Climate Mathematics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v18i4.1719Keywords:
climate, mathematics, politics, algebra, fractals, geometryAbstract
This essay is a critical response to Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright’s (2018) Climate Leviathan. It focuses on the political alternative fleshed out towards the end of the book: “Climate X.” For Mann and Wainwright, X is a variable to “solve for.” I seek to take this seriously as a mathematical statement, exploring the extent to which a politics of Climate X can be considered algebraic, especially in light of Mann and Wainwright’s references to “fragments” in the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The book’s algebraic approach, I argue, reduces the fragment (X), and politics along with it, to something numerable. From a different reading of Adorno and Benjamin, I show how two other fields of mathematics—set theory and fractal geometry—help address some of the pitfalls of Climate X, while pointing towards another climate politics that embraces deviation, infinity, and nothingness.
References
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Adorno TW (2013) Aesthetic Theory. London: Bloomsbury.
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Barnes T (2019) Not Only … But Also: Urban Mathematical Models and Urban Social Theory. In: D’Acci L (ed) The Mathematics of Urban Morphology. New York: Springer, 491–497.
Bartos AE (2018) Relational spaces and relational care: Campus sexual violence, intimate geopolitics and topological polis. Area, DOI: 10.1111/area.12449.
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Bhandar B (2018) Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Duke University Press.
Billé, F (2018) Skinworlds: Borders, haptics, topologies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36(1): 60–77.
Bishop AJ (1990) Western mathematics: the secret weapon of cultural imperialism. Race & Class, 32(2): 51–65.
Bloch E (1970) A Philosophy of the Future. New York: Herder and Herder.
Brown C & Liebovitch L (2010) Fractal Analysis. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Clemens J (2011) Work of Giorgio Agamben. Edinburgh University Press.
Dauphiné A (2012) Fractal Geography. Hoboken: Wiley.
Fenves P (2011) Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. Stanford University Press.
Ford TH (2016) Climate change and literary history. In: Bristow T & Ford TH (eds) A Cultural History of Climate Change. London: Routledge.
Foucault M (2005) The Order of Things. London: Routledge.
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Jesseph D (1999) Squaring the Circle: The War Between Hobbes and Wallis. University of Chicago Press.
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Laugwitz D (2009) Bernhard Riemann 1826–1866: Turning Points in the Conception of Mathematics. New York: Springer.
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Marx K (1992) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, volume 1. London: Penguin.
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Mountz A (2011) Where asylum-seekers wait: feminist counter-topographies of sites between states. Gender, Place & Culture 18(3): 381–399.
Neel PA (2018) Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict. Reaktion Books.
O’Sullivan D, Bergmann L & Thatcher, JE (2018) Spatiality, Maps, and Mathematics in Critical Human Geography: Toward a Repetition with Difference. The Professional Geographer 70(1): 129–139.
Paasi A (2011) Geography, space and the re-emergence of topological thinking. Dialogues in Human Geography 1(3): 299–303.
Riofrancos T (2019) Plan, Mood, Battlefield – Reflections on the Green New Deal. Viewpoint Magazine.
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2019/05/16/plan-mood-battlefield-reflections-on-the-green-new-deal/
Rose G (1995) Distance, Surface, Elsewhere: A Feminist Critique of the Space of Phallocentric Self/Knowledge. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13(6): 761–781.
Sawyer WW (2017) [1943]. Mathematician’s Delight. Mineola: Dover.
Secor A (2013) 2012 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture Topological City. Urban Geography 34(4): 430–444.
Shaw WS, Herman RDK & Dobbs GR (2006) Encountering Indigeneity: Re-Imagining and Decolonizing Geography. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 88(3): 267–276.
Siegmund-Schultze R (2009) Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact. Princeton University Press.
Springer S (2014) Human geography without hierarchy. Progress in Human Geography 38(3): 402–419.
Staeheli LA & Lawson VA (1995) Feminism, Praxis, and Human Geography. Geographical Analysis 27(4): 321–338
Tomba M (2019) Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity. Oxford University Press.
Vandermeer J (2014) Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance. London: Fourth Estate.
Voss RF (1988). Fractals in nature: From characterization to simulation. In: Peitgen H-O & Saupe D (eds) The Science of Fractal Images. New York: Springer, 21–70.
Woodward K, Jones III JP & Marston SA (2012) The politics of autonomous space. Progress in Human Geography 36(2): 204–224.
Adorno TW (1984) [1932] The Idea of Natural History. Telos 60(Summer): 111–124.
Adorno TW (2013) Aesthetic Theory. London: Bloomsbury.
Althusser L (2006) Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978–87. London: Verso.
Badiou A (2006) Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II. London: Bloomsbury.
Badiou A (2007) [1988] Being and Event. London: Continuum.
Barad K (2012) What Is the Measure of Nothingness: Infinity, Virtuality, Justice: 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts: Documenta Series 099. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.
Bargu B (2012) In the Theater of Politics: Althusser’s Aleatory Materialism and Aesthetics. Diacritics 40(3): 86–113.
Barnes T (2019) Not Only … But Also: Urban Mathematical Models and Urban Social Theory. In: D’Acci L (ed) The Mathematics of Urban Morphology. New York: Springer, 491–497.
Bartos AE (2018) Relational spaces and relational care: Campus sexual violence, intimate geopolitics and topological polis. Area, DOI: 10.1111/area.12449.
