Geology as Somatechnics: Re-imagining Human and Technology Entanglements in Geologies of the Future

Abstract

In this article we offer a textual analysis informed by feminist framings of the geologic as a somatechnic research practice. The turn to geology in recent feminist scholarship responds to the explosion of discourse on the Anthropocene (itself a geologic term) interrogating the power relations implicit in geology as a seemingly objective research practice and epistemology. We use this theoretical standpoint on geology to analyse two literary representations of geologies of the future –  Dawn by Octavia Butler and Earth After Us by Jan Zalasiewicz. In Earth After Us, aliens of the future mine the depths of the earth to understand humans’ relationship with the planet and planetary annihilation. In Dawn, aliens mine the geology of human flesh and genetics to understand the same thing. Through our analysis we demonstrate the ways that geology, as a specifically Western epistemology and research practice, relies on the distinction between the body – ‘bio’ – and nature – ‘geo’ – that Povinelli has termed ‘Geontopower’ (2016). Geontopower traces the ways that the research practices and epistemologies of geology are built from Western perspectives, that in turn are built on the backs of bodies – the slave power that built empires, as well as the long fossilised bodies that have powered capitalism. Through a feminist lens we demonstrate how these text’s representations of future geologies articulate a somatechnics in which bodies and technologies are intertwined. We argue that thinking geologically is a somatechnical research practice that reveals the extractive epistemologies implicit in ‘the White Geology of the Anthropocene’ ( Yusoff 2018 ). We conclude by offering a somatechnic geology in which the entangled relationships between bodies and systems of colonialism and capitalism are acknowledged as imbricated in the layers of flesh of humans and the planet alike, in order to imagine more just futures in an era of ecological urgency.