Günderrode’s Earth: On the Political Ecology of “Life”

ABSTRACT This essay examines the conception of life Karoline von Günderrode develops in her Naturphilosophie. Focusing on “Idea of the Earth,” the essay argues that Günderrode develops a theory of the Earth that understands it as a synthesis of body and spirit akin to a Spinozistic monism. In contrast to Schelling and Hegel, who understood the Earth as the inert backdrop for the emergence of independent organisms, Günderrode’s conception of the Earth treats it as an unconditional form of activity irreducible to its status as an object. The Earth, for Günderrode, is made up of combinatory elements that coalesce and dissolve in a constant tension that emphasizes the impermanence of particular forms of organization. This conception ultimately suggests that the division between inorganic and organic beings is untenable and that the Earth itself is “alive” in ways irreducible to either. The essay goes on to briefly examine the unique political ecology that emerges as a result of Günderrode’s Naturphilosophie which, by undoing the division between the organic and the inorganic, likewise reinvents the relation between what is “natural” and what is “social.”