ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Terracene Salar Mameni historicizes the popularization of the scientific notion of the Anthropocene alongside the emergence of the global war on terror. Mameni theorizes the Terracene as an epoch marked by a convergence of racialized militarism and environmental destruction. Both the Anthropocene and the war on terror centered the antagonist figures of the Anthropos and the terrorist as responsible for epochal changes in the new geological and geopolitical world orders. In response, Mameni shows how the Terracene requires radically new engagements with terra (the earth), whose intelligence resides in matters such as oil and phenomena like earthquakes and fires. Drawing on the work of artists whose practices interrogate histories of settler-colonial and imperial interests in land and resources in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Palestine, and other regions most affected by the war on terror, Mameni offers speculative paths into the aesthetics of the Terracene.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Salar Mameni is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

REVIEWS

“An innovative, timely, and eminently teachable book, Terracene is part of an exciting new wave of new materialist thought that challenges speciesism, decenters the human, and destabilizes the category of the human altogether. Salar Mameni writes beautifully, weaving memoir and personal vignettes with deep theorizing that demonstrates bright flashes of genius throughout. They bring together the best of critical race, Indigenous, and postcolonial scholarship to bear on the dystopian here and now of climate chaos and terrorized world-making. In short, Terracene is a sensation.”

-- Ronak K. Kapadia, author of Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War

“In compelling visual analysis, Salar Mameni shows us how the colonial construction of terror has violently homed in on racialized bodies and environments. Through an aesthetics of revolt forged in opposition to the pincer movement of the inhumane-inhuman, Mameni confronts the weaponization of environments in their narrativization.”

-- Kathryn Yusoff, author of A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None

"What makes this book particularly refreshing is its formal qualities. Between its more academic close readings, Mamani weaves poetic personal narratives and autobiographical accounts of his aesthetic experiences. Terracene demonstrates an avenue for academic writing that can more readily navigate the divide between academic and public intellectualism."
-- Kyle Sittig H-Environment, H-Net Reviews

"Mameni’s work [is] indispensable in making sense of an increasingly incomprehensible world."
-- Jasmine Sanau Film-Philosophy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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