List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Incipit: From Sub- to Exterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I: Terra Global Circus
1. Terra Has Standing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2. Terre's Brilliant Mines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3. Terra Globalized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
II: Welcome to Mineland
4. Sickly Mountainsides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5. Demonic Mines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
III: Hiding in Exterranean Matter
6. Geomedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
7. Saline Intimacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Explicit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199

Phillip John Usher is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at New York University.

Exterranean concerns the extraction of stuff from the Earth, a process in which matter goes from being sub- to exterranean. By shifting emphasis from emission to extraction, Usher reorients our perspective away from Earthrise-like globes and shows what is gained by opening the planet to depths within. Both historicist and speculative in approach, Exterranean eschews the self-congratulatory claims of posthumanism and lays the groundwork for a comparative ecocriticism that reaches across periods and languages. congratulatory claims of posthumanism and lays the groundwork for a comparative ecocriticism that reaches across periods and languages.