Text by Jeanne Etelain
Images: various sources
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August 28, 2026
While the concepts of “landscape” (Cosgrove, 1984), “place” (Casey, 1997), and “territory” (Elden, 2013) have been the object of much historical and philosophical research, the term “zone” has so far attracted less interest. This relative neglect is striking given the ubiquity of the term in contemporary language. We now inhabit a world saturated with zones: economic zones, ecological zones, military zones, time zones, autonomous zones, and countless administrative and urban zones. The proliferation of the term suggests a transformation in the way we relate to space itself.
Whereas territory evokes a bounded and relatively stable relation between a political authority and a portion of the Earth, and place evokes a singular location endowed with meaning, the zone designates a space whose identity derives from a difference: it is a portion of space set apart because something happens there, something is permitted or prohibited there, or because it is subject to a particular set of conditions.
Definition
Zone comes from the Greek zônè, derived from the Greek verb zonnunai, “to gird,” itself derived from the Sanskrit junāmi, “to join, to bind.” In archaic Greek, zônè denotes the belt or waist, but it is also used figuratively to refer to a space in the form of a band, or ring. It is this sense that appears in the ancient Greek cosmology of the fifth century BCE and that persisted until the end of the Middle Ages in Latin Europe (Aujac, 1987; Woodward, 1987). The ancient Greeks divided the terrestrial sphere into five bands, delimited by circles parallel to the equator, according to their relations with the rays of the sun. They thus counted one torrid zone, two polar zones, and two temperate zones. Terrestrial space was thus differentiated not by political borders or geometrical coordinates alone, but according to a cosmic relation to a dynamic process—the distribution of solar heat—and consequently according to its varying conditions of habitability.
Figure 1. The five climatic zones of ancient Greek cosmology, depicted in a 12th-century manuscript of Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, ca. 1150, ms. NKS 218 4°, fol. 34r, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhague. © Wikimedia Commons.
This ancient conception of zones is philosophically significant because it presents the Earth not as a homogeneous extension but as a differentiated field of possibilities. This characterization of terrestrial space in terms of sunlight was translated into terms of habitability: the torrid zone and the polar zones were considered uninhabitable because of their greater or lesser proximity to the sun, while only the temperate zones were considered habitable. The ancient theory of terrestrial zones posited as necessary, from the standpoint of reason, the existence of a second habitable zone, located in the southern hemisphere, but of which no experience could be had, since it was made inaccessible by the impassable torrid zone separating it from the Greek ecumene, the known and inhabited world. This second habitable zone, also known as the Antipodes, was a source of speculation and legend in Greek mythology, embodying the elsewhere and the unknown, some radical alterity (Wynter, 1995; Hiatt, 2008). The theory of zones consequently established not only a geography of habitability but also a limit to the geographical and political extension of the Greek ecoumene. It served as a normative limit on human actions and imperialist ambitions since the Earth in its totality could not become an object of governance or enter the sphere of political calculation, only the northern temperate zone.
The existence of the Antipodes posed a genuine challenge to the Christian doctrine of monogenesis by positing regions inhabited by peoples not descended from the sons of Noah. It is this conception of terrestrial space that the geographical revolution of the Renaissance overturned. With the European conquests, a new concept of Earth took shape, one that merges with the terrestrial globe considered as a whole. The Earth was henceforth perceived as a homogeneous, continuous, and universal space, habitable everywhere, entirely described by Euclidean geometry and Ptolemaic cartography (Besse, 2003). A new division of terrestrial space, concomitant with the birth of the modern state and of the colonial empires, imposed itself through a partition between sovereign territories and colonies.
The ancient theory of terrestrial zones thus goes hand in hand with an image of the Earth as a profoundly heterogeneous, discontinuous, and provincial space.
The existence of the Antipodes posed a genuine challenge to the Christian doctrine of monogenesis by positing regions inhabited by peoples not descended from the sons of Noah. It is this conception of terrestrial space that the geographical revolution of the Renaissance overturned. With the European conquests, a new concept of Earth took shape, one that merges with the terrestrial globe considered as a whole. The Earth was henceforth perceived as a homogeneous, continuous, and universal space, habitable everywhere, entirely described by Euclidean geometry and Ptolemaic cartography (Besse, 2003). A new division of terrestrial space, concomitant with the birth of the modern state and of the colonial empires, imposed itself through a partition between sovereign territories and colonies.
Figure 2. Nova et integra universi orbis descripsio, known as the “Golden Globe,” c. 1527. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Maps and Plans Department. © BnF.
With the geographical revolution of the terrestrial globe, the concept of zone progressively disappeared. Yet it reappeared in the eighteenth century in other disciplines within the natural sciences. Without any relation to the etymology, it came to designate more broadly a portion of space distinguished from its surroundings by a particular trait, function or activity that allows it to be qualified. One speaks, for example, of the white and black zones of a plumage. From the nineteenth century onward, the term took on a sense independent of physical data, designating a space artificially delimited within a larger surface, to which a certain type of activity or a specific function is assigned. The concept then proliferated in the military field (“war zone,” “buffer zone,” “no-fly zone”), in spatial planning (“towaway zone,” “residential zone,” “pedestrian zone”), and in economics (“time zone,” “free-trade zone,” “currency zone”). Since then, we have witnessed an avalanche of “zones,” giving rise to all sorts of abbreviations and acronyms (ZAC: zone d’aménagement concerté [concerted development zone], ZEP: zone d’éducation prioritaire [priority education zone], ZUP: zone à urbaniser en priorité [priority urbanization zone], and so on).
