“Reports from Abroad” Series Interview
What can philosophy say—and do—in the age of the Anthropocene? This collective interview brings together core members of Terranias, a Brazilian research group dedicated to rethinking philosophical practice amid the ecological and political challenges of our time. Founded in 2021 at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Terranias explores the intersections of philosophy, ecology, art, and politics through an interdisciplinary and collaborative lens. In this conversation, the group reflects on the urgency of ecological thought today, the importance of dialogue between academic and traditional knowledges, and the need to think “from abroad”—from the South, from the margins, and from the Earth itself.
- Tell me a little about the research group. When was it created, and what was the motivation behind its creation?
Terranias was created in 2021, when researchers from the “Philosophy and the Environmental Issue” research lab at the Department of Philosophy at PUC-Rio held an online event to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the research lab. Established by Professor Déborah Danowski in 2011, it was the first group in Brazil dedicated to ecological thinking and the problems of the Anthropocene.
Since the end of 2019, Danowski and her students had been meeting to create a space for discussing research in environmental philosophy, and the need to think together became even more pressing during the coronavirus pandemic. At the 2021 event, which marked the creation of Terranias, we took stock of the research developed over the last decade and planted the seeds for future projects. Expanding its scope beyond philosophy, the group was born as a space for collective experimentation, also bringing together anthropologists, biologists, artists, historians, and others concerned with ecological issues—originating from various institutions and cities. Today, Terranias has 27 researchers forming its core structural group, plus around 130 members who periodically participate in our activities, which include reading groups, film clubs, seminars, outreach activities, interviews, and events.
- What is the meaning of its name? What is the main issue it intends to address??
The name “Terranias” was directly inspired by the poem-manifesto Subterrânia 2 written by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica in 1969, in which the prefix “sub” is claimed as an affirmation of the aesthetic-political force of the underground/below/southern worlds. This symbolic operation aims to reverse the notion of “margin,” understood as power and invention. “Terranias” is also a reference to the earthbounds/terrestrials, the people invoked by philosopher Bruno Latour to face ecological catastrophe. And yet another attempt to associate the word “E/earth” [T/terra] (thought of both as a planet and as a piece of ground and territory) with a sense of errancy (the group’s visual mark expresses this), of multiplicity and diffusion—Earth itself existing through the earthbounds and acting on them and with them, reinventing their names, ways, and paths.
- What challenges does the environmental issue pose for philosophical reflection and knowledge production in Brazil?
We can mention at least three major challenges that this issue poses not only for philosophical reflection in Brazil, but also for intellectual work as a whole, as carried out in the country and abroad.
First, from a historical perspective, it is worth noticing that, from very early on, the “environmental issue” has been inseparable from the political project that constitutes Brazil. We are talking about colonialist and developmentalist visions that were promoted, above all, during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), which promoted the so-called “advancement of the agricultural frontier” and the “green revolution”—processes that culminated in true ecological devastation and the decimation of the forest peoples. Despite this scenario, in academia, the environmental theme as an issue appeared more gradually as the unforeseen consequences of that development project accumulated, whose imagery persists today in various ideological-political spectrums.
Second, we still face a disciplinary challenge. In the humanities and social sciences, the “environmental issue” has long been treated in a sectoral manner: regional economics, geography, and architecture have each attempted (in their own way) to address the shortcomings of development policies and their consequences for the population. Anthropologists and sociologists in the field have also observed its results on rural populations and the intensification of violence in the countryside linked to land ownership since the military dictatorship. The challenge today is to bring different areas of research into dialogue, establishing an integrated field of reflection in which the problem is also addressed by the humanities, as well as by earth and climate sciences. These approaches produce epistemological frictions that need to be considered in order for the interdisciplinary debate to be further deepened.
A third challenge—a unique one, if we consider knowledge production in Brazil—is to call on universities to produce compositions that incorporate popular and traditional knowledge. At Terranias, we seek to build bridges with grassroots social movements for land and food sovereignty, particularly indigenous and quilombola communities. This approach requires us to learn not to assume that our interests and ways of life are universal, taking care not to reproduce violence, erasure, and practices of uprooting from the land, to use the expression of thinker Antônio Bispo dos Santos.
- The group is quite interdisciplinary. How important is the interdisciplinary approach in addressing the covered topics?
