Planetary Personhood is an interplanetary campaign pursuing radical space decolonization.

The project proposes independent personhood for the entire planet Mars, and considers the possibility of solidarity with the entities already there - the stones!

Can we be kind to a planet, even without “life”?

1. Let Mars Be Mars
2. Recognize All Martians
3. Welcome to Earth Allan!
4. Mars Is Not Terra Nullius
5. Honor Nonlife: End Biocentrism
6. Stones Are Our Ancestors
7. Respect Other Ways of Being
8. Martian Matter Matters

As NASA, SpaceX, and others, now attempt to bring earthlings to Mars, Planetary Personhood is an opportunity to free ourselves from the conceptual baggage of earthly traditions and systems. Seeking to move away from the dualistic divide between living beings and inanimate matter, the project invites us to a new way of relating to a planetary whole, and to the myriad of nonhuman forces and actants that surround us.

SUPPORT MARTIAN RIGHTS!

1. LET MARS BE MARS

Through independent personhood, Mars will be owned by Mars. Any decisions regarding Martian matters will ultimately be taken by Mars, a new legal entity with rights protected in a Martian constitution.

This could include large-scale issues such as settlements and colonies of earthlings, geomorphological alterings such as mining and extraction of minerals, manipulation of planetary systems such as atmospheric composition, and water presence.

For compatibility with current human decision-making processes, the direct communication of the will and intention of Mars could be deferred to a group of human guardians or custodians. This group, similar to a board of directors of a corporation, or guardians of the Te Urewera territory in northern New Zealand, would think deeply about what is best for Mars, and strive to uphold Mars’s fundamental rights; Mars has a right to be Mars. 

These guardians could be composed of a diverse set of knowledge systems, such as representatives from indigenous groups and philosophies here on Earth, many of which enable a deeply symbiotic and respectful bond to the land.

2. Recognize all martians

Going beyond the life-nonlife boundary, and blurring the subject-object divide, Planetary Personhood recognizes all the native inhabitants of Mars as Martians. This includes all constituent parts, objects, structures, phenomena, matters, and moons. Martians cannot be owned, and their presence should be taken into account by all human visitors to Mars.

"Mountains and mosaics
pebbles and pound stones
silt, slivers, and sands
are all Martian in composition, origin, and trajectory
and should thus be considered Martians.”

3. Welcome to Earth Allan!

Experimenting with how this thinking would collide with Earthlings and their institutions, the project seeks citizenship for a Martian meteorite residing on Earth - Allan Hills 84001.

Allan was born on Mars, crystallized by molten rock 4.091 billion years ago, and blasted off the Martian surface by the impact of another meteor about 16 million years ago. Allan, the Martian, arrived on Earth approximately 13,000 years ago on the International Continent of Antarctica, and established first contact with humans on December 27, 1984.

After careful study by human scientists, Allan was found to carry fossilized remains of primordial bacterial colonies that were interpreted as evidence of life on Mars. This led to the announcement of the US. President Bill Clinton, in 1996:

“Today, rock 84001 speaks to us across all those billions of years and millions of miles. It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined. Even as it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it poses still others even more fundamental.

We will continue to listen closely to what it has to say, as we continue the search for answers and for knowledge, that is as old as humanity itself but essential to our people's future.”

Even though scientists later decided that it was unclear what Allan was saying about life, Planetary Personhood welcomes Allan as part of a Martian delegation carrying a message about a reality beyond both life and nonlife.

By seeking citizenship for this alien harbinger, the project attempts to challenge the limits of our institutional systems of categorization. It recognizes that this division between beings with rights and objects as property says more about the system than about Allan.

4. Mars Is Not Terra Nullius!

When considering human settlement on Mars, the planet is often seen as an empty place, a blank canvas, void of “life”—and therefore empty of independent agency and inherent value. Mars is the ultimate desert, our new Terra Nullius where humankind can once again carelessly manipulate the world to our liking. Mars is the dream world where the narrative of human domination is running wild and free.

We speak of Mars colonization as if we suddenly forgot the atrocities and genocides that the drive of colonization caused the last time we pursued it. We speak of terraforming Mars disregarding how the current terraforming of the Earth is causing unprecedented mass extinction and climate disruption.

