Tag: New Materialisms

The Posthumanities Hub Seminar “A Critical Cartography of New Materialist Constellations & Interventions in Times of Terror(ism)” with Dr. Evelien Geerts

On September 24, 2020

When: 5 November, 13:15-15:00 (Swedish time)

Where: Online. In order to take part in the seminar, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 3rd November 2020 at the latest.

As part of The Posthumanities Hub Seminar Series, we are exited to present Dr. Evelien Geerts (PhD UC Santa Cruz), a multidisciplinary philosopher and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham (UK), working on the ERC-funded ‘Urban Terrorism in Europe (2004-19): Remembering, Imagining, and Anticipating Violence’ project. Her research interests include new materialisms, critical epistemologies, political philosophical questions of identity, difference, and violence, and critical & diffractive pedagogies. She has published in Philosophy Today, Women’s Studies International Forum and Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, is furthermore an avid philosophy meme-creator, and part of the Dutch Journal of Gender Studies’ editorial board.

A Critical Cartography of New Materialist Constellations & Interventions in Times of Terror(ism)

Abstract:
This paper anticipates on my monograph project on critical new materialist theories and the idea of “theorizing from the ground up” during times of global crisis (such as the COVID-19 crisis we are currently experiencing; see Geerts 2020) and terror(ism) in particular.

Using (and commenting on) the new materialist methodologies of critical cartography and diffraction, this paper first of all wishes to reflect upon what it means to “theorize from the ground up” in a feminist philosophical manner by offering a situated critical cartography of contemporary new materialist thought. It is then argued that such a critical cartography is not only a novel but also much needed undertaking, as we, more than almost two decades after the Habermas-Derrida dialogues on terror(ism) (Borradori 2003), are in need of a Zeitgeist-adjusted conceptual framework that takes the more-than-human seriously. Such a “grounded”, critical new materialist framework could assist us with painting a more holistic picture of the complex ontological, epistemological, and eco-ethico-political entangled aspects of global crises, and, specifically, terrorist events, such as the Paris 2015 and Brussels 2016 attacks; the actual terror they produce; and the bio-/necropolitical repercussions they often engender.

Call for contributions: New Materialist Informatics – 11th International New Materialisms Conference

By posthumanitieshubweb

On July 20, 2020

In Call for Papers, Conferences

23-25 March 2021

University of Kassel, Germany

Deadline for Submission: October 15, 2020

www.uni-kassel.de/go/NMI2021

This 11th new materialist conference invites participants to investigate the possible intersections between, and beyond, new materialism and informatics. How can new materialism and informatics be brought together in ways that help build liveable and sustainable techno-lifeworlds? What new perspectives with regard to contemporary crises might emerge at such intersection and beyond? What kind of conceptual and methodological tools are needed for new materialist informatics design and research? This conference wishes to include and go beyond the new materialist readings of computing and computational artefacts and generate innovative perspectives on how techno-worldings can be performed from a new materialist perspective.

Prof. Christine Daigle’s talk at KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm (22 October 2018)

By Machinic Assemblage

On October 6, 2018

In Events, News

The Posthumanities Hub has a great pleasure to welcome to KTH Royal Institute of Technology our special guest, Prof. Christine Daigle from Brock University, Canada!

On 22nd October at 10:15 – 11:30 Prof. Daigle gives a talk ‘Our Posthuman Vulnerability: a material feminist inquiry’.

The event takes place in the seminar room at Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Insitute of Technology in Stockholm (address: Teknikringen 74 D, 5th floor).

It is open to the public and free of charge.

Abstract:

My proposal for understanding the posthuman as ‘transjective’ entails embracing our being as radically entangled and interconnected, a being that emerges from a manifold of affects, tensions, and relations and is constructed by them albeit always in flux, being done and undone by this web of relations and including its own relation to it. Our material entanglement with other humans, non-humans, living or non-living beings, renders us vulnerable. Material feminism offers particularly potent insights into our entanglement and its many consequences, such as vulnerability. I argue that we need to embrace our beings as vulnerable as this is generative of a new type of ethical responsibility, one that may lead to the enhanced flourishing of life in all its instances. Beyond accepting and embracing our entanglement, we must actively work toward affirming it and conceive of our vulnerability in affirmative and generative terms.

Bio:

Christine Daigle is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Posthumanism Research Institute and of the Posthumanism Research Network, and Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University (St. Catharines, Canada). She has worked and published extensively on Nietzsche, Beauvoir, and Sartre and is now researching intensely posthuman theory, material feminism, and affect theory.

What’s Up at the Hub?

