The power of terrain: The affective materiality of planet Earth in the age of revolution

Abstract

This commentary analyzes Stuart Elden’s contributions to a theory of terrain and proposes to further politicize them through a bodily, materialist, and non-anthropocentric examination of the severity of the climate crisis and of the ways in which grassroots movements struggling for radical change are empowered by their engagement with terrain. In particular, I argue in dialogue with Elden that this perspective requires an affective and non-Eurocentric examination of ‘the power of terrain’: that is, the irreducible capacity of the terrain of planet Earth, on the one hand, to severely disrupt human places and territories amid global warming and, on the other, to facilitate collective mobilizations for social, climate, gender, and racial justice.