Earth with Agency: A Thoroughly Queer Notion

Prevailing Western thought assumes earth is a machine to be worked, its matter existing to be converted into the fuel for human progress. This philosophy both underpins industrial design practice and helps to legitimate anthropogenic climate change. In a cross-disciplinary endeavor, this article utilizes esoteric spiritual discourses (Marcel Mauss’s Gift theory and James Lovelock’s Gaia theory) to “queer” the dominant notion of what earth is. In so doing, it attempts to posit a generative metaphor, which may help articulate an augmented role for designers in the age of climate change.