for Queer Ecologies
The Cosmic Fold
The Cosmic Fold is a contemporary interpretation of the univeral model of microcosm and macrocosm. From antiquity into the early modern period, religion, science, and magic were widely informed by a worldview in which Earth and the realm of humankind (the microcosm) mirrored the workings of the the heavens and the celestial plane (the macrocosm). Pre-Enlightenment philosophies of medicine, for instance, were based upon symmetries between the human body and the greater universe, for all were composed of the same primary elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and qualities (cold, hot, dry, and moist). The tradition of the “Zodiac Man” appears in manusripts throughout the late medieval and early modern period in western medical treatises to map these bodily and cosmic correlations. [see MAP]
In the 4th century BCE, Plato’s writings on cosmogony and cosmology codified the emanation of a universal spirit through all living things, from human to plant to mineral. This philosophy was integrated into the theology of medieval scholasticism, forming the basis for a highly-ordered universe in early modern Europe. Changing notions of “God” over time barely altered the essence of spirit—like sonar waves or signals, energy emanated from a divine source, passing through the great chain of being. This system complemented the agrarian society with its myriad dependencies upon the Earth’s rythms, and into the human condition it engrained profound identification with environment as a reflection and projection of the self.
The conflict of science and spirituality—the rational and the mystical—is an artifact of modern western thought. In the undoing of this binary, the Cosmic Fold represents the intra- and inter-relationship of a body and its environment, a concept for questioning if or where a barrier exists, which serves to parse through the immensity of creation at various scales. At a macroscopic level, it is ecology proper; all planetary life forms a greater ecosystem, a singular and complex body we call Earth (Gaia). At a microscopic level, as in quantum physics, we are reminded that all mater is “merely” the isolated electromagnetic push and pull between atoms attracted to or repulsed by one another. As the feminist theorist and physicist Karen Barad writes,
“The void is a lively tension, a desiring orientation toward being/becoming.”
This “lively tension,” not so different an idea than the Platonic idea of an animating spirit, affects all matter in the same way, whether it be part of a beating human heart or the infinitesimal speck of a black hole. [see EROS] It animates universal relationships of creation, homeostasis, and decomposition, and may account for why the telescopic images gathered by NASA have such a striking semblance to the images of brain cells and neural activity. The knowledge we seek—the ineffable—surrounds us, folded into us and us into it.
Nicholas di Benedetto and Alex A. Jones with QuERC, 2023