Eco-Humanities Research Group - Previous Events
Eco-Humanities Online Lecture Series
Thursday, 2nd December, 5.00 p.m. - 6.15 p.m. Irish time
Jason Groves, University of Washington
Registration Link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/eco-humanities-online-lecture-series-tickets-195796621967
Implicated Language, Implicated Ecologies: Paul Celan and the Eco-Poetics of Memory
When Paul Celan declares in his most famous text on his poetics, “the poem remains open to time, time can enter, time participates,” he also offers an early articulation of an Anthropocene poetics. Beginning with his 1959 Sprachgitter (Language Mesh) collection, Celan’s poetry increasingly demonstrates an openness to deep time and a receptivity to the ways in which the Shoah is registered not only in various landscapes but also in geological processes. My talk will attend to the ways in which this poetry collection accounts for and performs the making-present of the past that is constitutive of memory, namely with an understanding of memory and commemoration as an ecological and multispecies practice. Additionally, I will consider how Celan’s ways of commemorating the Jewish and anti-Jewish ecologies of Auschwitz—environmentally, ecologically, geologically, biogeochemically, planetarily, and linguistically—bear methodological and poetic similarities to recent studies by contemporary Black poets and theorists, including Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Christina Sharpe, of how the longue durée of the Middle Passage is mediated through oceanic archives and the element of water.
Jason Groves is Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Washington. His research areas include ecocriticism, interdisciplinary nineteenth-century studies, and the environmental humanities. His monograph, The Geological Unconscious: German Literature and the Mineral Imaginary, appeared with Fordham University Press in July 2020. From 2016-2019 he co-organized the Cross-disciplinary Research Cluster on the Anthropocene, and he currently co-organizes the Colloquium on Transcultural Approaches to Europe, both at the Simpson Center for the Humanities.
University College Cork Eco-Humanities Research Group
Workshop:
Agency, Onto-Epistemology and the ‘more-than-human’
Wednesday 12 January 2022 (online workshop), 9.45am – 4pm GMT
The University College Cork Eco-Humanities Research Group is delighted to host an online inter-disciplinary workshop to explore diverse notions of the agency, ontology and epistemology of the non-human, or ‘more-than-human,’ in the context of contemporary ecological crisis.
All are welcome at this workshop. Attendance at the workshop is free but advance registration is required – please register for the Workshop through Eventbrite here:
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University College Cork Eco-Humanities Research Group Workshop: Agency, Onto-Epistemology and the ‘more-than-human’ - Wed 12 Jan (online)
www.eventbrite.ie
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The full programme (including schedule and abstracts) can be accessed here
Eco-Humanities lunchtime seminars
Date: 3 February 2022
Time: 1-2 pm (Irish Time)
Number of speakers: 2
Laurence Davis (Government and Politics, l.davis@ucc.ie)
Title: "Gustav Landauer, Revolutionary Romanticism, and Utopia"
The social philosophy and revolutionary praxis of Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) is paradigmatic of socialist revolutionary romanticism, understood as a worldview combining aspects of socialist theory and romantic anti-modernism, and committed to the more-or-less explicit belief that communist socialism must break fundamentally with industrial/bourgeois civilisation in the name of premodern social, cultural, ethical, or religious values. In this short presentation I elucidate Landauer's critique of the ideology of progress and consider some of its radical political implications in the context of global ecocide.
Miranda Corcoran (English, miranda.corcoran@ucc.ie)
Title: "Dark-Uncanny and Dark-Sweet: Dark Ecology in We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Elizabeth: A Novel of the Unnatural"
This paper focuses on two gothic novels, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) and Ken Greenhall’s Elizabeth: A Novel of the Unnatural (1976), that imagine the interconnection between the human and the nonhuman as dark, sinister, and even deadly. Here, I draw on philosopher Timothy Morton’s conception of “dark ecology”, the idea that ecology is “dark” because it requires us to consider how we, as humans, are intimately connected with all sorts of nonhuman entities, from trees and flowers to insects, fungi and decaying matter. Ecology, in this sense, does not privilege the human, nor is it necessarily beautiful. I argue that rather than romanticising the relationship between their characters and the natural world, these novels evoke some of the ways in which humanity’s imbrication with the more-more-than-human world can be “dark-depressing”, “dark-uncanny”, and “dark-sweet” (Morton 5).