Planetary Personhood invites us to re-think our dreams of Mars. How can we go to space, but without the colonialism?

5. Honor Nonlife: End Biocentrism!

Biocentrism is the ethical view that divides the world into living beings and inanimate matter — seeing life in any form as valuable and worthy of attention and protection, seeking to protect species from extinction, valuing biodiversity and wildlife. On Earth, this view enables us to compassionately connect with other species, and is humbler than the related Anthropocentrism, which sees humans as superior and unique.

But on Mars, the absence of “life” reveals that biocentrism still maintains an underlying relationship to matter as mere resource. A thought that enables an extractivist mindset focused on short term goals of power and profit. Focusing on “life” means that humans can do whatever they want on Mars, which overlooks our deeply entangled state of interbeing that encompasses everything, including nonlife. Focusing on biodiversity also misses the fact that there is a lot of diversity on Mars: geodiversity!

It is a planet full of activity, but perhaps on different timescales: sandstorms, volcanoes, freeze-thaw cycles, marsquakes, and stones falling over – it is a place where “no-one” is doing anything, but a lot of things are happening.

6. STONES ARE OUR ANCESTORS

We usually think of humanity as consisting of a set of human bodies, but if we look deeper, we see that if it wasn’t for the animals, the plants, the mushrooms, and the microbiomes, there wouldn’t be any humanity at all! Even looking at our own bodies, we see that they are actually constructed of the minerals, the mountains, the wind, and the sunshine. Humanity consists entirely of non-human entities! We are nourished and sustained by countless parents, the rocks are our mothers and fathers. This invisible chain of umbilical cords doesn’t end by the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Without Mars, Earth would be radically different, as the history of the solar system would be different. The entire cosmos is linked in a mutual network of interdependence. This is not poetry; it is science.

7. RESPECT OTHER WAYS OF BEING

A possible way then, of enabling empathy and respect for other ways of being, is using the method of “Strategic Anthropomorphism”, called for by the contemporary philosopher Jane Bennett. This strategy exploits a glitch in the human psyche: the innate tendency to attribute human traits, emotions, or intentions to nonhuman entities. Unable to escape our access modes, we cannot know how Mars or meteorites experience reality, or if they are driven by volition or purpose. But trying to imagine otherness, even from our inevitably human perspective, might open a sense of mystery and curiosity where compassion can grow.

Do we have to treat Martians as humans in order to respect them?

8. MARTIAN MATTER MATTERS!

Recognizing the Martians, Planetary Personhood supports the positive aspects of space exploration, such as humbleness and wonder for the vastness of the universe, while it prevents our boldness from sliding into recklessness.

What sort of meteorite do we want to be? As we now blast off the Earth with renewed efforts to step into the unknown, why we go matters. Our intentions direct our actions, and our actions continuously reshape the path of evolution, for both living and nonliving beings.

If we don’t change ourselves and our minds before we go to Mars, space is not going to change it for us. We are a continuation of ideas, habits, and processes built up over generations, but we do have some response-ability in which ones to cultivate, and which to abandon.

Planetary Personhood, as a declaration, does not provide immediate answers but rather poses a series of questions and frames a certain Martian Mindset:

• What forms of presences and absences are supported and constructed by particular activities?

• Who is allowed to maintain their current form?

• Can respecting Martian ways of being, move us to reconcile with Earthlings?

The Marrow

There was a word inside a stone.
I tried to pry it clear,
mallet and chisel, pick and gad,
until the stone was dropping blood,
but still I could not hear
the word the stone had said.

I threw it down beside the road
among a thousand stones
and as I turned away it cried
the word aloud within my ear
and the marrow of my bones
heard, and replied.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

INITIATORS

Planetary Personhood is initiated by the art and design studio Nonhuman Nonsense. Seeking to transmute our relationship to the nonhuman, the studio embraces the contradictory and the paradoxical – telling stories that open the public imaginary to futures that currently seem impossible. Aiming to redirect focus to the underlying ethical and political issues, to challenge the power structures that enable and aggravate the current destruction of (non)human worlds - allowing other entities to exist. Their work has been presented at the United Nations, shown at the MU Artspace, Dutch Design Week, Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, ArkDes Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Gogbot Festival among others.