A zone is always a “something zone” or a “zone of something,” as if it were inevitably a space awaiting qualification. In the absence of a qualifier, the zone evokes rather the vague, the anarchic, the errant, as suggested by the French expressions c’est la zone [“what a dump”], zone grise [“grey area”], or zoner [“to drift about”]. Since it possesses no properties of its own and always needs to be determined, the zone thus appears as a space of pure difference that resists every attempt at definition, one that would give us its identity or essence.
Problems
We live in a world of zones: Shenzhen, Dubai, Gaza, gated communities, urban ghettos, holiday villages… Everywhere on the planet, zones of exception —each governed by a specific set of rules, whether in the form of special authorizations, exemptions or prohibitions— proliferate in all their diversity, at every scale and in every size. Several studies in the social sciences and political philosophy even present the zone as an emerging spatial paradigm that calls into question traditional concepts of sovereignty and territoriality (Ong, 2006; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Easterling, 2016; Slobodian, 2023). In their eyes, zones correspond to the geometry and topology of a new political geography underlying a new economic model, social order, and mode of governance that emerged in the 1970s, with the advent of integrated world capitalism and the neoliberal turn.
Numerous studies have asserted that sovereign states are no longer the most important actors in regulating the economy and social relations, with governance functions now lying in the hands of various non-state entities in the service of a globalized sovereignty of capital. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri famously named it Empire: a power of deterritorialized flows, without borders, at once everywhere and nowhere, which extends over the whole surface of the planet and insinuates itself into the most secret intimacy of individuals, into the heart of their psychic, affective, and cognitive life (Hardt and Negri, 2001). The two authors, drawing on Deleuzo-Guattarian terminology, oppose the "striation" of the modern globe (the territorial division into sovereign states delimited by national borders) to the production of a “smooth” global space, that is, a continuous and uniform space with no outside.
However, the proliferation of zones challenges this narrative. They fragment the global uniformity of Empire as much as the territorial division of states. On the one hand, the zone fragments the territorial tiling, since it constitutes a portion of space promulgated by a state within its own territory, which then escapes its jurisdiction in the form of legal exemptions or even autonomous administrative entities (Easterling, 2016). By this means, zones allow other actors, most often private ones, to exercise authority over the management of territory and population (Ong, 2006). Yet the zone fragments just as much the uniform meshwork of globalized capitalism, since it produces a layering of legal norms, labor regimes, economic models, social rights, and even cultural styles, which coexist with one another and sometimes enter into competition (Neilson, 2014).
They create differentiated pockets for the circulation, production, and consumption of global flows—of goods, people, capital, and information—while simultaneously regulating the conditions under which these flows can move, accumulate, or be halted. In this sense, zones are not simply bounded spaces of exception but devices for the selective articulation of spaces within global capitalism: some are strategically connected to transnational circuits of production and consumption, while others are relegated to the margins of these circuits, often becoming sites of intensified exploitation, extraction, and dispossession, as in extractive zones. Zones thus contribute to producing a profoundly uneven geography of globalization, in which mobility and connectivity for some depend upon immobility, exclusion, and dispossession elsewhere.
A zone thus designates any portion of space subject to a particular status and obeying specific rules. What is striking, however, is that the term in itself remains relatively indeterminate: it is always completed by a qualifying adjective or a noun complement.
A zone is always a “something zone” or a “zone of something,” as if it were inevitably a space awaiting qualification. In the absence of a qualifier, the zone evokes rather the vague, the anarchic, the errant, as suggested by the French expressions c’est la zone [“what a dump”], zone grise [“grey area”], or zoner [“to drift about”]. Since it possesses no properties of its own and always needs to be determined, the zone thus appears as a space of pure difference that resists every attempt at definition, one that would give us its identity or essence.
Problems
We live in a world of zones: Shenzhen, Dubai, Gaza, gated communities, urban ghettos, holiday villages… Everywhere on the planet, zones of exception —each governed by a specific set of rules, whether in the form of special authorizations, exemptions or prohibitions— proliferate in all their diversity, at every scale and in every size. Several studies in the social sciences and political philosophy even present the zone as an emerging spatial paradigm that calls into question traditional concepts of sovereignty and territoriality (Ong, 2006; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Easterling, 2016; Slobodian, 2023). In their eyes, zones correspond to the geometry and topology of a new political geography underlying a new economic model, social order, and mode of governance that emerged in the 1970s, with the advent of integrated world capitalism and the neoliberal turn.
