e-flux Journal #114

<p>On the occasion of the Taipei Biennial 2020 and together with the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), this special issue of e-flux journal will also be available to read in Chinese in 2021. Titled “You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet,” the issue deals with an increasingly pressing situation: people “around” the world no longer agree on what it means to live “on” earth—to such a radical extent that the foundational material and existential categories of “earth” and “world” are profoundly destabilized. It was often said at the beginning of Trump’s time in office that he had no coherent strategy. But today we can see that, on the contrary, he had an extremely coherent strategy that unfolded over four years without fail: privatization, deregulation, and isolating the US from any international project. The message of this strategy was clear: “You and I don’t live on the same planet.” What becomes of politics when opposing parties are taken as aliens occupying separate earths altogether? It is as if the question no longer concerns different visions of the same planet, but the composition and shape of several planets in conflict with one another. Pluralism has taken a much more explicit ontological shape, as if we are literally living on different earths—and earths that are at war with each other, as the essay in this issue “Coping with Planetary Wars” explores…</p>