Book Review: Earthbound: The Aesthetics of Sovereignty in the Anthropocene
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221108067 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
that France played a significant role in Argentina’s state terrorism during the Dirty War.
As is stated, it is “a monograph about great power, namely the national (Argentine) and
transnational (French) institutional perpetrators who were complicit in the great crime of
torture”(157). Collard’s analysis also provides a proposed framework to resist and hold
accountable not just the “torturing rogue”state, but as important, the broader system and
structures exporting, teaching, and enabling torture across the globe. This includes adopt-
ing the concepts of “transnational institutional tortures”and “transnational state violence”
to advance a “progressive political project”. After all, one would be hard pressed to iden-
tify an example of state violence that did not involve the implicit or complicit involve-
ment of external states and/or corporations (e.g. Libya, Syria, or Yemen) that result in
vast harms, oppressions, and deaths. Overall, Collard provides an insightful analysis
that scholars, students, governmental and nongovernmental organizations will find
insightful.
DAWN L. ROTHE
Florida Atlantic University, USA
ORCID iD
Dawn L. Rothe https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4897-5910
References
Kauzlarich D and Kramer R (1998) Crimes of the American Nuclear State: At Home and Abroad.
Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Kramer R and Michalowski R (1990) Toward an integrated theory of state-corporate crime. Paper
presented at the American Society of Criminology, Baltimore, MD.
Z
iz
ek S (2008) Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. New York: Picador.
DANIEL MATTHEWS, Earthbound: The Aesthetics of Sovereignty in the Anthropocene. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1-4744-5530-5, £80 (hbk).
It will hardly be a surprise to readers of this journal that the enduring centrality of the idea
of sovereignty to the organisation and expression of our planetary legal and political rela-
tions can be viewed as a contributory factor towards climate change and the various other
profound ecological challenges that we associate with the Anthropocene –the label now
well established as a descriptor of this, our latest geological epoch (the timing of its
origins still much disputed) in which humanity has come to have a significant impact
on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. After all, the greenhouse gas emissions that cause
climate change affect the entire atmosphere, regardless of the source of the fossil fuel
extraction and use that produces these emissions. It follows that solutions to global
warming require regulatory co-ordination on a global scale. But as indicated by the rela-
tive ineffectiveness of a succession of treaties up to and including the 2016 Paris
Agreement –failings most recently highlighted at the 2021 Glasgow Cop26 Summit,
such co-ordination is thin on the ground. In a world divided into over 190 sovereign
Book Reviews 967
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