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Paper short abstract:

Following geophysicists as they measure geomagnetic and geoelectric field variations in a seismic fault in central Chile, I ask: What can we learn from their ecologies of practice and modes of attention to and with electromagnetics to endure in, and hopefully exit from, the Anthropocene?

Paper long abstract:

Sounding the depth of the Earth is a difficult task. Geophysicists need to display complex apparatuses to render amenable to scientific enquiry otherwise radically withdrawn realities: physico-chemical processes that occur several thousand meters below surface, at several hundred degrees of temperature. In this paper I ethnographically track the efforts of a team of geophysicists as they strive to gain access to the depth of a seismic fault in central Chile by measuring natural geomagnetic and geoelectric field variations. I'm particularly interested on the riskiness and speculative ethos of their methods, specifically magnetotellurics: the situated compounding of the Earth's electromagnetism by precariously working with and through solar winds, thunderstorm activity, convection heath and other cosmic forces in continuous interaction with multiple forms of dispossession on the planet's surface. As I follow geophysicists in their efforts to compose electromagnetism, I ask: What can we learn from geophysics pragmatics to endure in, and hopefully exit from, the Anthropocene? How can their ecologies of practice and modes of attention to and with electromagnetics may inform a political programme to both resist and flourish in a damaged world? Heeding recent calls to geologise politics, I finally suggest that a more careful engagement with geophysics' cosmic sensibility entails the revision of the 'social' critique against earth sciences and the possibility of crafting an alternative imaginary for interdisciplinarity and knowledge production.