Simon Critchley’s series “The Stone” at the New York Times has just published an upbeat and important interview between Natasha Lennard and Carry Wolfe. It’s a sanguine introduction to posthumanism written for a general audience, an important intervention in a public forum as we gear up for the presidential inauguration. But why—why oh why!—did it have to be titled: “Is Humanism Really Humane?” ? Or perhaps I should be asking: why oh why did the piece not take the seeming paradox more seriously, i.e. more literally? Didn’t deconstruction teach us to respond à la lettre? Shouldn't we unpack how the "human" of the various "humanisms" is (not) related to the "human" of the category of the "humane," especially as we live in the age of the anthropos? This I attempt elsewhere (in a forthcoming piece), so for now just a few immediate thoughts. And, before anyone raises this point, it doesn’t matter who chose the title—that’s the title and the interview lives with it. It’s not being pedantic to argue that asking the question "Is Humanism Really Humane?" without unpacking etymologies and word histories—muddies the waters considerably.
For sure, Wolfe—who has thought and written a lot about humanism and posthumanism—opens the interview by acknowledging that “the subject of ‘humanism’ itself is a vast one,” that there are “many different varieties of it,” and that posthumanism “doesn’t mean ‘anti-humanism.’” Despite this plurality, despite the quotation marks that Wolfe himself puts around “humanism,” and despite the pledge that there is nothing “anti” about the “post,” Wolfe nonetheless proceeds to talk of the “sketches of the ‘human,’ ‘the animal’ or ‘nature’ that we get from the humanist tradition.” The emphasis is mine: he says “the humanist tradition.” This is a problem. Where did the “the” come from? Where did the plurality go? Where did the quotation marks go? Later in the interview, Wolfe writes: “Humanism provides an important cultural inheritance and legacy, no doubt, but…”; and he talks of how “…the humanist philosophical tradition considered…” If there are multiple traditions of humanism, and if posthumanism is not anti-humanism, then what exactly are “the humanist tradition” and “humanism” within the bounds of this interview? Wolfe never says. He leaves this to Lennard, who defines humanism as “the hierarchical distinguishing between human and nonhuman animals based on a certain notion of ‘knowledge’ or ‘intelligence.’” And Wolfe, in his response, neither disagrees nor nuances. Wolfe’s definition of posthumanism is, unlike his (half-disavowed) rejection of (which?) humanism, generous and cogent: “You find hints of [posthumanism] in anything that fundamentally decenters the human in relation to the world in which we find ourselves, whether we’re talking about other forms of life, the environment, technology or something else.” He continues as follows: “Perhaps more importantly, you find it in the realization that when you don’t allow the concept of the ‘human’ to do your heavy philosophical lifting, you are forced to come up with much more robust and complex accounts of whatever it is you’re talking about.” I could not agree more. As an early modernist, a scholar of the variety of humanism that Wolfe calls “Renaissance humanism,” I embrace that definition of posthumanism—it’s an essential anti-anthropocentric mode of inquiry—and I assert that one indeed finds “hints” of it in many places, including everywhere in early modern humanism, that moment before Latourian modernity untied the Gordian knot that we now collectively attempt to re-tie. Countless MLA papers this year made this point beyond all doubt--I think of Katie Chenoweth, Hassan Melehy, Vin Nardizzi, Karl Steel, and countless others. As Kenneth Gouwens has pointed out in his fabulous “What Posthumanism Isn’t” piece in Joseph Campana and Scott Maisano’s book Renaissance Posthumanism, the humanism that Wolfe rejects is a very recent—historically and geographically situated—variety. It has nothing to do with early modern humanism, nor with 19th-century German reflections on the term. He doesn't say it does--but neither does he define humanism in any other more rigorous manner (in his book, he starts with Wikipedia). Wolfe's humanism is--shows Gouwens-- most clearly that of the “Humanist Manifesto” published in 1933, signed by thirty-four intellectuals including John Dewey (see Gouwens, p. 44). We would do well to remember that and either to be more precise about which humanism’s “humane-ness” we’re asking about, or else to change questions and ponder for example whether anthropocentrism is humane--at least that's a precise question. My only point here is that, as Latour has written recently, “the humanities have a problem with the word ‘human’” (“Life Among Conceptual Characters,” p. 474). To be continued... *Thank you to Danielle Zuckerman, who knows a thing or two about the Anthropocene, for first bringing the New York Times piece to my attention. In the 350.org email update, Jamie Henn writes: “Yesterday Donald Trump did what I thought was unthinkable, and officially nominated ExxonMobil's CEO Rex Tillerson to be the next US Secretary of State” (December 14, 2016). On Fox News (see below), it’s asked “why he’s an excellent choice” and Robert Charles is happy to explain: Tillerson is “not a Johnny-come-lately-diplomat” and a “brilliant out-of-the-box choice.” Not a word about all that Exxon has done to knowingly screw up the planet and pretend it knew nothing (see http://exxonknew.org/). MSNBC’s reporting was a bit more balanced, indeed pointing out that Tillerson denies the science of global warming—still on MSNBC Richard Branson says he “hopes” that Tillerson’s “not a climate denier” and that, once he’s no longer at Exxon, he might be able to “do something” about global warming…….. Meanwhile, as Brady Davis writes in the Washington Post, some have less hope: “Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump.” I write this after a day at the British Library, reading 500 year-old books about the planet-- and here I am this evening, reading about how scientists now genuinely fear losing data about the current and future state of our planet. After yesterday’s post about Trump, Ebell, and the question of education in the Anthropocene, it is somehow fitting that today I advance a few witness’s notes about children leaning about ecosystems.
