About this Event
Sunday | May 12th | 3pm EST
Please join us at Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore for a conversation between author Mohamed Amer Meziane and writer Andreas Malm to mark the launch of The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization.
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How the disenchantment of empire led to climate change.
While industrial states competed to colonize Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century, conversion to Christianity was replaced by a civilizing mission. This new secular impetus strode hand in hand with racial capitalism in the age of empires: a terrestrial paradise was to be achieved through accumulation and the ravaging of nature.
Far from a defence of religion, The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization argues that phenomena such asevangelism and political Islam are best understood as products of empire and secularization. In a world where material technology was considered divine, religious and secular forces both tried to achieve Heaven on Earth by destroying Earth itself.
Mohamed Amer Meziane is a philosopher, performer and professor at Brown University after teaching for 4 years at Columbia University. The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization won the Albertine Prize for non-fiction in 2023 and his second book is titled: At the Edge of the Worlds: Towards a Metaphysical Anthropology.
Andreas Malm teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of, among other books, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming and How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, United States
USD 0.00
