I’ve been waiting for this particular call for papers… I hope to see some of you there in Tenerife!
“NATURA LOQUENS:” ERUPTIVE DIALOGUES, DISRUPTIVE DISCOURSES
Contributions are invited for the 5th EASLCE International Conference on “Natura Loquens: Eruptive Dialogues, Disruptive Discourses,” to be held in Tenerife, Canaries, SPAIN, 27-30 June 2012. The event is organised on behalf of EASLCE (the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment) by the University of La Laguna, Faculty of Philology, and the Department of English and German Studies, in the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.
There is an ongoing debate nowadays over the agency of Nature and the necessity of reopening the definition of what counts as speech. One would need to differentiate between new insights about animal communication and the idea that nonanimal and inanimate nature “signify,” or the suggestion of biosemiotics that life itself is a process of signification. Thus, Nature often presents articulated reactions which can be both eruptive and disruptive.
We expect to bring to the arena of this academic meeting, placed at the very foot of Mount Teide (Spain’s highest volcanic peak, with an altitude of 3718 m.), as manifold eruptive dialogues as possible. Attention will focus on the contrasting relationship between Nature and humankind, ever in perpetual and delicate interrelationship since the history of humankind and especially after the emergence of the so-called Anthropocene Era (P. Crutzen). In effect, the ability to speak and communicate made it possible to detach this Homo sapiens genus from other animal species, establishing thus a hierarchy that has been working until present day. Such Aristotelian human “loquacity” is based on a “great chain of being” (A.O. Lovejoy) that places this Homo loquens in a superior position, being able to structure and articulate the universe.
If we were able to deconstruct and reverse this idea in order to acknowledge Nature’s ability to speak out (Christopher Manes, David Abrams), then multiple and creative conversations could be established, so as to reconstruct the natural order of things. While environmental concerns grow louder and more frequently today, traditional disruptive discourses that posit the idea of nature as an impediment to human progress do continue to emerge and spread out. The main purpose of this conference is then to reenact, rethink and fluidize the dialogic balance between Nature and human knowledge, engaging in an intellectually fairer and more empathetic communication.
Proposals for papers (EITHER standard papers 2500 words/20 minutes OR contributions to paper jam sessions 1250 words/12 minutes) and panels (3 papers OR 5 jam session papers) are now invited.
Topics will include but not be restricted to:
– Ideological, philosophical, political and cultural uses and/or misuses of the concept of Nature as the material reality of the sum of all organic and inorganic phenomena, including human beings.
– Description of Nature’s “agency” in cultural, artistic, literary and filmic representations of the anthropocentric canon in diachronic and synchronic historical periods.
– Dialogues and discourses regarding either subalternity or supremacy of Nature in historical, sociological, economic and artistic documents and other media.
– The interaction of Nature and Humankind in the creation/destruction of the world, as depicted in sci-fi, catastrophe literature, and trans- and post-human utopias/dystopias.
– Lead metaphors and metonymies, and other semantic tropes, structuring our perception and comprehension of the natural world, and the human capacity to transform the environment.
– Material/spiritual approaches to the natural world and their political and ethical contestations.
– The “retaliation” of Nature, especially in the 21st century: climate change, the ozone hole, “nukes” and quakes, eruptive ash clouds and other “apocalyptic” signs.
– The mirage/miracle of Nature: biodiversity& homogenization, global and local phenomena, human-made/destroyed landscapes, eruptions and erosions…
– The seemingly “pathetic fallacy”: Speaking animals, plants or inanimate objects in literature and the arts.
– Theoretical & critical approaches to Nature, and discussion of their frailties and strengths in contemporary debate: postcolonialism, environmentalism, ecological feminism, material ecocriticism, toxicity and discourse, biosemiotics, ecopedagogy, ecotranslatology, and others.
The primary conference languages will be English and Spanish, but (following our practice at previous EASLCE conferences) proposals for panels in other European languages are also welcome.
Please submit proposals for panels or individual papers (title plus 250 words), together with a brief bionote (4-5 lines), and complete contact data, to Professor Juan Ignacio Olivaby 31 January 2012, indicating your IT requirements.