Registration Link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/ucc-eco-humanities-lunchtime-seminar-series-tickets-255190550807
Eco-Humanities lunchtime seminars
Date: 3 March 2022
Time: 1-2:15 pm (Irish Time)
Number of speakers: 4
Crystal Addey (crystal.addey@ucc.ie)
Title: Ancient Greek Philosophy and Contemporary Environmental Crisis: Relational Philosophy, Late Antique Theurgy and Contemporary Indigenous Traditions
Abstract: Are ancient Greek philosophy and religions useful for thinking through and dealing with contemporary environmental crises? Environmental philosophers have examined the ethical, political and cosmological dimensions of the current environmental crises we face. However, ancient Greek philosophy is often blamed for instigating anthropocentric worldviews, ethics and cosmologies. Plato and Neoplatonist philosophers such as Plotinus are often charged with contributing to this anthropocentrism by ontologically separating humans from other animals and the natural world through their metaphysical dualism. Yet some scholars have argued that a more ecocentric perspective in line with – and prefiguring – some of the concepts and frameworks evident within deep ecology can be found in the works of Plato and Plotinus. However, to date, theurgy (a type of religious ritual used by Neoplatonist philosophers in late antiquity) has been almost entirely overlooked within these debates, in line with its broader marginalisation within the history of philosophy. Turning the lens on Neoplatonic theurgy and the practices and worldview exemplified by it, I consider if theurgic frameworks may have any relevance for the current environmental crises we face, by examining: (1) the ecocentric nature of the theurgic worldview and the relationship it envisages between human beings and animals, plants, and the natural world in relation to the divine; and (2) the parallels and points of contact between theurgic/ancient polytheistic-philosophical worldview(s) and contemporary indigenous worldviews.
Jenny Butler (j.butler@ucc.ie)
Title: Guardians of the Earth: Eco-Cosmology and Contemporary Paganism
Abstract: Contemporary Pagan cosmology is holistic, resting on the fundamental notion that a spiritual energy infuses all that exists and as such this religious movement has been described by some scholars as a form of modern animism. Based on ethnographic research with practitioners of witchcraft and druidism, this presentation explores the special status of the natural world in contemporary Irish Pagan discourse and practices, and the connection between environmental activism, “Earth healing” rituals, and spiritual worldviews.
Gert Hofmann (g.hofmann@ucc.ie)
Title: Prolegomena for a Poetics of the Body as a Theory of Eco-human Writing
Abstract: The Poetics of the body conceives of a poetic theory of subjectivity which reflects critically on cognitive science and eco-science as the lead sciences of our age. I call this theory “eco-human”, because it hopes to offer an alternative to the discourses of transhumanism and posthumanism. The Poetics of the Body is an ethically marked poetic which, based on an elementary body-awareness, aims at overcoming the fundamental anthropocentrism of all prevailing human traditions of scientific knowledge and philosophical understanding. It is a theory that shows affinities and sympathies with Emmanuel Lévinas’ humanistic ethics of “the other human”, but expanding it to the presence of the other life as the other subject – not as another object of cognitive appropriation.
Kian Mintz-Woo (mintzwoo@ucc.ie)
Title: On the Importance of Climate Civilization Collapse
Abstract: In this paper, we consider the implications of anthropogenic climate change driven civilization collapse (climate collapse, for short) for climate ethics. First, we argue that climate collapse is a real possibility: many experts believe that 4°C could lead to collapse, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest (2021) assessment report’s high-emission socioeconomic pathways include that level of warming in their very likely (66-100%) range by 2100. Second, we argue that taking the risk of climate collapse seriously challenges two longstanding assumptions in climate ethics: (a) stable governance capable of promoting justice will exist in the long-term, and (b) current generations receive little or no benefit from climate change mitigation. This paper then argues that rejecting these assumptions matter, because their rejection explains how urgent climate action can be practically justified, or even required, for currently living people.
