European Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSAeu) invites submission for the SLSAeu’s conference: ANTHROPOCENES: Reworking of the Wound, to be held on 17-20 June 2020 in Katowice, Poland.
Call for Proposals
Anthropocenes (Reworking the Wound)
The concept of the Anthropocene, formulated by geologists and chemists, was created to name the changes in planetary (geological) record exerted by human global activity. Despite its specific scientific provenance, the idea of human environmental domination brought the awareness of overall planetary problems this domination triggered for the latest forms of life developed on earth (humans included). This in turn has kindled discussion not only across sciences but also across the humanities. The manner in how humans utilize the common habitat and abuse their power in the shared space thus coalesced under the moniker of the Anthropocene, which has gathered a number of critical assumptions, speculations, and diagnoses. Such critical attention ponders the onset of the new geological era caused by the exploitative attitude of humans in intra and extra species relations, seen in the epistemological, ethical and practical organisation of life on Earth.
Following that critical considerations of the Anthropocentric condition, informed by a number of –cenes (such as Capitalocene, Cthulucene, Robocene, Planthropocene, Neganthropocene, Urbanocene etc.) , the conference would like to invite a debate on the forms of conceptualizing human planetary agency with regard to narratives, concepts, representations, formulations, discoveries, approaches, research, data, and controversies the concept has begotten. With the subtitle – reworking the wound – that specifies the debate’s trajectory, we would like to examine the possibilities for exploring the existing damage and discuss the responses (not necessarily solutions) to its outcomes and the ways those outcomes can be embraced. With this in mind, we encourage presentations and panels that are interested in (but not limited to) discussing the Anthropocene and the notion of the wound in the Earth in light of:
– theories and diagnoses for the anthropocentric/anthropocentric condition (the Anthropocene in the humanities and the sciences)
– forms of activism triggered in response to the environmental change
– artistic reactions to the environmental exploitation (aesthetics for the Anthropocene as a coping mechanism)
– environmental awareness vs./and anthropocentric awareness (the Anthropocene as a state of consciousness)
– mechanisms of domination and political strategy (the Anthropocene and the social/the legal)
– the agency of the natural and the unnatural
– ecological crisis as value relations
– hierarchies of species (the animal, the human, the machine)
– petrocultures and permacultures (reorganizing the policies of utilization)
– preservation into cohabitation (rethinking the policies of the common)
– histories of human and non-human species/natures.
– materialities of natural resources and their cultural signification
– economies of/for ecological crisis
– hierarchies of species and environmental agents
– technologies as ecosystems
– outcomes of the crisis and its discontents.
– materials of the anthropocene – plastic, rubber, silicon etc.
– cosmopolitics and cosmotechnics
– post-planetary foresight (theory and design)
– non-human imageries (the phenomenology of the Anthropocene)
– pedagogies of the Anthropocene(s)
Presentation/panel proposals of 300 words max should be submitted to: anthropocenes2020@gmail.com along with a bio note and affiliation. We also encourage roundtables and other creative/alternative forms of contribution. Submission deadline is November 15, 2019.
The conference website will start soon and will be linked to SLSAeu’s official website. Information about keynotes will have been available by the end of September 2019.
You do not have to be a current member of SLSAeu to present at the conference, but we encourage you to join the association. Information about SLSAeu membership is available at https://www.slsa-eu.org/membership.html. A detailed profile of the organisation is presented at https://www.slsa-eu.org/.