Numerous studies have asserted that sovereign states are no longer the most important actors in regulating the economy and social relations, with governance functions now lying in the hands of various non-state entities in the service of a globalized sovereignty of capital. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri famously named it Empire: a power of deterritorialized flows, without borders, at once everywhere and nowhere, which extends over the whole surface of the planet and insinuates itself into the most secret intimacy of individuals, into the heart of their psychic, affective, and cognitive life (Hardt and Negri, 2001). The two authors, drawing on Deleuzo-Guattarian terminology, oppose the "striation" of the modern globe (the territorial division into sovereign states delimited by national borders) to the production of a “smooth” global space, that is, a continuous and uniform space with no outside.
However, the proliferation of zones challenges this narrative. They fragment the global uniformity of Empire as much as the territorial division of states. On the one hand, the zone fragments the territorial tiling, since it constitutes a portion of space promulgated by a state within its own territory, which then escapes its jurisdiction in the form of legal exemptions or even autonomous administrative entities (Easterling, 2016). By this means, zones allow other actors, most often private ones, to exercise authority over the management of territory and population (Ong, 2006). Yet the zone fragments just as much the uniform meshwork of globalized capitalism, since it produces a layering of legal norms, labor regimes, economic models, social rights, and even cultural styles, which coexist with one another and sometimes enter into competition (Neilson, 2014).
More importantly, zones—time zones, free-trade zones, etc.—do not merely organize an already globalized space; they actively produce the spatial infrastructure of globalization.
They create differentiated pockets for the circulation, production, and consumption of global flows—of goods, people, capital, and information—while simultaneously regulating the conditions under which these flows can move, accumulate, or be halted. In this sense, zones are not simply bounded spaces of exception but devices for the selective articulation of spaces within global capitalism: some are strategically connected to transnational circuits of production and consumption, while others are relegated to the margins of these circuits, often becoming sites of intensified exploitation, extraction, and dispossession, as in extractive zones. Zones thus contribute to producing a profoundly uneven geography of globalization, in which mobility and connectivity for some depend upon immobility, exclusion, and dispossession elsewhere.
Figure 3: Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, Pudong District, Shanghai, China. © Kamal Zharif Kamaludin.
The zone thus accounts for the profoundly heterogeneous nature of globalized space, which it multiplies rather than divides (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). To put it differently, unlike the partition of the globe into sovereign territories, the division of space into zones has the effect of creating more space by producing internal differentiation. In this sense, the zone marks a shift from the extensive conquest of space to its intensive colonization, from territorial expansion to the increasingly fine-grained differentiation, enclosure, and exploitation of spaces already integrated within a globalized world.
One should not, however, be too quick to conclude that this division corresponds to a functional differentiation of space in the service of a single global logic, as suggested in dependency theory or world-systems theory (Wallerstein, 1974). These approaches were crucial in underscoring that capitalism produces an uneven geography that relies on and even produces local differences within an international division of labor, and upon the unequal appropriation of labor, resources, and surplus across space. the spatial categories of core, semi-periphery, and periphery tend to organize this unevenness at the level of a totalizing system to which they are entirely subjected, erasing every form of difference that is not put in the service of capital.
Zones carve out enclaves, corridors, pockets, and exceptional spaces whose relations to surrounding territories may be simultaneously disjunctive and conflictual. Their enclavic character creates thresholds, gaps, and points of friction that may become sites of evasion, resistance, and invention. The zone is not simply a place within the world-system; it is a spatial operation that establishes a particular relation between inside and outside, connection and disconnection, inclusion and exclusion. It is precisely because zones are never fully integrated that they can become sites of unexpected forms of agency and experimentation.
The “zone” has thus become a strategy of resistance to neoliberal, globalized capitalism, to that form of power that governs through fragmentation and secession. Economic zones generate forms of contestation within themselves, owing to the overlap, the divergence, and the competition among the norms that coexist there, which makes it possible to play some off against others. This is the case, for example, of the special economic zones in China, which have been the theater of victorious workers’ struggles that would otherwise have been impossible in the rest of the country, where the state unions hold the grip (Ong, 2006: 103). More than this, the zone seems to constitute the form of spatiality specific to the autonomist movement, as one of its most emblematic concepts attests: the Temporary Autonomous Zone (Bey, 1985). According to this movement, power must be opposed with “another geography, discontinuous, archipelagic, intensive,” slipping into the spaces left vacant by the market and the state (Comité Invisible, 2014: 187). This strategy passes through the creation of self-managed communes, far from the traditional centers of power, where the desired social changes are prefigured on the basis of a militant re-evaluation of everyday gestures and a required coherence between discourse and practice (Graeber, 2004).
One should not, however, be too quick to conclude that this division corresponds to a functional differentiation of space in the service of a single global logic, as suggested in dependency theory or world-systems theory (Wallerstein, 1974). These approaches were crucial in underscoring that capitalism produces an uneven geography that relies on and even produces local differences within an international division of labor, and upon the unequal appropriation of labor, resources, and surplus across space. the spatial categories of core, semi-periphery, and periphery tend to organize this unevenness at the level of a totalizing system to which they are entirely subjected, erasing every form of difference that is not put in the service of capital.
