Against "terrenism"
Léopold Sédar Senghor, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the fear of a de-spiritualised earth
pp. 201-217
in: Adam Bobbette, Amy Donovan (eds), Political geology, Berlin, Springer, 2019Abstract
In 1961 Négritude poet and Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor organised a conference entitled "Construire la Terre" (Building the Earth), which was inspired by the work of the French geologist, palaeontologist, philosopher and Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. What Senghor attempted in his speech could be described as an attempt at imagining African post-independence politics through geological dimensions. This chapter looks at the political issues with Senghor's vision of planetary development and compares it with today's desires for "ancestral geographies' across the political spectrum.
