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Stengers, Heidegger, Descola, (Kraus) and what is cosmopolitics

My own notion of cosmopolitics is slightly different from that Stengers has been proposing and examining. I tend to add to her notion, grounded on the idea of an ecology of practices, two other elements that, it seems to me, make the notion more dramatic and still more crucial. I take the ecology of practices is about the conflicts, indifference, collaborations and alliances between practices of knowing, intervening and keeping company. The ecology of practices is the very cosmic scenario where any epistemic endeavor takes place - but also what the epistemic endeavor sponsors (and maintains, instaurates, brings about) in its surroundings. To the ecology of practices, I would add the history of being in the sense of Heidegger: what makes nihilism a cosmopolitics is that it names an attitude of intelligence extraction towards the rest of the cosmos - including the very protagonists of intelligence-extraction. The history of nihilism and of whatever precedes and succeeds it is cosmopolitical, it is an adventure in the realm of controlling things and letting them be. One of the consequences of nihilism - and of our modern practices - is the anthropocene or whatever is the name for the current impact on the planet's geology the current regime around humans has. I also add what Descola calls a disposition of being, in the context of the anthropology of nature: naturalism - as much as animism - is a cosmopolitics. In this sense, it is explicitly about the relationship humans hold with non-humans and how the former craft a form of life among the latter. The issue of the connections between modernity, nihilism and naturalism elucidate the three of them.

Ludueña understands cosmopolitics in terms of spectrology. He cites Karl Kraus saying that as there are no more than shadows and puppets left, then the banalest events should be considered from a cosmic viewpoint. Ludueña adds that, conversely, "it is not possible to understand any aspect of the cosmos without paying attention to the seeming details of the deceased human world" (La comunidad de los espectros III: Arcana Imperii, 26. My translation).

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