My dissertation asks: how do background understandings of Earth—socially and historically situated horizons of meaning about the planet—enable and constrain human and more-than-human democratic practices? I argue that these background understandings, or imaginaries of Earth, are not external to politics but rather constituted in and through politics. This then raises an important question: if imaginaries shape and are shaped by politics, how can we intervene in this dynamic to extend democracy to non-human others?

My dissertation, Imaginaries of Earth, addresses this question in two ways. First, it examines how different imaginaries relate to practices, whether as ecosystems to be managed, a community of subjects with rights to be recognized, or as an intrusive actor to be institutionally accounted for. Second, it develops a general account of how the plurality of these imaginaries is not an obstacle but the very condition for democratic practices that can sustainably extend the boundaries of political inclusion beyond the human. More specifically, my dissertation develops this post-anthropocentric democratic theory by tracing how different ways of imagining Earth flow together at sites of confluential politics, opening possibilities for democratic renewal grounded in confluential democratic practices. I begin with the planetary imaginary that emerged in the mid-twentieth century, when the metaphor of “Spaceship Earth” and photographs of the planet from space encouraged people to picture Earth as a unified system to be managed. Against this, I examine the rise of a counter-imaginary that frames Earth as a community of beings, most clearly expressed in the transnational Rights of Nature movement, where the Earth community is treated as a subject with rights. Finally, I turn to contemporary thinkers who invoke the figure of Gaia to capture the planet’s unpredictable agency. Taken together, these different imaginaries can be seen coming together at sites of confluential politics, a politics that highlights both flows and turbulence; particularly, in the relations between Earth imaginaries (and the discursive, sociotechnical, and political practices that carry them). I weave these strands together to develop an account of a confluential Earth politics, which draws on critical democratic theory and riverine environmental thought to reframe the plurality of imaginaries not as a problem to be managed, but as a headwater for democratic renewal. These different imaginaries coming together at sites of confluential politics also provide the groundwork for my broader argument: that democratic theory must take seriously the plurality of Earth imaginaries as a condition for extending democracy beyond the human, and for cultivating post-anthropocentric forms of collective life in the context of ecological crisis.

Taken together, these chapters show how Earth imaginaries constitute the horizon within which human and more-than-human democratic struggles unfold. Imaginaries of Earth contributes to democratic theory, environmental political thought, and the environmental humanities by demonstrating how imaginaries shape the scope of political community and by offering a framework for rethinking democracy in a time of planetary and ecological crisis.