The concept of the zone allows us to attend to another spatial logic, one which does not simply divide the world into functional regions but produce discontinuities within territories themselves.
Zones carve out enclaves, corridors, pockets, and exceptional spaces whose relations to surrounding territories may be simultaneously disjunctive and conflictual. Their enclavic character creates thresholds, gaps, and points of friction that may become sites of evasion, resistance, and invention. The zone is not simply a place within the world-system; it is a spatial operation that establishes a particular relation between inside and outside, connection and disconnection, inclusion and exclusion. It is precisely because zones are never fully integrated that they can become sites of unexpected forms of agency and experimentation.
The “zone” has thus become a strategy of resistance to neoliberal, globalized capitalism, to that form of power that governs through fragmentation and secession. Economic zones generate forms of contestation within themselves, owing to the overlap, the divergence, and the competition among the norms that coexist there, which makes it possible to play some off against others. This is the case, for example, of the special economic zones in China, which have been the theater of victorious workers’ struggles that would otherwise have been impossible in the rest of the country, where the state unions hold the grip (Ong, 2006: 103). More than this, the zone seems to constitute the form of spatiality specific to the autonomist movement, as one of its most emblematic concepts attests: the Temporary Autonomous Zone (Bey, 1985). According to this movement, power must be opposed with “another geography, discontinuous, archipelagic, intensive,” slipping into the spaces left vacant by the market and the state (Comité Invisible, 2014: 187). This strategy passes through the creation of self-managed communes, far from the traditional centers of power, where the desired social changes are prefigured on the basis of a militant re-evaluation of everyday gestures and a required coherence between discourse and practice (Graeber, 2004).
Figure 4. ZAD de la Colline in Switzerland, protesting Holcim’s planned expansion of its cement quarry. © Lahminewski Lab.
This operation, which turns zonal geography back on itself, is flagrant in the détournement of the acronym ZAD, Zone d’Aménagement Différé [deferred development zone] becomes Zone À Défendre [zone to defend]. The ZADs designate militant struggles that oppose “useless” large-scale development projects through the occupation of the targeted territories, where new forms of life, coexistence, and subsistence are experimented with and founded on ecological and social principles (Collectif Mauvaise troupe, 2016). One might see in this reversal of the acronym an established dialectic between capitalist overdetermination and critical productivity. For Hakim Bey, however, the zone embodies on the contrary “a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral,” one “that violates ‘the’ law of History,” “an unforgivable negation of the dialectic,” where “a difference [comes] to light,” alone able truly to “change the world” (Bey, 1985: 97-98). The concept of zone escapes a systemic logic, just as much as it escapes a dialectical vision of spatial difference that would recuperate every opposition in its path within the frame of a global logic. The concept of zone corresponds rather to a de-totalization of space in which the parts are always in excess of the whole, possess their own autonomy, and can therefore truly make a difference.
Proposal
It would be wrong, however, to file the zones on the side of a somewhat hasty romantic fetishism of place, of the local, or of territory. Not only are they nodal points where global processes such as globalized capitalism are articulated, but they are also laboratories of experimentation where new practices aiming at global change are elaborated. For the economic zones, for example, what is at stake is most often a conversion of national territories to a market economy of libertarian inspiration; for the autonomous zones such as the ZADs, it is rather a matter of taking part in a social transformation of the world through the modification of the field of the possible. By suspending established norms, zones can create conditions in which forms of collective organization that would otherwise appear impossible can be tested. Its transformative potential resides precisely in its capacity to make alternative social arrangements materially practicable rather than leaving them at the level of abstract political imagination.
This parallel between economic and autonomous zones is important because it prevents the concept of the zone from being reduced to any particular political orientation. The zone is not inherently capitalist, anti-capitalist, emancipatory, or authoritarian. What characterizes it more fundamentally is its capacity to reorganize spatial relations, to establish a degree of differentiation from their surroundings, in order to create conditions under which other forms of organization can emerge. In one case, this differentiation may facilitate the deregulation of economic activity; in another, it may experiment with alternative social arrangements.
Rather than the whole subsuming the parts, it is the parts that act upon and ultimately reshape the whole. Rather than the whole exceeding the sum of its parts, it is the parts that exceed and overflow the whole. Zones thus introduce a profoundly agentic vision of space, in which the zones are not merely sites in which events occur, but have the capacity to produce effects: they enable certain actions, constrain others, channel movements, bring elements into relation, and create conditions under which events that were previously unlikely or impossible can emerge.
Such a conception challenges one of the most persistent assumptions in modern thought, namely that space is fundamentally passive. In the classical image of space as container, space exists prior to and independently of the objects, relations, and events that occupy it. It is the neutral extension within which things are distributed and actions take place. Whether conceived geometrically, physically, or administratively, this model tends to separate space from becoming. Time, by contrast, is associated with change, movement, succession, and novelty. Space provides the coordinates within which change occurs, but does not itself participate in that change. The concept of the zone unsettles precisely this division between a dynamic time and a static space, and entails categories usually reserved for time, such as indetermination, contingency, or openness.