nonhuman-nonsense.com

REFERENCES

Legal Personhood & Guardianship

GARN: Global Alliance for Rights of Nature,”What Is Rights Of Nature?”, 8 June 2020, https://therightsofnature.org/what-is-rights-of-nature/

“Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth” World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, 15 June 2010,
http://pwccc.wordpress.com/programa/

“Te Urewera Act 2014,” Public Act Contents – New Zealand Legislation, accessed November 19, 2019, http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2014/0051/latest/DLM6183601.html

"Tāmati Kruger: Down That Way, Glory Waits - E-Tangata." E. September 13, 2019. https://e-tangata.co.nz/korero/tamati-kruger-down-that-way-glory-waits/

Interbeing, Intra-action, & Metaphysics

Barad, Karen. Meeting the University Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007. https://www.dukeupress.edu/meeting-the-universe-halfway

Barad K. Matter Feels, Converses, Suffers, Desires, Yearns and Remembers: Interview with Karen Barad. 2009. Available: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/11515701.0001.001/1:4.3/--new-materialism-interviews-cartographies?rgn=div2&view=fulltext

Hạnh, Nhất, and Annabel Laity. The Other Shore: a New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries. Parallax Press, 2017. https://www.parallax.org/the-other-shore-by-thich-nhat-hanh/

Campagna, Federico. Technic and Magic: the Reconstruction of Reality. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/technic-and-magic-9781350044036/

Life-Nonlife Boundary, Anthropocentrism & Biocentrism

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010. https://www.dukeupress.edu/vibrant-matter

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. Geontologies: a Requiem to Late Liberalism. Duke University Press, 2016. https://www.dukeupress.edu/geontologies

Morton T. Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People. Verso Books; 2017. Available: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2465-humankind

Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-billion-black-anthropocenes-or-none

Colonialism

“A Quick Reminder of Why Colonialism Was Bad | Current Affairs.” September 2017, https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/a-quickreminder-of-why-colonialism-was-bad

Piper, Kelsey. “The Case against Colonizing Space to Save Humanity.” Vox, Vox, 22 Oct. 2018, www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/22/17991736/jeff-bezos-elon-musk-colonizing-mars-moon-space-blue-origin-spacex.

Allan Hills 84001 & Life on Mars

Clinton, W. J. 1996. “President Clinton Statement Regarding Mars Meteorite Discovery.” White House, Office of Press Secretary. https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/clinton.html.

ALH84001, Martian Meteorite Compendium, C Meyer 2012, https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/mmc/alh84001.pdf

“NASA’s Mars 2020 Will Hunt for Microscopic Fossils,” NASA (NASA, November 12, 2019), https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7539

Martian Colonization & Terraformation

Zubrin, Robert, and Richard Wagner. The Case for Mars: the Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must. Free Press, 2011. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-82757-5

“Mars & Beyond.” SpaceX, http://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars

Kelsey Piper, “Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Want to Colonize Space to Save Humanity,” Vox (Vox, October 22, 2018), https://www.vox.com/futureperfect/2018/10/22/17991736/jeff-bezos-elonmuk-colonizing-marsmoon-space-blue-originspacex

Geodiversity

Gray, J. M. Geodiversity: Valuing and Conserving Abiotic Nature. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2014. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Geodiversity%3A+Valuing+and+Conserving+Abiotic+Nature%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9780470742150

Nonhuman Subjectivity & Anthropomorphism

Gratton, Peter, and Peter Gratton. “Jane Bennett: The Interview.” Philosophy In A Time Of Error, 25 May 2010, http://philosophyinatimeoferror.com/2010/05/25/jane-bennett-the-interview/

Popova, Maria. “Subjectifying the Universe: Ursula K. Le Guin on Science and Poetry as Complementary Modes of Comprehending and Tending to the Natural World.” Brain Pickings, 10 Apr. 2018, www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/10/ursula-k-le-guin-late-in-the-day-science-poetry/

Le Guin Ursula K., Hard Words, and Other Poems (New York: Harper & Row, 1981) https://www.ursulakleguin.com/hard-words

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. When Species Meet. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2009. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/when-species-meet

Despret V. The Becomings of Subjectivity in Animal Worlds. Subjectivity. 2008;23: 123–139. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.15