Memories of Air

In this talk, Giovanbattista Tusa suggests that we are currently witnessing a mutation, which disrupts the mythical imaginary that had confined viruses, climate change, and atmospheric turbulences to an immutable, celestial background. Western philosophy has based its perpetuation on ideas that have been built on an exploitable ground, endlessly manipulated, dissociated from a sky that has become increasingly uncertain and threatening, increasingly distant. The conclusions presented in this short presentation move in opposite direction to this disastrous separation, as Giovanbattista Tusa argues that the repression of this traumatic experience, is the cause of the perturbation that haunts our time. Disorientation pervades philosophy when the entire imaginary to which it had anchored its power to change the world seems to dissolve in the air; but precisely for this reason, philosophy must accept inhabiting the fluctuating disorientation of its own time, populated by intermittent and uncertain opportunities of experiencing differently the past and the future—to encounter different relationships with the times that change.

Keywords: ecology; climate change; philosophy.