The Earth for the Other Others

This chapter explores an implication of the question of effacement of the other others, which this book advanced, for and in thinking the Earth. Mobilizing the question of the other others to think the Earth anew is no more but also no less than an articulation of yet another, perhaps the most important part of the question: How, or is it possible, to think the Earth in the first place? Advancing this problem moves the argument in the chapters beyond the hitherto predominant paradigms of linear otherness, in which the other and the question of belonging to a territory have been inextricably connected one to another. Is that connection between other and territory necessary, and what does that connection preclude from the view? To formulate and advance these questions the chapter engages with Gilles Deleuze’s notion of territorialization, and in particular with his questioning of the relationships between territorialization and existence, as well as between earth and being. The argument shows both necessity and insufficiency of Deleuze’s analysis of territorialization in relation to otherness in order to ask about of those others who remain in an intrinsically necessary relationship to the earth without ever finalizing their relation with a particular territory. In that way, the chapter provides a view of the political before it locks into either political ontology or political theology -- now extending the question of the effacement of the political beyond its exemplification as the political in the Talmud.