A paper on the Anthropocene and the problem of representation by Lisa Taliano, presented in the UK at the University of Hertfordshire and published in Writing Visual Culture June 2020.

This paper takes seriously Bruno Latour’s challenge to replace the blue marble with a better representation of the earth. Latour makes the provocative claim that we need to replace our conception of the earth from the well-worn planetary view defined and accepted since the beginning of modern science in order to shift our attention away from the globe to the surface of the earth, to the critical zone where all life exists. Through an analysis of two alternative representations presented by Bruno Latour in his performance/lecture, Inside, this paper explores the powers and limits of representation, focusing on the question: can philosophy, art and science, by working together, change the way we know the world, and our relationship and attitude towards it, by successfully changing our representations of it?