The environmental issue presents itself as a problem that requires an openness to dialogue between different fields of knowledge. Thinking philosophically about the climate crisis implies recognizing its multiple dimensions and understanding that it inaugurates a new space-time conjuncture, which in turn demands new tools for reflection and action—hence the importance of interdisciplinary work. We are facing a challenge that affects not only specific areas, but the very structure of modern science, whose methods and knowledges—traditionally separate—are now crossed by problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
The classic separation between what has been conventionally called “natural sciences” and “social sciences”, for example, loses much of its meaning in times like ours, when the catastrophes and challenges that emerge from it confuse and confluence the spheres of what we define as natural or human/social. On the one hand, human beings, as a species, are increasingly perceived as a force of not only biological and social scale, but also geophysical or even geological scale (which inspires the name “Anthropocene”). On the other hand, what we generally define as belonging exclusively to the order of “Nature” or the “natural” continues to demonstrate how it is constituted and traversed by social, cultural, and technical dimensions and elements.
In this sense, there seems to be a double dimension of complexity imposed on the sciences and the way they are being developed, produced, and practiced. One of these dimensions would be that of their internal organizational structure, their “institutional physiology,” in reference to the traditionally established boundaries between their disciplines, areas of knowledge, fields of activity, and departmental niches. The other is related to themes, subjects, problems, that is, the content, so to speak, of this organizational structure. In the latter case, as already mentioned, the looming catastrophes pose complex problems that require (for their full understanding) the articulation of a series of knowledges from the most diverse fields. Thus, it is becoming increasingly evident that such issues cannot be easily allocated to just one or another area of knowledge. Therefore, the environmental issue itself demands an interdisciplinary approach, because the type of problem we are dealing with does not depend on the great division between Nature and Culture, is indifferent to this modern conception, and cannot even be captured and domesticated by it.
More than the bringing together of different theoretical perspectives, interdisciplinarity requires us to know different methodological procedures that impact the way we understand what may or may not be a research contribution. Perhaps, at first glance, a sociological answer may not sound very good to the ears of a philosopher—just as much as an anthropological formulation may not suffice to a biological inquiry. The interdisciplinary disposition here is, therefore, the willingness to build alliances—to move epistemologically from one point to another, enduring the discomfort that this may cause to those premises and habits in which we have been trained. Thus, we believe that we will also be even more potentially open to understanding and composing together with non-modern knowledges and worldviews—and why not philosophies?
- How relevant is this approach to the philosophical debate in Brazil? And how do recent political events affect the debate?
The relevance of this approach to the philosophical debate in Brazil lies in recognizing that the global ecological catastrophe can only be understood in its complexity through a perspective of open dialogue with other areas of knowledge, traditional wisdoms, and socio-environmental movements. For this reason, Terranias has as its horizon epistemic and ontological plurality, which requires alliances beyond academia and, with that, openness to new political (or cosmopolitical) practices. This openness creates border frictions that allow philosophy to be situated within the scope of thought developed in Brazil and Latin America—territories marked by colonial and racial violence, but also by experiences of struggle, alliance, and resistance.
Following Bruno Latour, we understand that the present moment requires us to make a decision between modernizing and ecologizing—the election of far-right leaders in several countries and the dilemmas posed by developmentalism are clear demonstrations of this bifurcation. In this sense, the task facing Terranias is to contribute to opening up theoretical, artistic, political, and imaginative paths for the second option, understood as a call to repair past and present violence, and an invitation to invent other ways of inhabiting Earth.
- How relevant is the knowledge of traditional peoples to philosophical debate in Brazil, and how can we combat its invisibility?
In the face of worsening ecological collapse and the advance of extractivism, we are witnessing a proliferation of protests from “traditional peoples” against the destruction of life. As these peoples have been warning for centuries, this destruction affects not only humans or what the heirs of modernity call “Nature,” but also beings that cannot be neatly classified within the Nature-Culture divide.
The public emergence of these voices and struggles also resonates in the philosophical field in Brazil, which has been called upon to reconcile with traditional knowledge that has historically been rendered invisible. The consequences of such exclusion, deeply linked to the colonial hierarchy that presupposes traditional modes of existence and knowledge as inferior, are felt in many dimensions: these peoples have been and continue to be the target of multiple ethnocides and epistemicides on different scales in Brazil and around the world.
In recent decades, however, we have witnessed a significant change: the growing presence of indigenous peoples, quilombolas, caiçaras, and other traditional peoples in institutional spaces. This insertion has enabled dialogues based on epistemological plurality, opening paths for new ways of thinking and acting committed to climate justice and confronting environmental racism. Their contributions have been fundamental, especially in reflections on relations with the land and in the formulation of different proposals for ecological and civilizational transition. Such proposals point to alternatives to the paradigm of “development,” bringing concepts such as Well Living, relationality, and the communal.
