What we talk about when we talk about depth – I

Abstract

Recent scholarship on mining and drilling, urban infrastructure, maritime logistics, the transit of toxins, the anthropocene, and the disposal of bodies theorizes the politics of sub-surface worlds (Anand 2017, Appel et al. 2015, Campling & Colás 2021, Klinger 2017, Murphy 2013, Yusoff 2018). Bringing these depths into view has centered new spaces, scales, materials, and relations. Yet the concept of depth itself, and the responsibilities that attend its investigation, have not been sufficiently examined.

Depth is more than a simple spatial signifier or linguistic trope. Thinking with and beyond verticality (Graham and Hewitt 2012), volumetric space (Weizman 2007, Elden 2013, Billé 2018), and metaphor (McKittrick 2018, Shalem 2017), we want to suggest that the deeps constitute a semiotic landscape that is resolutely material but always exceeds conventional materialist readings. Deep spaces matter: they are simultaneously material and meaningful. This panel engages critically and creatively with the mattering of chthonic landscapes, defined broadly.

Encoded in the concept of depth are all kinds of latent associations and meanings. As such, we may speak of deep time, deep sleep, deep ecology, deep learning, the deep state, skin deep, diving deep, depth of character, depth of perception, depth of field, depth of meaning, etc. How, we ask, are these (and many other) conceptualizations of depth tied to the deep places of the earth? And if, as Spivak teaches us, thought must be “written on the planet as planet” (2012: 349), how does thinking operate beneath the planetary surface?

Chair

• Nicholas Anderman, University of California, Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• A Broad Now: Engaging the speculative present on the Salar de Atacama - Anna Friz, University of California, Santa Cruz

• How Dangers (Should) Re-emerge From the Aquatic Abyss - Sven Bergmann, German Maritime Museum

• Deep learning in the planetary oilfield: On subterranean plasticity - John Kendall, U Minnesota

• The Plume: movement and mixture in subterranean water worlds - Andrea Ballestero, University of Southern California

Session Organizers

• Anya Kaplan-Seem, University of Minnesota

• Xander Lenc, University of California, Berkeley

• Nicholas Anderman, University of California, Berkeley