EEHN’s current Environmental Humanities Fellow, Dr Hannah Stark (University of Tasmania), will give her second and final paper at IASH on the 26th October.
Title: Love, Kinship and Futurity in the Anthropocene
Time: 1pm
Venue: IASH, Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9NW
Abstract: What does it mean to love and be loved in the Anthropocene? This paper works from the premise that the nature of kinship is changing rapidly and fundamentally: new reproductive technologies are transforming procreation, progressive social ideologies are mainstreaming queer family making in Western culture, and cultural theorists are expanding notions of kinship through attentiveness to multispecies intimacies. This project asks how attachment, commitment and love are imagined beyond the hetero-normative family, apart from genetic or biological ties, and outside of the species. As such it brings together traditional feminist and queer theoretical frameworks with ecocriticism, animal studies and critical posthumanism, to explore literature as a speculative space for engaging with the complexities and opportunities of living together in a time of environmental uncertainty. This presentation will focus, in particular, on Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (2015) and Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014) in order to examine how love is mobilised as a political resource for articulating new modes of diverse and multi-species sociality and new futures in the Anthropocene.
Hannah’s time as our EH Fellow finishes at the end of October, so don’t miss this last chance to hear about her work!
