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Being on the Edge: Body, Place, Climate

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Place, Space and Hermeneutics

Part of the book series: Contributions to Hermeneutics ((CONT HERMEN,volume 5))

Abstract

Life is always on edge – on the edge of things in open space, on the edge of the place we now occupy, at the edge of our body, in intersecting edges with others, and in psychologically uneasy states when we are “on edge.” In view of this basically edged character of life and existence, I explore how climate, along with body and place, have to be seen as edge phenomena. Their edges are for the most part fragile and precarious, and in concert with each other they can all too easily eventuate in full-scale climate crisis of the very sort we face today.

Climate, wind, season, hour are not of another nature than the things, animals, or people that populate them, follow them, sleep and awaken within them.

—Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 263.

Man may surmount climate.

—Watsuji Tetsuro, Climate: A Philosophical Study, p. 39.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here I would question Timothy Morton’s use of the term “hyperobject” (Morton 2010: 130ff) to designate climate change: if anything, the situation is just the opposite: climate is no object, much less a super-object.

  2. 2.

    He continues: “In much of what follows, I address the resistance mounted by impoverished communities who have been involuntarily moved out of their knowledge; … with social movements that seek to stave off one of two ruinous prospects: either the threatened community capitulates and is scattered (across refugee camps, placeless ‘relocation’ sites, desperate favelas, and unwelcoming foreign lands), or the community refuses to move but, as its world is undetermined, effectively becomes a community of refugees in place … displacement without moving.” (18–19).

  3. 3.

    Entailed here is the interaction between climate and human history. For Watsuji, there is no history apart from climate, and vice versa: see 8 and 11, and especially 10: “History is climate history and climate is historical climate.”

  4. 4.

    This is Watsuji’s version of Heidegger’s notion that we stand out in time through temporal ecstasies.

  5. 5.

    Similarly, “man apprehends himself in climate” (p. 8).

  6. 6.

    These words form the conclusion of This Changes Everything.

  7. 7.

    Janz 2011: 178. Note also Janz’s statement that “climate affords ways of being” (174). These are, in my preferred terms, ways of being bodily in the place-world.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Edward Casey

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  1. Edward Casey
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Correspondence to Edward Casey .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

    Bruce B. Janz

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Casey, E. (2017). Being on the Edge: Body, Place, Climate. In: Janz, B. (eds) Place, Space and Hermeneutics. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52214-2_32

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