By posthumanitieshub

On August 23, 2017

In Call for Papers, Events, News, Symposiums, Workshops

2001-09-14 20.48.22
Here we share with you news and updates on new jobs, visiting scholars at the Posthumanities Hub, various events, seminars, and workshops that are organized by the Hub or its mothership, Tema Genus (the Gender Studies at the interdisciplinary department of TEMA, at Linköping University, Sweden).

News

Our warmest congratulations on their great success to the amazing Marietta Radomska and Lisa Linden, both of TEMA LIU, who received VR grants! Marietta will be working on her project entitled ”Dödens ekologier: miljön, kroppen och etik i samtida konst” and Lisa on “Empowerment och stigmatisering: Patientorganisationer, gynekologisk cancer och identiteter i omvandling.”
Congratulations to “hubbers” Desirée Ljuncrantz (Tema G, Liu) and Marianna Szczygielska (Central European University, visiting PhD student at Tema G in 2015/16) who successfully defended their PhD theses!
A special issue of Angelaki on “Tranimacies: intimate relations between animals and trans*studies” edited by our fantastic colleagues Marianna Szczygielska, Eliza Steinbock, and Anthony Wagner is now out! With contributors from our hubbers, Marietta Radomska and Vera Weetzel, and our Tema Genus Professor Madina Tlostanova, among others, this issue is pushing the boundaries of thinking beyond the human/animal binary.
Congratulations to Christine Daigle from Brock University and to her team for receiving a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) partnership development grant to support Posthumanism Research Network. We’re happy and proud to be Posthumanities Research Network partner and collaborator and we’re thrilled about these new opportunities to work together.
Have a look at this, it’s from our friends in international posthuman studies: The 9th Beyond Humanism Conference https://vimeo.com/228020059
We recommend you look up Royal Holloway Centre for the GeoHumanities‘ website for more information on interdisciplinary relations between geography and arts and humanities scholarship and practice; blog, forum, call for papers, and more!

Call for papers

We are pleased to announce that a call for abstracts intended for a special issue of an environmental humanities journal on a theme of “Plantarium. Human-Vegetal Ecologies” is now open. For this special issue, edited by Olga Cielemecka and Marianna Szczygielska, we invite contributions that look into human-botanical ecologies, relationalities, and histories. We seek both traditionally academic submissions, as well as visual materials, provocations, review essays, activist reports and commentary pieces, and other varying genres. Please submit abstracts (500 words) to plantarium2017[at]gmail.com as word documents (.doc or .docx) until September 29, 2017. Call available here.

Upcoming Conferences, Workshops, and Other Events

Curated talks around Automata, a thought-provoking performance on stage at Orionteatern in Stockholm are now available online here. A a recording of a discussion “Free-spirited cyborgs and controlled bodies” is also available online. Chaired by Carl Åkerlund this panel discussion between Samira Ariadad, Helena Granström, Waldemar Ingdahl and the founder and director of Posthumanities Hub, Cecilia Åsberg, took place on May 6th in Orion Theatre following a staging of Automata.

Recent Past Events

A two-day workshop Eco/Decolonial Arts: Open-ended Poetic/Philosophical Forays whose aim was to develop transversal dialogues between various ways of engagement with both ecocritical/ecological and decolonial perspectives took place at Tema G on June 28 and 29.
A Seed Box funded workshop “Plantarium: Re-Imagining Green Futurities” organised by Olga Cielemecka and Marianna Szczygielska took place in June, 1st-2nd, at Linkoping University. It brought together activists, artists, practicioners, independent researchers, and academics to rethink the generative potentialities of the botanical. More about the event. Many thanks to our invited keynote speakers Cate Sandilands and Michael Marder, Mirko Nikolic for a plant yoga session and Christina Sadlbauerand Regula Heggli for vegetal speed dating, and all participants for making it such a special event! Now we’re planning to work on a CfP for a special issue, intended for one of the top environmental humanities journals, on the theme of hum-vegetal ecologies. Stay tuned!
Professor Cecilia Åsberg, director and founder of the Posthumanities Hub, gave a keynote lecture at the 8th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms “Environmental Humanities and New Materialisms: The Ethics of Decolonizing Nature and Culture.” The conference took place at Maison de l’UNESCO in Paris on June 7-9, 2017. Professor Åsberg gave a lecture entitled “A Thousand Tiny Anthropocenes” on ecological humanities, mapping out their challenges and potentials as feminist posthumanities.

For archives of our news and events earlier in 2017, click here.

Iceberg 1999 by M A Felton