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Ex-orbitant globality

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>10/2005
<mark>Journal</mark>Theory, Culture and Society
Issue number5
Volume22
Number of pages21
Pages (from-to)165-185
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Social theorists, drawing on the study of complex dynamical systems to address global processes, tend to evoke an immanent globality devoid of a constitutive otherness or outside. However, as well as dealing with the internal dynamics of systems, complexity studies point to the mutual implication of systems and their surroundings: a concern that resonates with the interest in the convolutions of the inside–outside relationship prominent in post-structural philosophies. This article, looking at theories about the dynamical characteristics of the solar system, galaxy and universe, develops the idea of an ex-orbitant globality that treats the earth as a system in active and ongoing interchange with its cosmic environment. A sense of the inevitable excess and unpredictability that attends this openness to the cosmos and to further other-than-human influences, it is suggested, has repercussions for the way we respond to environmental change injecting an element of abyssal undecidability into all our deliberations.