If the Anthropocene names a condition in which human activities have become capable of transforming planetary processes, it also challenges the spatial categories through which the Earth has traditionally been represented. The issue is not only that humans have acquired a new capacity to transform the planet, but that the distinction between an active humanity and a passive Earth can no longer be maintained. The Earth must instead be understood as a dynamic field of interactions in which human practices, biological processes, geological formations, infrastructures, and climatic systems continuously affect one another. The history of the concept of zone, from Ancient Greek cosmology to globalized zoning, can be read, in this respect, as a history to think this relationship between planetary habitability and human inhabitation.
More unsettling still is the fact that we not only live in a world of zones; the zone has itself become the name of our world—the only world in which we can live: the Critical Zone. The concept of Critical Zone corresponds to a paradigm shift in the Earth sciences emerging in the early twenty-first century. It refers to the narrow band at the surface of the planet, between the ocean floor and the top of the canopy, where the biogeochemical processes essential to Earth's habitability are concentrated (Gaillardet, 2023). Here again, it corresponds to an understanding of the Earth as profoundly heterogeneous and dynamic: numerous physical, chemical, and biological components meet and interact there, in a process of constant transformation and evolution. At the origin, the critical zone was only a very small portion of the terrestrial surface, where microbial the activity developed and then progressively expanded, over billions of years, higher into the atmosphere and further into the Earth’s crust. The critical zone thus corresponds not to a vision of the Earth in movement, as in the Copernican revolution, but to a vision of the Earth as movement itself (Aït-Touati and Latour, 2022).
Proposal
It would be wrong, however, to file the zones on the side of a somewhat hasty romantic fetishism of place, of the local, or of territory. Not only are they nodal points where global processes such as globalized capitalism are articulated, but they are also laboratories of experimentation where new practices aiming at global change are elaborated. For the economic zones, for example, what is at stake is most often a conversion of national territories to a market economy of libertarian inspiration; for the autonomous zones such as the ZADs, it is rather a matter of taking part in a social transformation of the world through the modification of the field of the possible. By suspending established norms, zones can create conditions in which forms of collective organization that would otherwise appear impossible can be tested. Its transformative potential resides precisely in its capacity to make alternative social arrangements materially practicable rather than leaving them at the level of abstract political imagination.
This parallel between economic and autonomous zones is important because it prevents the concept of the zone from being reduced to any particular political orientation. The zone is not inherently capitalist, anti-capitalist, emancipatory, or authoritarian. What characterizes it more fundamentally is its capacity to reorganize spatial relations, to establish a degree of differentiation from their surroundings, in order to create conditions under which other forms of organization can emerge. In one case, this differentiation may facilitate the deregulation of economic activity; in another, it may experiment with alternative social arrangements.
The concept of zone thus makes it possible to further complicate the relations between the local and the global, between the inside and the outside, or between the parts and the whole. A zone is not simply an enclosed space separated from its surroundings. It is a relational space whose very existence depends upon differences and tensions with what lies beyond its boundaries with the capacity to transform it.
Rather than the whole subsuming the parts, it is the parts that act upon and ultimately reshape the whole. Rather than the whole exceeding the sum of its parts, it is the parts that exceed and overflow the whole. Zones thus introduce a profoundly agentic vision of space, in which the zones are not merely sites in which events occur, but have the capacity to produce effects: they enable certain actions, constrain others, channel movements, bring elements into relation, and create conditions under which events that were previously unlikely or impossible can emerge.
Such a conception challenges one of the most persistent assumptions in modern thought, namely that space is fundamentally passive. In the classical image of space as container, space exists prior to and independently of the objects, relations, and events that occupy it. It is the neutral extension within which things are distributed and actions take place. Whether conceived geometrically, physically, or administratively, this model tends to separate space from becoming. Time, by contrast, is associated with change, movement, succession, and novelty. Space provides the coordinates within which change occurs, but does not itself participate in that change. The concept of the zone unsettles precisely this division between a dynamic time and a static space, and entails categories usually reserved for time, such as indetermination, contingency, or openness.
The concept of the zone ultimately offers a different image of the Earth, one whose analytical and philosophical implications are particularly significant for understanding the Anthropocene.
If the Anthropocene names a condition in which human activities have become capable of transforming planetary processes, it also challenges the spatial categories through which the Earth has traditionally been represented. The issue is not only that humans have acquired a new capacity to transform the planet, but that the distinction between an active humanity and a passive Earth can no longer be maintained. The Earth must instead be understood as a dynamic field of interactions in which human practices, biological processes, geological formations, infrastructures, and climatic systems continuously affect one another. The history of the concept of zone, from Ancient Greek cosmology to globalized zoning, can be read, in this respect, as a history to think this relationship between planetary habitability and human inhabitation.