Benjamin W (1996) The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism. Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 116–200.
Benjamin W (1998) The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: Verso
Benjamin W (2006) The Land Where the Proletariat May Not Be Mentioned: The Premier of Eight One-Act Plays by Brecht. In: Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935 –1938. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 330–334.
Bernes J (2019) Between the Devil and the Green New Deal. Commune. https://communemag.com/between-the-devil-and-the-green-new-deal/.
Bhandar B (2018) Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Duke University Press.
Billé, F (2018) Skinworlds: Borders, haptics, topologies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36(1): 60–77.
Bishop AJ (1990) Western mathematics: the secret weapon of cultural imperialism. Race & Class, 32(2): 51–65.
Bloch E (1970) A Philosophy of the Future. New York: Herder and Herder.
Brown C & Liebovitch L (2010) Fractal Analysis. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Clemens J (2011) Work of Giorgio Agamben. Edinburgh University Press.
Dauphiné A (2012) Fractal Geography. Hoboken: Wiley.
Fenves P (2011) Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. Stanford University Press.
Ford TH (2016) Climate change and literary history. In: Bristow T & Ford TH (eds) A Cultural History of Climate Change. London: Routledge.
Foucault M (2005) The Order of Things. London: Routledge.
Harvey D (1969) Explanation in Geography. London: Edward Arnold.
Herman RDK (2008) Reflections on the Importance of Indigenous Geography. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 32(3): 73–88.
Jesseph D (1999) Squaring the Circle: The War Between Hobbes and Wallis. University of Chicago Press.
Khatib S (2013) A Non-Nullified Nothingness: Walter Benjamin and the Messianic. Stasis 1(1). http://www.stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/56.
Lanoiselée Y, Nivanen L, Kaabouchi AE, & Wang QA (2018) Composition of Fractals. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1113: 012013.
Laugwitz D (2009) Bernhard Riemann 1826–1866: Turning Points in the Conception of Mathematics. New York: Springer.
Lukinbeal C (2004) The map that precedes the territory: An introduction to essays in cinematic geography GeoJournal 59(4): 247–251.
MacFarlane K (2017) A thousand CEOs: Relational thought, processual space, and Deleuzian ontology in human geography and strategic management. Progress in Human Geography 41(3): 299–320.
MacFarlane K (2019) Time, Waste, and the City: The Rise of the Environmental Industry. Antipode 51(1): 225–247.
Mandelbrot BB (1982) The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: WH Freeman.
Mandelbrot BB (2012) The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick. New York: Vintage Books.
Mann G (2008) A Negative Geography of Necessity. Antipode 40(5): 921–934.
Mann G & Wainwright J (2018) Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future. London: Verso.
Marston S.A, Jones, JP & Woodward K (2005) Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(4): 416–432.
Marston SA (2000) The social construction of scale. Progress in Human Geography 24(2): 219–242.
Martin L & Secor A (2014) Towards a post-mathematical topology. Progress in Human Geography 38(3): 420–438.
Marx K (1992) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, volume 1. London: Penguin.
Mitchell K & Kallio KP (2017) Spaces of the Geosocial: Exploring Transnational Topologies. Geopolitics 22(1): 1–14.
Mitchell K, Marston SA & Katz C (2004) Life’s Work: Geographies of Social Reproduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mountz A (2011) Where asylum-seekers wait: feminist counter-topographies of sites between states. Gender, Place & Culture 18(3): 381–399.
Neel PA (2018) Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict. Reaktion Books.
O’Sullivan D, Bergmann L & Thatcher, JE (2018) Spatiality, Maps, and Mathematics in Critical Human Geography: Toward a Repetition with Difference. The Professional Geographer 70(1): 129–139.
Paasi A (2011) Geography, space and the re-emergence of topological thinking. Dialogues in Human Geography 1(3): 299–303.
Riofrancos T (2019) Plan, Mood, Battlefield – Reflections on the Green New Deal. Viewpoint Magazine.
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2019/05/16/plan-mood-battlefield-reflections-on-the-green-new-deal/
Rose G (1995) Distance, Surface, Elsewhere: A Feminist Critique of the Space of Phallocentric Self/Knowledge. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13(6): 761–781.
Sawyer WW (2017) [1943]. Mathematician’s Delight. Mineola: Dover.
Secor A (2013) 2012 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture Topological City. Urban Geography 34(4): 430–444.
Shaw WS, Herman RDK & Dobbs GR (2006) Encountering Indigeneity: Re-Imagining and Decolonizing Geography. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 88(3): 267–276.
Siegmund-Schultze R (2009) Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact. Princeton University Press.
Springer S (2014) Human geography without hierarchy. Progress in Human Geography 38(3): 402–419.
Staeheli LA & Lawson VA (1995) Feminism, Praxis, and Human Geography. Geographical Analysis 27(4): 321–338
Tomba M (2019) Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity. Oxford University Press.
Vandermeer J (2014) Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance. London: Fourth Estate.
Voss RF (1988). Fractals in nature: From characterization to simulation. In: Peitgen H-O & Saupe D (eds) The Science of Fractal Images. New York: Springer, 21–70.
Woodward K, Jones III JP & Marston SA (2012) The politics of autonomous space. Progress in Human Geography 36(2): 204–224.
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Published
2019-09-12
How to Cite
MacFarlane, K. (2019). Climate Mathematics. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(4), 803–815. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v18i4.1719
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