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Mohamed Meziane’s States of the Earth attends to the materiality of the phenomenon we’ve come to call “secularism.” Far from just a set of beliefs, orientations, or even behaviors, secularism performs literally dirt-y work, unearthing the treasures of Earth in the name of industrial paradise. Material as this work undoubtedly is, Meziane suggests it is framed by a cosmo-theological revolution. Cosmologically, the heavens are “sacrificed” or “dissolved” in favor of an increasingly disemboweled Earth. Theologically, the sovereign is (both numerically and geographically) fragmented and disseminated.
In appreciation of the author’s cosmotheomaterial account of the secular, this response turns to the recent techno-industrial recreation of human efforts in space. How might we understand the increasingly entrepreneurial storming of the “dissolved” heavens? As self-professed saviors design extra-terrestrial colonies built from lunar and asteroidal mines, are we witnessing an extension, transformation, or reversal of the secular-etractive paradigm? What do we make of the abandonment of heaven for Earth as the techno-prophets abandon Earth for the heavens?