More unsettling still is the fact that we not only live in a world of zones; the zone has itself become the name of our world—the only world in which we can live: the Critical Zone. The concept of Critical Zone corresponds to a paradigm shift in the Earth sciences emerging in the early twenty-first century. It refers to the narrow band at the surface of the planet, between the ocean floor and the top of the canopy, where the biogeochemical processes essential to Earth's habitability are concentrated (Gaillardet, 2023). Here again, it corresponds to an understanding of the Earth as profoundly heterogeneous and dynamic: numerous physical, chemical, and biological components meet and interact there, in a process of constant transformation and evolution. At the origin, the critical zone was only a very small portion of the terrestrial surface, where microbial the activity developed and then progressively expanded, over billions of years, higher into the atmosphere and further into the Earth’s crust. The critical zone thus corresponds not to a vision of the Earth in movement, as in the Copernican revolution, but to a vision of the Earth as movement itself (Aït-Touati and Latour, 2022).
Figure 5. Soil map of the Strengbach Critical Zone Observatory in the Vosges forest, France. Virtual exhibition, “CZO Space,” Critical Zones. Observatories for Earthly Politics, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2020. © Alexandra Arènes, studio SOC.
Because of its heterogeneous and dynamic character, it is impossible to study the critical zone in the laboratory using the classical experimental method, as not all the factors that influence biogeochemical processes can be fully reproduced there. In other words, the critical zone is not “scalable” and needs to be studied in the field, at the level of a watershed, a mountain, or a glacier. Numerous critical zone observatories have thus developed around specific sites, each observatory devoting itself to the study of a particular biogeochemical process. The critical zone corresponds, then, to a situated vision of the Earth, composed of heteroclite sites, each singular, far from the image of the homogeneous, uniform, and universal globe seen from the sky. The difficulty that critical zone scientists now confront lies precisely in this tension between a situated, multiple Earth and the will to adopt an integrative, even holistic, approach to understand the Earth system as a whole rather than isolated parts. This tension can be seen in the hesitation over whether the term “critical zone” should be used in the singular, designating the entire habitable surface of the Earth, or in the plural, referring to the specific places studied by the observatories. The tension between the two expresses a more fundamental ontological problem: the Earth is one, but it does not exist as a homogeneous whole. It is a multiplicity of singular processes and configurations whose relations constitute what we call the Earth.
In conclusion, the specific problems of the critical zone, centered on the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the Earth, on the complex relations between the parts and the whole, or again on the intertwining of the conditions of habitability and the modes of inhabitation, resonate deeply with the more general questions that the concept of zone has always served to articulate. The history of the concept of zone reveals a conceptual continuity across objects that might otherwise appear unrelated: ancient cosmology, colonial geography, global capitalism, autonomous political experiments, and the Earth sciences. What connects them is not a common substance or a single historical logic, but a shared problem: how to think spatial difference without reducing it either to the partition of a homogeneous whole or a collection of discrete places. The zone names a form of spatial differentiation that is neither simply territorial nor merely functional. It is a relational operation through which a portion of space acquires a particular set of conditions, norms, capacities, and constraints. A zone is not simply where something happens; it participates in determining what can happen.
The zone therefore offers a way of thinking the Earth without returning either to the modern image of a homogeneous globe or to a romantic celebration of isolated localities. It allows us to hold together the global and the situated, the whole and the part, connection and disjunction, habitability and inhabitation. This has an epistemological consequence: the concept of zone creates a privileged point of contact between the natural sciences and the humanities. The zone can therefore function as a transversal concept, not by erasing disciplinary differences, but by making it possible to formulate a common question across them: how do spatial configurations acquire the capacity to shape processes, relations, and forms of life?
In this sense, the zone may offer one of the conceptual figures through which the Anthropocene can be thought beyond the opposition between the global and the local, nature and society, space and time. To think terrestrially is not simply to think on the Earth as a bounded planet. It is to think from within a world whose conditions of existence are continuously produced by heterogeneous and interacting processes. The zone gives this world a spatial form: a world made not of a single homogeneous surface, but of differences, relations, thresholds, frictions, and emergent capacities.
In conclusion, the specific problems of the critical zone, centered on the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the Earth, on the complex relations between the parts and the whole, or again on the intertwining of the conditions of habitability and the modes of inhabitation, resonate deeply with the more general questions that the concept of zone has always served to articulate. The history of the concept of zone reveals a conceptual continuity across objects that might otherwise appear unrelated: ancient cosmology, colonial geography, global capitalism, autonomous political experiments, and the Earth sciences. What connects them is not a common substance or a single historical logic, but a shared problem: how to think spatial difference without reducing it either to the partition of a homogeneous whole or a collection of discrete places. The zone names a form of spatial differentiation that is neither simply territorial nor merely functional. It is a relational operation through which a portion of space acquires a particular set of conditions, norms, capacities, and constraints. A zone is not simply where something happens; it participates in determining what can happen.
The concept of Critical Zone makes the philosophical problem that the history of the zone has progressively brought into view particularly explicit: how to think a whole that exists only through heterogeneous parts, a unity that does not erase difference, and a space whose very structure is inseparable from processes of transformation.
