Human/nonhuman: Decolonial Perspectives on Life on a Diminished Planet
This material is also available in: Español Português
February 8th, 2021, 12 pm (EST) / 5 pm (GMT) / 9 am (PST) (ZOOM)
To register for the Q&A session, please click here.
This panel, part of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies online symposium series Pandemonio 2021, asks about the challenges the contemporary crisis of the living unleashed by anthropogenic climate change, planetary metabolic rift and the ever-accelerating rate of species extinctions presents to the field of cultural studies and to the humanities more widely. What do the vocabularies and frameworks of disciplines predicated on the distinctiveness and autonomy of aesthetic experience, and thus also of its human subject of enjoyment and critique, have to offer in response to a process that appears to call into question its most fundamental assumptions? Is the ‘Necrocene’ –the ‘becoming-extinction’ of species and of ecological, linguistic and spiritual diversity alike– also a moment of anaesthesia, in the sense of precluding any kind of cognitive grasp of ‘the hyperobject’ or ‘the irruption of Gaia’, the presence of which has now become as undeniable as it remains impossible to represent? Or is this crisis, on the contrary, one that calls for radical aesthetic responses, which have the power to evoke what conceptual and analytical discourses cannot? In the contributions to this panel, we will return to the archives of de/coloniality, in an attempt to find in the critique of modernity’s colonial-extractivist matrix a point of departure for entering into critical exchanges with the ‘environmental humanities’ from the vantage point of the ‘epistemologies of the South’ (Sousa Santos 2014). The panel, moderated by JLACS editor Freya Schiwy (UC Riverside), will feature podcasts by Lesley Wylie (University of Leicester), Victoria Saramago (University of Chicago), and Jens Andermann (NYU), as well as a Q&A/panel discussion where they will also discuss their recent books in relation to an emerging field of Latin American environmental humanities. Literary critics and environmental humanities scholars Mary Louise Pratt (NYU) and Jennifer Wenzel (Columbia) will provide critical responses and commentary.
To register for the Q&A session, please click here.
Podcasts
- Jens Andermann, “Nocturnal Voices: Sound Matter and Acousmatic Ghosts”: https://soundcloud.com/jens-andermann/nocturnal-voices-jens-andermann (download pdf version here)
- Victoria Saramago, “Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America”: https://soundcloud.com/user-47089761/fictional-environmental-podcast-pandemonium-2021-1-7-21-1049-pm
- Lesley Wylie, “What is it like to be a tree? Anthropomorphism, Phytomorphism, and Spanish American Culture” (excerpt from The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature): https://soundcloud.com/user-510406641/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-tree-anthropomorphism-phytomorphism-and-spanish-american-culture
Participants:
- Freya Schiwy is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Her latest book is The Open Invitation: Activist Video, Mexico, and the Politics of Affect (2019).
- Jennifer Wenzel is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Latest book: The Disposition of Nature. Environmental Crisis and World Literature (2020).
- Jens Andermann is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. Latest book: Tierras en trance. Arte y naturaleza después del paisaje (2018).
- Lesley Wylie is Associate Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Leicester. Her latest book is The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature (2020)
- Mary Louise Pratt is Emeritus Silver Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Latest book: Los imaginarios planetarios (2018)
- Victoria Saramago is Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies at the University of Chicago. Her latest book is Fictional Environments. Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America (2020)