Philosophical production in Brazil, earlier strongly anchored in foreign references, especially from the so-called Global North, now faces the challenge of composing with the thought produced by extra-modern collectivities. In this context, voices such as Ailton Krenak, Nego Bispo, Célia Xacriabá, Davi Kopenawa, among others, stand out, whose presence shifts not only theoretical references, but also philosophical practice itself. New ways of producing thought, based on assumptions that differ from those of Western modernity, have the potential to cause profound ruptures in the field of philosophy and to question concepts that have been crystallized by modern tradition.
In this sense, composing with this knowledge means recognizing it as legitimate, even—or especially—when it forces us to radically transform the foundations of philosophical practice; when, by its mere existence, it requires us to rethink what we understand by temporality, knowledge, reality, etc.
Taking them seriously would imply a cosmopolitical effort, in the sense proposed by philosopher Isabelle Stengers: eliminating the possibility of framing them as mere cultural variants, forcing us to feel the real discomfort of seeing our most basic categories questioned and rendered uncertain in the face of this ontological difference, and, at the same time, showing us how this same transformation can make them something much more interesting.
- With such an interdisciplinary research group, it is natural to think about the importance of philosophy opening itself up to what is foreign. But what is the importance of the foreign in philosophy? How do the group’s studies allow us to think about the place of the “abroad” in philosophical reflection?
Considering the scope more traditionally addressed by the philosophical canon, the “environmental issue” already manifests itself in principle as an outside, an element of exteriority and foreignness in relation to which our thinking today is called upon to provide an answer. In this sense, the group’s inter- or transdisciplinarity presents itself as a structural characteristic of our way of responding to the call of the “environmental issue.” In a way, the group’s practical bet is that thought (philosophical or otherwise) only occurs when provoked by its outside, which then becomes the intimate core around which it can develop.
With regard to our own identity as Brazilians, we have our own foreigners within the country; those who, a priori, do not even recognize the idea of the State, nor that of identity, but are traversed by them and reinvent their existence from this traversal. They are the indigenous peoples, quilombolas, riverine communities, and all those who are said to be “traditional.” We understand these “distinct outsiders” also as distinct modes of existence or practices of world-building that the ecological crisis demands more than ever be taken seriously. These other practices, foreign to the traditional philosophical polis, become conditions for our thinking without ever ceasing to be other/foreign.
The philosophy that emerges from these encounters becomes capable of reinventing its own topology within/without (and its reflection in oppositions such as polis/physis, culture/nature, thought/body, among others), allowing questions from different fields, disciplines, and worlds to circulate, recreating ways of thinking and providing responsible answers beyond any “nationality” or “provenance.” In this sense, the foreigner-traveler (to borrow a notion from the Arab-Palestinian thinker Edward Saïd) incorporated by a transdisciplinary research group is constantly dealing with his own outside, in dialogue—always complex, always destabilizing, always asymmetrical, always provisional—with his many others. The transdisciplinary exercise is, therefore, the one that recognizes oneself disciplinarily as the other of the other, to compose (with these others) ideas, practices, conflicts, possibilities and impossibilities, frictions and fictions.
André M. Penna-Firme is the Editor of the Reports from Abroad series. He is a teacher, poet and PhD candidate in Philosophy and Aesthetics at PUC-Rio, with a master’s degree in philosophy with an emphasis on Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art from both PUC-Rio and Université Paris 8. His research covers topics such as literary reception, intellectual history, history of concepts, literature, always at the intersection of three axes: History, Literature and Philosophy. He currently investigates the poetic and theatrical nature of philosophical thinking in authors such as Nietzsche, Diderot, and others.
Alyne Costa
Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research focuses on the philosophical and political implications of the Anthropocene, for which she draws mainly from science and technology studies and the “ontological turn” in anthropology (with especial interest in political ontology and practical ontologies). From 2022 to 2024, she coordinated the project “The Earth and Us: Education, Research, and Citizenship in the Anthropocene”. She is the leader of Terranias.
Ana Paula Morel
A member of Terranias, she is a professor in the Department of Society, Education and Knowledge (SSE) and in the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal Fluminense University. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum (UFRJ), where she researched autonomous education experiences within the Zapatista movement. She coordinates an outreach and research project that connects the university, schools, and social movements, and is the author of Um mundo onde caibam muitos mundos: educação descolonizadora e revolução zapatista (Autonomia Literária, 2023). She is a member of the Cuerpos, Territorios, Resistencias Working Group of CLACSO and of the Popular Education and Health Working Group of ABRASCO. Her main areas of interest include autonomies and cosmopolitics, popular education in health, libertarian education, and Indigenous issues and education.