The zone therefore offers a way of thinking the Earth without returning either to the modern image of a homogeneous globe or to a romantic celebration of isolated localities. It allows us to hold together the global and the situated, the whole and the part, connection and disjunction, habitability and inhabitation. This has an epistemological consequence: the concept of zone creates a privileged point of contact between the natural sciences and the humanities. The zone can therefore function as a transversal concept, not by erasing disciplinary differences, but by making it possible to formulate a common question across them: how do spatial configurations acquire the capacity to shape processes, relations, and forms of life?
In this sense, the zone may offer one of the conceptual figures through which the Anthropocene can be thought beyond the opposition between the global and the local, nature and society, space and time. To think terrestrially is not simply to think on the Earth as a bounded planet. It is to think from within a world whose conditions of existence are continuously produced by heterogeneous and interacting processes. The zone gives this world a spatial form: a world made not of a single homogeneous surface, but of differences, relations, thresholds, frictions, and emergent capacities.
This article is a revised and translated version of an essay originally published in French: Etelain, Jeanne, “Zone – des zones antiques aux ZAD : penser l’espace terrestre à l’époque de l’Anthropocène,” Dictionnaire Arcadie. Lexique philosophique par temps d’Anthropocène, 29 September 2023, URL: https://arcadico.hypotheses.org/1472.
Jeanne Etelain is a philosopher and a professor at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts, and is an associate researcher at Paris Nanterre University. Her research focuses on the philosophy of space, the earth, and ecology from the perspective of renewing metaphysics, informed by feminist and decolonial epistemologies. In addition to numerous book chapters and academic articles, she is the author of Zones: Terre, sexes et science-fiction (Flammarion, 2025) and editor of Ce que les féminismes font à la métaphysique: Anthologie des nouveaux matérialismes (PUF, 2026). She is also active in publishing and translation, notably through her involvement with the executive committee of the journal Les Temps qui restent.
Header image: An area in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. The image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Jeanne Etelain is a philosopher and a professor at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts, and is an associate researcher at Paris Nanterre University. Her research focuses on the philosophy of space, the earth, and ecology from the perspective of renewing metaphysics, informed by feminist and decolonial epistemologies. In addition to numerous book chapters and academic articles, she is the author of Zones: Terre, sexes et science-fiction (Flammarion, 2025) and editor of Ce que les féminismes font à la métaphysique: Anthologie des nouveaux matérialismes (PUF, 2026). She is also active in publishing and translation, notably through her involvement with the executive committee of the journal Les Temps qui restent.
Header image: An area in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. The image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Bibliography
Aït-Touati, Frédérique, et Bruno Latour, Trilogie terrestre, Montreuil, Éditions B42, 2022.
Aujac, Germaine, « The Foundations of Theoretical Cartography in Archaic and Classical Greece », in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, éd. J. B. Harley et David Woodward, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 130-147.
Besse, Jean-Marc, Les grandeurs de la Terre. Aspects du savoir géographique à la Renaissance, Lyon, ENS Éditions, 2003.
Bey, Hakim, T.A.Z.: Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, New York, Autonomedia, 1985.
Casey, Edward, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997.
Charbonnier, Pierre, Abondance et liberté: une histoire environnementale des idées politiques, Paris, La Découverte, 2020.
Collectif Mauvaise troupe, Contrées: histoires croisées de la ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes et de la lutte No TAV dans le Val Susa, Paris, L’Éclat, 2016.
Comité Invisible, À nos amis, Paris, La Fabrique, 2014.
Cosgrove, Denis, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Londres, Croom Helm, 1984.
Easterling, Keller, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Londres-New York, Verso: Paperback edition, 2016.
Elden, Stuart, The Birth of Territory, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Etelain, Jeanne, Zones. Terre, sexes et science-fiction, Paris, Flammarion, 2025.
Etelain, Jeanne. «This Planet Which Is Not One: On the Notion of Zone», Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, dir. Bruno Latour, Karlsruhe, ZKM/MIT Press, 2020, p. 160-163.
Foucault, Michel, «Des espaces autres (1967)», in Dits et Écrits 1980–1988, Paris: Gallimard, 1994, p. 752-760.
Gaillardet, Jérôme, La Terre habitable, ou l’épopée de la zone critique, Paris, La Découverte, 2023.
Graeber, David, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Chicago, Prickly Paradigm, 2004.
Hardt, Michael, et Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001.
Hiatt, Alfred, Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Latour, Bruno, Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique, Paris, La Découverte, 2015.
Mezzadra, Sandro, et Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, Durham, Duke University Press, 2013.
Neilson, Brett, «Zones: Beyond the logic of exception», Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 40 (2), 2014, p. 11-28.
Ong, Aihwa, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham, Duke University Press, 2006.
Slobodian, Quinn, Crack-up capitalism: market radicals and the dream of a world without democracy, New York, Metropolitan Books, 2023.
Stengers, Isabelle, Au temps des catastrophes, Paris, La Découverte, 2013.
Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System, Cambridge, Academic Press, 1974.
Woodward, David, «Medieval Mappaemundi», in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, éd David Woodward et J. B. Harley, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 287-370.
