Anthropocene Desire Lines

In this experimental visual essay, we follow an imaginary lump of coal across space and time from its Gondwanan beginnings, through its extraction from the Talcher Coalfields in Odisha in India, combustion in a thermal power plant in Ennore in Tamil Nadu, and into the future through its multitude of post-combustion afterlives. We do so through the figure of ‘anthropocene desire lines,’ which draws on Karen Coelho’s idea of ‘water lines’  ⁽¹⁾  and Gabrielle Hecht’s idea of ‘residual governance’, ⁽²⁾  to track how flows of earthly matter that begin in subterranean strata, and, mobilized by ideas of power, growth and national pride, result in indifference towards the molecular colonization of bodies, soils, waters and airs they produce. ⁽³⁾  The essay compresses the deep, everyday and future times of coal, and its geologic, territorial, microscopic and planetary scales into a single textual/visual narrative. In this way, it draws out simultaneities across time and interconnections across space, as a way of developing a relational Anthropocene imaginary. 

Approximately 251.9 million years ago, on a cold, glacial, windswept plane on the northern edge of ancient supercontinent Gondwana, geologists and botanists think that sparse, patchy vegetation, possibly of the species Glossopteris, survived the Great Dying. ⁽⁴⁾ 

Over the next 50 million years or so, as the climate slowly warmed and the ice retreated, thick, dense, forests clustered around swampy freshwater lakes. Later still the climate turned dry and semi-arid and the vegetation became sparser again. As the successive layers of vegetation died, and layers of vegetation and soil accumulated over them, they were converted into peat and then into layers of bituminous carbon-rich coal. This process is known as “biochemical coalification” or “carbonation”. ⁽⁵⁾  It occurs when the cells of dead plant matter interact with water, heat, pressure and microbial activity, and are slowly transformed into carbon-rich macerals, the organic equivalent of minerals. Our lump of coal would be made up mostly of vitrinite, a maceral formed by the thermal alteration of lignin and cellulose in plant cell walls.

This is illustrated by a story of the Judges of the Chennai High Court who, in 2011, based on the Right to Life guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, filed Public Interest Litigation against the Government of Tamil Nadu and the Chennai Port Trust, objecting to the offloading of coal at the Chennai Port as an aesthetic insult and an assault on their airways: 

One cannot walk bare footed or touch the walls of this High Court, in spite of regular cleaning of the premises, as the iron ore/coal dust particles settling in the premises in high quantities every day would make hands and foot dirty in thick black colour. It, naturally sends shocking waves through the nerves and makes one to think as to what we are breathing in - oxygen or these black particles?  ⁽²²⁾ 

The Judges proposed that coal should be offloaded only at Ennore (Kamarajar) Port. They were not interested in eradicating the black particle problem, but in transferring it elsewhere, out of sight and breath. Their argument reinforced the narrative of Ennore as empty and barren, that had justified the building of the port and the installation of industrial infrastructure there in the first place. ⁽²³⁾  

In this experimental visual essay, we have explored how to present research on the extractive coal economy in India and the forms of neoliberal statecraft that govern it. We have attempted to show  the multiplicity of time and the network of sites the coal economy indifferently colonises, and the disruptive relations it sets up between geological, atmospheric, biophysical and political matter. We have done so in order to contribute to the development of an Anthropocene imaginary and to invite solidarity across sites, scales and practices. By constructing the essay in relations between words and images, and bringing heterogeneous, multiple, multivocal, multi-sited and relational sources of knowledge into view, we hope to have exemplified a relational mode of thinking across space, time and agency, commensurate with the challenges of the Anthropocene.