Fear of a Dead White Planet: Fear of a Dead White Planet

Fear of a Dead White Planet asks: How does one study when the planet is on fire? The More Worlds Collective challenges the contemporary rush to planetary technofixes for environmental emergency. Instead, it tracks how such planetary-science frames are enmeshed in the longstanding projects of White Supremacy, settler colonialism, and epistemological violence. Calling for unlearning and joined-up study, the collective reclaims terraforming from off-earth engineering schemes to think through how our more modest efforts to study differently are also world-making and world-breaking. In orienting its work toward terra and formation, the collective commits to a place-based, non universal study scaled at levels both intimate and massive. Through its serious but unruly methods, Fear of a Dead White Planet invites readers to recognize and conjure alternate worlds in and around the university.

Joseph Masco is Samuel N. Harper Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

Tim Choy is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

Jake Kosek is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley.

M. Murphy is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Data Justice and Science and Technology Studies at the University of Toronto.