Wynter, Sylvia, «1492: A New World View», in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas, éd Vera Lawrence et Rex Nellteford, Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, p. 5-57.
Further reading
Etelain, Jeanne, Zones. Terre, sexes et science-fiction, Paris, Flammarion, 2025.
Etelain, Jeanne, «“Un espace qui dure” : Le tournant spatial de l’Anthropocène», Les Temps qui restent, no. 1, 2024 [URL: https://lestempsquirestent.org/fr/numeros/numero-1/un-espace-qui-dure-le-tournant-spatial-de-l-anthropocene].
Etelain, Jeanne. «This Planet Which Is Not One: On the Notion of Zone», Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, dir. Bruno Latour, Karlsruhe, ZKM/MIT Press, 2020, p. 160-163.
Etelain, Jeanne, «Qu’appelle-t-on Zone ? À la recherche d’un concept manqué», Les Temps Modernes, vol. 692, no. 1, 2017, p. 113-135.
Harvey, David, «Space as Keyword», in Spaces of Global Capitalism. Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Londres: Verso, 2006, p. 119-148.
Lefebvre, Henri, La production de l’espace, Paris, Anthropos, 1974.
Zusman, Yogev, L’espace aléatoire, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2021.
Aït-Touati, Frédérique, et Bruno Latour, Trilogie terrestre, Montreuil, Éditions B42, 2022.
Aujac, Germaine, « The Foundations of Theoretical Cartography in Archaic and Classical Greece », in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, éd. J. B. Harley et David Woodward, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 130-147.
Besse, Jean-Marc, Les grandeurs de la Terre. Aspects du savoir géographique à la Renaissance, Lyon, ENS Éditions, 2003.
Bey, Hakim, T.A.Z.: Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, New York, Autonomedia, 1985.
Casey, Edward, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997.
Charbonnier, Pierre, Abondance et liberté: une histoire environnementale des idées politiques, Paris, La Découverte, 2020.
Collectif Mauvaise troupe, Contrées: histoires croisées de la ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes et de la lutte No TAV dans le Val Susa, Paris, L’Éclat, 2016.
Comité Invisible, À nos amis, Paris, La Fabrique, 2014.
Cosgrove, Denis, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Londres, Croom Helm, 1984.
Easterling, Keller, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Londres-New York, Verso: Paperback edition, 2016.
Elden, Stuart, The Birth of Territory, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Etelain, Jeanne, Zones. Terre, sexes et science-fiction, Paris, Flammarion, 2025.
Etelain, Jeanne. «This Planet Which Is Not One: On the Notion of Zone», Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, dir. Bruno Latour, Karlsruhe, ZKM/MIT Press, 2020, p. 160-163.
Foucault, Michel, «Des espaces autres (1967)», in Dits et Écrits 1980–1988, Paris: Gallimard, 1994, p. 752-760.
Gaillardet, Jérôme, La Terre habitable, ou l’épopée de la zone critique, Paris, La Découverte, 2023.
Graeber, David, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Chicago, Prickly Paradigm, 2004.
Hardt, Michael, et Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001.
Hiatt, Alfred, Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Latour, Bruno, Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique, Paris, La Découverte, 2015.
Mezzadra, Sandro, et Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, Durham, Duke University Press, 2013.
Neilson, Brett, «Zones: Beyond the logic of exception», Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 40 (2), 2014, p. 11-28.
Ong, Aihwa, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham, Duke University Press, 2006.
Slobodian, Quinn, Crack-up capitalism: market radicals and the dream of a world without democracy, New York, Metropolitan Books, 2023.
Stengers, Isabelle, Au temps des catastrophes, Paris, La Découverte, 2013.
Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System, Cambridge, Academic Press, 1974.
Woodward, David, «Medieval Mappaemundi», in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, éd David Woodward et J. B. Harley, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 287-370.
Wynter, Sylvia, «1492: A New World View», in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas, éd Vera Lawrence et Rex Nellteford, Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, p. 5-57.
Further reading
Etelain, Jeanne, Zones. Terre, sexes et science-fiction, Paris, Flammarion, 2025.
Etelain, Jeanne, «“Un espace qui dure” : Le tournant spatial de l’Anthropocène», Les Temps qui restent, no. 1, 2024 [URL: https://lestempsquirestent.org/fr/numeros/numero-1/un-espace-qui-dure-le-tournant-spatial-de-l-anthropocene].
Etelain, Jeanne. «This Planet Which Is Not One: On the Notion of Zone», Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, dir. Bruno Latour, Karlsruhe, ZKM/MIT Press, 2020, p. 160-163.
Etelain, Jeanne, «Qu’appelle-t-on Zone ? À la recherche d’un concept manqué», Les Temps Modernes, vol. 692, no. 1, 2017, p. 113-135.
Harvey, David, «Space as Keyword», in Spaces of Global Capitalism. Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Londres: Verso, 2006, p. 119-148.
Lefebvre, Henri, La production de l’espace, Paris, Anthropos, 1974.
Zusman, Yogev, L’espace aléatoire, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2021.