Thermal Sensations—Burning the Flesh of the World

McHugh, Kevin E.; Kitson, Jennifer L

doi:10.1080/2373566x.2017.1415158

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…13 These provocative invitations to imagine a world without us resonate with a thought experiment in more-than-human geographies I have been pursuing: becoming-thermotropic in planetary heat. 14 Elaborating elemental touchstones in this ongoing sensory experiment charges this essay. The paper explores elemental thinking through a thermal imaginary that decenters the human, providing a fleeting glimpse of a world without us, pushing toward a post-phenomenology and elemental ethics in the Anthropocene.…”

Section: World-without-usmentioning

confidence: 98%

Becoming-elemental – a thermal imaginary in the Anthropocene

McHugh

2022

cultural geographies

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The Anthropocene problematic calls for imaginative aesthetic experiments fostering more-than-human thought and sensibilities. In this thought experiment, I draw on a sensing device in conjuring a thermal imaginary that decenters the human, espying a glimpse of a strange and uncanny world-without-us. The imaginary is a speculative performance in elemental attunement – becoming-molecular, becoming-imperceptible in the generative potentia of planetary heat – opening a pathway in rethinking bodies and worlds as emergent in, and through, forces elemental and cosmic in scope. The thermal imaginary accentuates the elemental as exorbitant, anonymous, and nonpossessable, an earthly plenum beyond any final capture, possession, mastery and control. Elemental alterity, the very strangeness of the earth, rises in the thermal imaginary as a summons, a calling from the “outside,” gesturing toward an immanent ethics of radical openness working in, and through, earthly bodies always already exposed and vulnerable in the force of the elemental. We must be open to the elemental summons, expanding capacities for what a body can do, moving beyond spinning reductive and redemptive Anthropocene narratives for saving this world. There can be no new bodies and worlds to come in the absence of an elemental ethics worthy of the earth itself.

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Section: World-without-usmentioning

confidence: 98%

Becoming-elemental – a thermal imaginary in the Anthropocene

McHugh

2022

cultural geographies

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“…Dixon (2009) shows how forms of art play a political role in commenting upon and challenging distributions of spaces and agency, by contesting political, economic, cultural and ethical contexts within which human and more-than-human entanglements operate (see also Dixon, Hawkins & Straughan 2012). Other work has theorized elemental materiality as contributing to an improved understanding of 'the material ontology of Earth, world, and life' (Engelman & McCormack, 2018: 243; see also Clarke 2015;McHugh & Kitson, 2018).…”

Section: Spaces and Politics Of Aestheticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Materiality, Race, and Speculative Aesthetics

Brigstocke

Gassner

2021

GeoHumanities

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“…Over the last decade or so the elements have become the focus of a significant and growing volume of research by geographers (e.g. Adams-Hutcheson, 2019; Adey, 2015; Anderson and Wylie, 2009; Engelmann, 2015; Jackson and Fannin, 2011; Martin, 2011; McCormack, 2015, 2017a, 2018; McHugh and Kitson, 2018; O’Grady, 2019; Simpson, 2018; Squire, 2016). This work is part of a wider renewal of interest in the elements across disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies and media studies (see, e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elemental worlds: Specificities, exposures, alchemies

Engelmann

McCormack

2021

Progress in Human Geography

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The elements have become the focus of a significant volume of research by geographers and others. Engagements with the elements have been framed in terms of four elemental orientations: matter, molecule, milieu and media. Our aim is to consider what is at stake in efforts to think with, across and beyond these orientations. Avoiding any reduction of the elements to a single ontological or epistemological proposition, we explore possibilities for grasping their implication in the composition and decomposition of worlds. Doing this can be facilitated by thinking about these worlds in relation to three interrelated matters of concern: specificities, exposures and alchemies.

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Thermal Sensations—Burning the Flesh of the World

Cited by 10 publications

References 28 publications

Becoming-elemental – a thermal imaginary in the Anthropocene

Becoming-elemental – a thermal imaginary in the Anthropocene

Materiality, Race, and Speculative Aesthetics

Elemental worlds: Specificities, exposures, alchemies

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