Anelise De Carli
Postdoctoral researcher in Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, where she also serves as an affiliated faculty. Her research focuses on Visual Culture and Environmental Humanities, engaging with photography, archives, and multimedia practices. She holds a PhD from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and was a visiting scholar at Université Jean Moulin Lyon III. Co-founder of the Association for Research and Practice in Humanities, coordinates the groups Thinking Through Images and Anthropocene Atlas, also contributing to Terranias.
Tobias Marconde
Tobias Marconde is a member of Terranias since its foundation, he holds a Master's degree and is a PhD candidate in Philosophy from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and an undergraduate student of Geography at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. His main interests are: contemporary continental philosophy, ecology, science studies, and the ontological turn.
João Pedro Saddi
João Pedro Saddi holds a bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (2020). He has a master's degree from the Graduate Program in Social Sciences at PUC-Rio, where he defended his dissertation entitled "Horto Florestal: Recado de uma controvérsia socioambiental“ (Horto Florestal: Message of a socio-environmental controversy), having developed the research project entitled ”População tradicional e conservação ambiental: o Horto Florestal e os dilemas socioambientais" (Traditional population and environmental conservation: Horto Florestal and socio-environmental dilemmas). He was an analyst at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and was a member of the Tecgraf PUC-Rio Institute. He has experience in the field of anthropology, with an emphasis on ethnology and topics related to ecology. He is currently a member of the research group “Terranias: Transdisciplinary Center for Ecological Thought” and the research group “RASTRO: Network for socio-environmental studies and visual anthropology.”
Cecilia Cavalieri
Cecilia Cavalieri is an artist-etc., a cosmotransfeminist writer, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy at PUC-Rio [CNPq/PDJ], and a visiting scholar at Sophiapol / Université Paris-Nanterre [CNPq/MCTI]. She holds a master’s degree in Art and Contemporary Culture [UERJ/Capes] and a PhD in Visual Languages [UFRJ/Capes], with a research residency at the Laboratory of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Université Paris-Nanterre [Capes/PDSE]. She is a member of the research groups EAF – Feminist Affective Epistemologies [UFSM/CNPq], Terranias – Transdisciplinary Center for Ecological Thought [PUC-Rio/CNPq], SPECIES – Center for Speculative Anthropology [UFPR/CNPq], the Proyecto Portunholas: Laboratory of Women Artists on the Borders of South America [Goethe Institut Bolivia], and the indamefrican collective Editora Des-bordes [Red Conceptualismos del Sur]. Cavalieri co-organized the International Colloquium The Thousand Names of Gaia [2014] and is the author of La Femme [Psémata, Florianópolis: 2019] and The Abyss of the Other [A3 Press, London: 2019].
João Victor Consoli
João Victor de Almeida Consoli is a member of Terranias, he holds a degree in Environmental Science from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF/RJ) and is currently pursuing a master's degree in philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). His research focuses on the relationship between the practice of science, the production of factuality, and fiction as a method of onto-epistemic openness.
Éter Monteiro
Éter Monteiro Mesquita Marques is a member of Terranias, and an undergraduate student in Social Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Researches the ontological impact of science studies in relation to feminist theory, seeking to reflect on the body without conceptually separating nature from culture.
Luiza Proença
Luiza Proença is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at PUC-Rio (CAPES), focusing on art, activism and environmental issues.
Marconi Felinto
Marconi da Silva Felinto Júnior is a member of Terranias since 2021, he holds a degree in History (2025) and complementary training in Anthropocene and Ecological Crisis (2025) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He is currently pursuing a master's degree in Social History of Culture at the same institution. His current research seeks to establish possible dialogues between the fields of theory of history and anthropological theory, addressing themes such as time, historicity, and dreams, drawing primarily on authors such as Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Marisol de la Cadena.
Matheus Henrique Ferreira
A member of Terranias, he is a Biology and Philosophy Teacher who holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and a Master’s degree in History and Philosophy of Science from the same institution. He is also a member of the Contemporary Ontologies Working Group of the National Association of Philosophy Researchers (ANPOF). Having dedicated himself to a transdisciplinary research-training, his fields of interest include cybernetics, biological, ecological and cognitive sciences, feminist science studies, critical pedagogies, political economy-&-ecology-&-ontology, cosmopolitics and pluriversal philosophy.
Tiago Andrade da Silva
Member of Terranias, currently a postgraduate philosophy student in Federal University of ABC Region (UFABC). He is also part of Nexos: Critical Theory and Interdisciplinary Research (Southeast) and Paradoxo: Antropoceno e Felicidade (UFABC). His research focuses on the relationship between science and justice in the Anthropocene, establishing dialogues between philosophy, science studies and anthropology.
