| Title | Concrete Solarities |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Cristián Simonetti(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0404.1.10 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/solarities-elemental-encounters-and-refractions/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Cristián Simonetti |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2023-11-22 |
| Long abstract | Concrete is a material that substantiates key contradictions of contemporary urban life. This anthropic rock, the most abundant in earth history, not only materializes modern narratives of progress but is currently a candidate to mark the onset of the Anthropocene. Moreover, contrary to how it has been traditionally portrayed by the industry, as a synthetic product of modern ingenuity, concrete results from a deep planetary relationship between the Earth and the Sun; the very same relationship that has made the existence of life in this planet, as we know it, possible, including humans. Attending to contemporary dystopias of Chile’s neoliberal experiment in Santiago, this chapter addresses the importance of the relationship between sunlight and concrete for understanding the human condition in the Anthropocene. |
| Page range | pp. 117–124 |
| Print length | 8 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Keywords |
|
Cristián Simonetti is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His work has concentrated on how bodily gestures and environmental forces relate to notions of time in science. More recently he has engaged in collaborations across the sciences, arts, and humanities to explore the environmental properties of materials relevant to the Anthropocene. He is the author of Sentient Conceptualizations: Feeling for Time in the Sciences of the Past (Routledge, 2018), co-editor of Surfaces: Transformations of Body, Materials and Earth (Routledge, 2020), and co-editor of a special issue of the journal Theory, Culture & Society entitled “Solid Fluids. New Approaches to Materials and Meaning” (2022).