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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
On 22 and 23 January 2016 the international conference Nonhumans & Politics. Non-Anthropocentric Perspectives on Politics took place at the Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover (Hannover Institute for Philosophical Research, Germany). It dealt with the question of how to think about the nonhumans (the environment, plants, animals, technology, artificial intelligence, machines etc.) as political actors.
The conference gathered participants from twelve countries working in diverse disciplines: political theory, philosophy (continental and analytical traditions), film studies, theology, anthropology, sociology, comparative literature, history of science and art history. These diverse frameworks were brought together in order to re-investigate and re-conceptualize the juncture of nonhumans and politics. The conference focused on the question whether the notion of ‘nonhuman politics’ is conceptually possible and what would that imply on a practical level
The event opened with welcoming remarks from the conference organizer Dr. Iwona Janicka, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick and FIPH Fellow, who stressed the urgency of rethinking politics with respect to nonhumans given our rapid technological development and impending ecological crisis. The first session gathered scholars working on French contemporary philosophical thought. Dr. Susannah Ellis (Université de Paris 7) spoke about nostalgia for humanism in post-1970s French thought, Massimiliano Simons from University of Leuven looked at the work of Michel Serres, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour in order to investigate how things get represented in science (quasi-objects) and drew parallels to political representation. Dr. Iwona Janicka (University of Warwick and FIPH) reconsidered the concept of ‘political subject’ in Jacques Rancière’s work and opened it up towards posthumanist and neo-materialist frameworks.
The second panel focused specifically on animals: Andrzej Grzybowski (Polish Academy of Sciences) problematized the animal/human distinction by drawing on Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida’s work. Dr. Federico Zuolo, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin and University of Hamburg, considered the moral status of animals following a minimal theory of public justification. He claimed that the principles ruling the treatment of animals in a liberal democracy must be acceptable (as non reasonably rejectable) by all those who are subject to these rulings. The following session dealt with the passage from ontology to politics. Sigmund Bruno Schilpzand (University of Amsterdam) presented arguments for the view that nonhuman entities are endowed with agency and argued for extending the political circle by drawing on Bruno Latour’s work. Eva Meijer, also from the University of Amsterdam, discussed political worm agency by contrasting Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s theory of political animal rights with Jane Bennett’s view of worm agency.
The final panel of the day examined film representations of nonhumans and politics. Dr. Nikolaj Lübecker (University of Oxford) focused on the work of the American director James Benning – Two Cabins (2011) and Stemple Pass (2012) – and argued that Benning’s work frustrates our inclination to draw nature into any (anthropocentric) political economy. Dr. Hideaki Fujiki (Nagoya University) considered the politics of documentary films post the 11 March 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Mashya Boon (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences) undertook a philosophical ‘thought experiment’ on the malleability of our sense of self by closely discerning the cinematic figure of the human clone as it is conceived of within the cinematic texts of Moon (Jones, 2009), Alien:Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997) and The 6th Day (Spottiswoode, 2000).
The following day opened with the session on broadly considered stewardship. Frauke Albersmeier (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) explored in what ways the concept of ‘solidarity’ might be helpful or cumbersome for understanding our responsibilities towards nonhuman animals. Dr. Ivana Damnjanović (University of Belgrade) examined the consequences for democracy if ‘GOD AI’ (i.e. artificial intelligence significantly smarter than humans) is to become a reality. Christiane Alpers (Radboud University Nijmegen and KU Leuven) considered posthumanism from the Christian theological perspective and argued that the goal of politics is no longer to establish the best order of social human life in its natural environment but to respond spontaneously to natural goods.
The final two panels of the conference dealt with the necessary shifts in different disciplines and the interpretative tropes crucial for understanding the contemporary world. Dr. Erika Cudworth and Dr. Stephen Hobden (University of East London) claimed that International Relations, as a global discipline, not only should, but needs to provide the source of ideas that counter current forms of social organising, which appear to be driving us towards catastrophe at a global level. Confronted by two of the most significant threats to ‘security’ on the planet, climate change and the mass extinction of our fellow species, International Relations has thus far singularly failed to provide a counter-narrative. This implies that a radical re-thinking is necessitated. Agata Agnieszka Konczal (Adam Mickiewicz University Poznán) questioned the presuppositions of traditional anthropology and argued, following the work of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Tim Ingold, Donna Haraway and Eduardo Kohn, that in a new geological epoch of Anthropocene, there is paradoxically no more space for ‘just human’ anthropology. Finally, Dr. Benoît Dillet, Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow of the European Union at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, argued that a renewed project of ideology-critique – one that takes into account the role of nonhumans in the age of the Anthropocene – is crucial. In presenting an enlarged concept of the ideology critique project, he discussed the recently coined notion of ‘Capitalocene’ as an alternative to the understanding of Anthropocene. Dr. Alexander Wilson (Aarhus University) claimed that the allure of posthumanity is deeply related to the postmodern anthropocenic zeitgeist according to which humanity has exhausted its ‘futurity’. The ubiquity of the posthuman narrative today is inextricable from the chronopolitical landscape we now find ourselves in. He investigated the ‘chronopolitics’ of the contemporary displacement of concern onto the speculative actants of the posthuman, prehuman, and nonhuman.
About FIPH
The Hannover Institute for Philosophical Research (Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover) is an independent institute for philosophical research. The research program at the institute is interdisciplinary. Challenges presented by the natural sciences, technology and globalization are critically examined and evaluated. The institute advises businesses and policy makers and prepares expert opinions on philosophical, theological, social, political and economic issues. In addition, it regularly offers fellowships.
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