Abstract

In this interview, Brian Massumi discusses the possibility of a collective practice of experimentation beyond the infernal alternatives between the state authoritarianism and a narrow and exclusionary notion of freedom based on the individual, reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic. This requires diagnosing the mix of forces at play, in other words, examining the interlinkages of various modes of power. Analysis of the ecology of powers then invokes a positive project that is inventing an aesthetics of the earth. An aesthetics of the earth is a call for a more-than-human relational ethics, which takes place in intricate co-composition with the earth and its emergent strata of all kinds: viral, bacterial, vegetal, animal, human, technological. Thus, from the ecology of powers to an aesthetics of the earth, Massumi proposes a politics of potential that is diagnostic rather than prescriptive yet encourages experimentation towards a postcapitalist future at this critical juncture of our epoch.