Registration Link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/copy-of-ucc-eco-humanities-lunchtime-seminar-series-tickets-274711729177
About this event
In this series we will hear from:
- Dr Alexander Hampton, University of Toronto, Realist Ontology and the Aesthetics of Nature: Methexis, Mimēsis and Poiēsis as a Return to Nature, Thursday 5th May, 17.00-18.15
- Prof Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Homogenising effects of globalisation on biological and cultural diversity, Thursday 19th May, 17.00-18:30
- Prof Freya Matthews, LaTrobe University, To decolonize nature we need ‘a story about feeling ’, Thursday 2nd June, 17.00-18:15 (pre-recorded)
Please note that all times are Irish Time
These sessions will all take place via Zoom and registration is required in order to receive Zoom link.
Registration Link:
Full abstracts and bios for each speaker are provided below:
1. Realist Ontology and the Aesthetics of Nature: Methexis, Mimēsis and Poiēsis as a Return to Nature, Alexander J.B. Hampton, University of Toronto.
- Abstract: The anthropocentric, disenchanted, commodified and instrumentalised view of nature, responsible for the anthropogenic destruction that characterises the environmental crisis, has deep roots in the Western intellectual tradition. However, equally a part of the Western tradition, though often-marginalised, is the philosophical tradition of ontological realism. This is the metaphysical position that ideals are real, transcendent realities that originate from a source that is beyond material and human reality, yet act as the ground for both. This consideration examines the resilient capacity of the realist tradition, most powerfully expressed through aesthetics, to disrupt and critique anthropocentrism, through three central, recurrent and evolving concepts: methexis (participation), mimēsis (imitation) and poiēsis (making). Taken together, these articulate and enact a relationship between humans and nature that recognises nature’s own inherent meaning and value apart from those imposed upon it by human minds. These dimensions of aesthetic realism are explored through examples from poetry, painting, music and architecture, taken from antiquity to modernity, each in its own way challenging anthropocentrism. In doing so, realist aesthetics presents itself as a creative resource for rethinking the human-nature relationship.
- Bio: Alexander J. B. Hampton is an Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto, specialising in metaphysics, poetics and nature. He is the author of Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion (Cambridge, 2019), and editor of Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19 (Routledge, 2020), Christian Platonism: A History (Cambridge, 2021), and the Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (Cambridge, 2022). He is currently writing a study of nature and the metaphysics of participation. He holds degrees from Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and Toronto. Further Information: www.ajbhampton.com
2. Homogenising effects of globalisation on biological and cultural diversity, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo.
- Abstract: State power and nation-building produce cultural similarity and comparability. The modern state aims to make populations legible through population statistics and manageable through a variety of official institutions, media, standardised education and labour markets. Economic globalisation, similarly, aims to make everything comparable with everything else, translating and reducing nature into resources (or ‘ecosystem services’) and people into producers and consumers. The common denominator is profitability, and economies of scale ensure accelerated standardisation. The current decade is that of the mega-mine, the smartphone and the shipping container. The benefits of global modernity are many, but contemporary overheated globalisation has severe unintended side-effects. Standardisation entails a loss of flexibility, defined as uncommitted potential for change. In order to understand this process, it is necessary to view ecology and culture through a common lens. Although evolution has led to increased semiotic complexity until the present age in both domains, the process is now being reversed owing to Anthropocene effects.
