The intuition of something else. Geographical features of an anthropocenic catastrophe

Abstract

We are living in an age in which disasters are a basically constant backdrop of breaking news, but that can be named as natural provided only that we ignore the evolutionary path leading to the present situation.Namely, the present pandemic – interpreted as a stress test of our model of development – shows itself as a real «anthropocenic catastrophe». As a catastrophe, not only because of its unquestionable tragic impact on lives, but also, following René Thom, as an abrupt evolutionary discontinuity, as acatastrophe of a representation of the world. Anthropocenic, because, despite the ongoing debate over such concept, it is hard to ascribe SARS-CoV- 2 to nature.The present essay aims at framing the pandemic within the model of territoriality by Claude Raffestin, showing how the neoliberal paradigm has taken to the extreme its choices in terms of blind trust in digitalisation and automation (algocracy), regarding decision-making, work, and health, so finally disrupting the evolutionary inner adjustment process through which territorialities have been able through time to settle singularities into a common framework.