Hi Adrian, hope you were spared the worst of the flooding from Irene!
On the subject of this conference, in case anyone missed the link from Tim Morton some time back, an excellent article (originally from 2003), Anthony Trewevas’ “Aspects of Plant Intelligence”, was recently republished in the Summer 2011 ANTENNAE at the following link:
http://www.antennae.org.uk/ANTENNAE%20ISSUE%2017.docx.pdf
I Just recently started reading books by Justus Buchler, whose “ordinal metaphysics” seems closer to object-oriented philosophy than other process philosophers such as Whitehead and Hartshorne.
Best, Mark
MC, the leading Buchler scholar Robert Corrington is now online if you have related questions, his spirituality may be off putting if it’s not your cup of tea, as it is not mine, but he is a very strong reader of philosophy and a generous teacher.
http://ecstaticnaturalism.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-i-am-not-whiteheadian.html
Thanks, Mark and dmf, for sharing those tips. Corrington is an interesting theoretical synthesist – I’ve found his comparison of Buchler and Whitehead (available online somewhere) useful and his pantheistic theology more to my liking than most (partly for their Peircian semiotic underpinnings). I also like how upfront he is about his own personal struggles (the sorts that philosophers often tend to downplay).
The plant intelligence article is great – I recommend it to readers.
A friend of mine is a Buchler scholar, and I’ve been promising to make some headway into his writings for a while now. I think your nudges will help me do that.
his writings are all up on his Drew U. site. I too appreciate his willingness to be open with the fact that his intuitions/orientation/style may all well be symptomatic of his illness, and even with such high personal stakes he has a sense of humor about the leap of faith involved in combining the human/psychological/social realm with cosmology. This suits both my own Nietzschean leanings/psychology about the auto-bio-graphical nature of philosophy/human-being and my pragmatic preference for owning our fallibility.
that and his heidegger seminar was literally magic, as we were working through B&T he was conjuring up the very table that we were sitting around, bringing the page into vivid 3D, and like all good magi I have no idea how he did it, and I attend to such things.
Thanks for the personal insights into RC, Dirk. I read ECSTATIC NATURALISM about a decade ago and found it intriguing but, due to my rushed & shallow reading at that time, a bit too abstract and mystical. It was thanks to Leon’s recent AFTER NATURE pointer to Corrington’s blog that I became aware of the great cache of articles there, and was subsequently seduced by Buchler. As I now read through METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL COMPLEXES, much of the earlier abstract fog I perceived is dissipating.
Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve never taken a single philosophy class. I probably have an even stronger aversion to Heidegger, based on similar shallow encounters. This is where blog digressions are so helpful for overcoming the initial aversion (withdrawal ?) Consider Michael’s latest post at ARCHIVE FIRE:
“In my thinking ‘powers’ or ‘dispositions’ are animated by a collaboration between both the qualities or properties inherent in the material composition of onto-specific entities and the ever-present conditions in which they exist”.
I’m now reading this in the light of Buchler’s metaphysics and feel like the climber in Casper David Friedrich’s 1818 painting “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” (which, rhizomatic digression warning, appears on the cover of Jason Roberts’ A SENSE OF THE WORLD: HOW A BLIND MAN BECAME HISTORY’S GREATEST TRAVELER – the true story of James Holman (1786-1857)).
Just back from watching a tiny opossum (smaller than a squirrel!) make its rounds of my back patio by the dawn’s early light.. Intrigued readers may be interested that Justus Buchler (1914-1991) was probably most famous for leading the charge (at least within academia) against the McCarthyite tactics of the late 1950s and early 1960s (from his position within the ACLU), perhaps opening the door to the more psychedelic philosophies of the late 60s and early 70s. For me, this sense of context helps to transcend the Rancierean polarization between the Police and the People (that one of our friends has recently been highlighting). At more cosmic levels, a “Logic of Ultimate Contrasts” is what bothered me with Charles Hartshorne, too..
Hi from the Canary Islands – this was an interesting read. I actually love to go out and watch nature or all kinds of animals over here (La Palma was a great place to do so) – I wasn’t born here and moved here 6 years ago but still I found awesome wildlife.