- Bio: Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and has written extensively about such themes as identity, ethnicity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, globalisation, climate change, migration and human rights. Among his many books are Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change (2016), Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast (2018) and Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. Further information: https://www.hyllanderiksen.net/about
3. To decolonize nature we need ‘a story about feeling.’ Freya Matthews, LaTrobe University (Note that this is a pre-recorded lecture with live Q&A/discussion led by Dr Crystal Addey)
- Abstract: It is often argued that the project of European colonialism rested on, and was legitimated by, an ideology of reason, of which the science that emerged in 17-18th century was the apotheosis. The epistemology of science enacted a subject-object dualism that was reiterated in a system of binaries that set abstract thought above feeling, the civilized above the primitive and the human above nature. It was this system of hierarchies that was historically seen by the colonisers as legitimating their domination of other peoples and the whole of nature. The legacy of this dualism lingers today in the attitude of Western civilization to the natural world, particularly via its framing of nature conservation in scientific terms. I argue that the goals of the conservation project would be better served if its epistemology were expanded to include very different ways of knowing based on feeling and hence on caring. Instances of such alternative epistemologies may be found in certain pre-agrarian societies that rely for their livelihood on the ecological integrity of their environment. Practitioners in such societies often develop ways of knowing attuned to subtle cues regarding the flourishing or otherwise of their ecological communities together with a sensitivity to the needs and attitudes of local beings. Such ways of knowing depend on the cultivation of ‘feeling’ via attentive and affective relationships with place and with those who hold, and pass on, the knowledge of place. I consider whether the teaching of such alternative ways of knowing might be integrated into mainstream conservation and environmental education in Australia, and if so, whether such new arrangements might have ripple effects into education and cultural epistemology generally, helping to ‘Indigenize’ social thinking.
- Bio: Freya Mathews is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Latrobe University. Her books include The Ecological Self (1991), Ecology and Democracy (editor) (1996), For Love of Matter: a Contemporary Panpsychism (2003), Journey to the Source of the Merri (2003), Reinhabiting Reality: towards a Recovery of Culture (2005), Ardea: a philosophical novella (2015) and Without Animals Life is not Worth Living (2015). She is the author of over seventy articles in the area of ecological philosophy. Her current special interests are in ecological civilization; indigenous (Australian and Chinese) perspectives on “sustainability” and how these perspectives may be adapted to the context of contemporary global society; panpsychism and the critique of the metaphysics of modernity; and wildlife ethics in the context of the Anthropocene. In addition to her research activities she manages a private biodiversity reserve in northern Victoria. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Thursday 25th January 2024: 4.00-5.15pm (GMT)
Jesse Peterson (University College Cork)
Ecologizing Death through an Ecohumanities Approach
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/ecologizing-death-through-an-ecohumanities-approach-tickets-781243699937?aff=oddtdtcreator
Scholarship on death typically focuses on the death of humans, overlooking the wider socio-ecological factors involved in processes around death. However, situating death within an ecohumanities approach carries potential to expand and enrich our understanding of nature as a matter of ‘deathly concern.’ In this lecture, Peterson will present on ecohumanities and death, highlighting emerging themes and contributions from the newly published (9 Jan. 2024) volume, Death’s Social and Material Meaning Beyond the Human, edited by Jesse D. Peterson (UCC), Natashe Lemos Dekker (UL), and Philip R. Olson (VT). Published as part of the Death and Culture Series by Bristol University Press, this volume explores death beyond the human to reveal complex interconnections among human and more than human creatures, entities, and environments. Using examples from this publication—such as the death of waterbodies (Peterson, 2024), the ‘ecological afterlives’ (Olson, 2024; Gould et al., 2024; Holleran, 2024) of the human dead, or the agency of parasitic and microbial lives (Zanzu, 2024; Hoerst, 2024; Yepez & Johnson, 2024)—Peterson will discuss and reflect on the social, cultural and political importance of nonhuman death, the relational materiality of the human corpse, and concerns over ‘ontological security’ (Giddens, 1984) offered by novel forms of care and labour.
Dr Jesse D. Peterson (he/him) works as a Lecturer with the Radical Humanities Laboratory and Department of Geography at University College Cork. He researches societal relationships to ecological challenges using transdisciplinary methods, having focused on issues related to oceans and biodiversity. His research addresses topics such as the production of ocean health and pollution, more-than-human relationships, socio-ecological death, citizen science, biodiversity data, and innovation in research methods, with publications in peer-reviewed journals, edited collections, literary magazines, and museum exhibits, such as Geohumanities, The Digital Environmental Humanities Handbook, Green Letters, Minerva, saltfront and more.