Thursday November 10, 2016, while in Nantes for other reasons, I quickly visited the Jardin des plantes opposite the train station and happened upon Claude Ponti’s exhibition of strange things made of plants, “Le Jardin Kadupo,” such as the “Pontanpo,” a plant pot made of plant pots, showing “the life of pots” and the “Dormanron”! As well as the trees and plants with their Linnaean signs, there was thus also this throwing-up-in-the-air of that specifically modern attempt to classify and give order. And through the garden walked several groups of young children, out for a one-day mini-version of what the French call “une classe verte,” i.e. a class of hands-on exploration of the world of plants and minerals and suchlike. Each child had a little bag in which s/he collected leaves for future drying and placement into a herbarium—but what was just so fabulous was that, as they indeed learned to identify leaves and thus trees, to give order to what they were seeing, Ponti’s exhibition was also offering resistance, saying “No, there is no order!” Both parts of the lesson are so valuable—they feed each other. This afternoon (Saturday Nov 12, 2016)—as the only non-accompanied adult in the theater!—I saw L’île aux vers de terre (Worm Island) by Cécile Fraysse of Compagnie AMK (Aérostat Marionettes Kiosque), again at Nanterre Amandiers as part of Philippe Quense’s “Welcome to Caveland.” It’s not a play “about” an ecosystem; it simply “is” an ecosystem into which the audience is invited. There’s a rocky-mossy island, on which live a young girl and her grandmother—and a lot of earthworms; and there’s thunder and lightening; and… but none of that captures it really. The program presents it (well) as follows: “Two puppeteers dressed in camouflage [and indeed they are! they look like big mossy mounds], a singing guitarist dressed as a seal, and strange pink earthworms that are both docile and worrying, busy in their work of hollowing out the insides of the scenery, all accompany the adventures of Nanouk and her grandmother. Within a lightscape that changes with the seasons, submerged within textiles and foliage, the island which gives its name to the play is an organism that breathes and crackles, a living compost-ground [un terreau vivant] shot through with tunnels and passages, secret jurisdictions as old as the world. The young spectators, to whom mini-telescopes have been given [little plastic tubes!], are invited to deliver their gaze unto this fictional and very real [plastique] matter. Through scalar games and purely bodily sensations, Cécile Fraysse questions our relationship to the world” (my translation; French here). I won’t spoil the story, but it’s not a particularly happy play or story, not an ecosystem that is miraculously saved, nor for that matter heinously destroyed by some big Anonymous Industry—no, it’s an ecosystem, with ups and downs and losses and gains and with humans and nonhumans assembling themselves, co-evolving; it’s an ecosystem in which no one is master. P.S. Check out AKM’s other plays for young audiences: Iceberg; Gingko Parrot; and the others; check out their Youtube channel, and their blog; oh, and go see L’Île aux vers de terre if you’re in Paris, it’s on in various places through April 2017 (see here). In other words: as I leave France (again), it’s with this memory of children learning about ecosystems, a very anti-Trump, anti-Ebell kind of thing to do. aEach time I’ve gone to write an email since Donald Trump became President Elect this week, during the night of November 8-9, 2016, it’s been hard to know how to start. Do I acknowledge the election and express… something? No less hard here. What is clear is that making even incremental progress on global warming and all it brings will now be much more difficult is clear. There’s Trump’s tweet from November 6, 2012, which makes his position clear. And there’s the fact that Trump has selected Myron Ebell to lead the transition of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), id est Myron Ebell who chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition that takes aim at “global warming alarmism,” id est Myron Ebell the original global warming skeptic, id est Myron Ebell who on Fox News (see here) tries to twist reality, who on Fox News (see below) is against Maryland’s “Environmental Literacy” requirement—“That’s not really education, it’s propaganda.” That pretty much clinches the main point for me, as an educator and as a scholar engaged in thinking about the Anthropocene—let’s put it clearly, Ebell (and Trump who now puts him in this new role vis-à-vis the EPA) are COMPLETELY AGAINST EDUCATION ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND THE ANTHROPOCENE. And then there are, of course, Trump’s specific plans. Naomi Klein (who also criticized the positions of HRC), has studied what Trump’s arrival will likely mean for global warming, in a piece in the Nation: “Donald Trump’s Presidency Could Literally Mean the End of Their World. Island nations like Kiribati will disappear if Trump goes forward with his energy plans.” As Klein summarizes, among Trump’s immediate plans are: (1) remove any obstacles to the creation of the Keystone XL pipeline; (2) list restrictions on fossil-fuel production; (3) cancel “billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs.” This would mean that Kiribati and other low-lying islands may simply not survive. Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” is here (archived here as PDF from November 11, 2016—you never know what will disappear!). As I probably don’t need to tell the majority of Americans who did not vote for Trump, the election of Trump should make us afraid: the posting of racist signs above water fountains, a planned KKK rally in North Carolina, widespread reports of harassment, are just some of the reasons to be afraid. It can feel mighty hard to even have a thought for global warming when so many (non-white, not-male, LGBTQ, non-Christian [which includes Atheists], not-etc.) people are indeed facing immediate threat. But it’s all connected: as Naomi Klein points out in the piece referenced above, and as the Pope did in his “Laudato Si” encyclical, and as the climate justice movement has been reminding us for a long time, the consequences of Trump’s views on global warming will not affect everyone equally: rich white men of a certain age like Trump will be okay; others won’t. Racism and sexism and hate are at the heart of global warming. Which is to say, simply, that—now more than ever—we have to look around us AND (like Anaxagoras) take a step back and look away from the city to think about our planet in the infinite void. We must do one and the other. Recommended viewing on Trump and his "stewardship" of the planet: the film “You've been trumped.” For the second time this week, I ended up on my back in a dark room alongside a bunch of strangers doing the same. This time, it was one part of the exhibition Le Grand orchestre des animaux at the Fondation Cartier. The crux of the exhibition was thus this largely dark room, an echo chamber for the animal sound recordings of Bernie Krause, what he calls biophony (“the creature chorus of natural sound”). The experience is pretty damn gripping. In addition to the sound, there are visuals that materialize that sound in another form. The left wall is a kind of giant oscilloscope marking in long bars and real time the frequencies of different animals in the recording (each recording belongs to a different location); the front and right walls are an EKG-like recording instrument that keeps a trace of what the left wall measures. You’re surrounded in animal sound as sound, as flickering frequency bars, and as a ticker-tape-life recording that wraps around. The animals here are the active agents. As they come and go, they leave a sonic footprint on the walls, which both serves to identify them, but in a more direct way than through sight. You can hear many animals at once, and yet still hear them all individually at the same time. And there is none of that almost automatic distracting anthropomorphizing that all too easily hits us when we look at an animal. Some great sound for thought.
I spent the last couple of days in Boulder, CO at the “Premodern Ecologies” conference organized by Scott Bruce of Boulder University’s Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS), in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. It truly was a colloquium or “talk-together,” with generous interlocutors gathered from a variety of fields, including History, Art History, Economic History, English, Italian, French, and others. I would be unable to do justice to the whole, so—without wanting to spoil the plot of anyone’s unpublished work—I present just a few points… What do I take away with me, on the ideas level? 1) The need for the plural when we talk of ecology/ecologies, as the conference title made clear, as Steve Mentz underscored in his very satisfying plenary reading of Hamlet that I hope will soon be in print, and as Richard Hoffman underscored in his closing remarks. Similarly, Anne Harris—in a nice paper on the stones of Montneuf, which dovetailed with my piece on Normandy limestone—brought out how the idea of the Anthropocene shouldn’t be about a switch between a fantasy of a pristine Edenic state and our now fallen situation. Steve, Anne, myself, and others all worked with the Anthropocene, in different ways, as a way of asking questions, of seeking out (as Steve put it) that which has been “hiding in plain sight” all along, as a mode of analysis, as central to that which makes the humanities so urgent these days. 2) The need for, and complex nature of, interdisciplinary study. One (of a good number of) reminders of this was Paolo Squatriti’s rich plenary about “worrisome weeds” that spanned continents (when/how/where does a plant become a weed?)—to think ecologically is to think in multiple languages and across borders. What Crosby showed for Europe and the New World vis-à-vis the Columbian Exchange, Squatriti showed for Medieval Europe, the Islamic Caliphate, and Asia. Without giving too much away, I won’t think of spinach, rye, and much more in the same way again. 3) Related to the above: different disciplines approach things in different ways. A noticeable trend of the conference tended to be that—and obviously, I oversimplify here—the literary scholars generally spoke more about premodern ecological anxieties and hesitations (Mentz, myself, Guevara, Brooks, etc.), tended thus to be more postsustainable in approach and outlook; whereas scholars from history and other fields often put the emphasis on premodern formulations of conservation (e.g. in medieval and early modern forests--Richard Keyser, Sarah Morrison, Abigail Dowling, etc.) This isn’t about pessimistic literary folk vs. the optimists, not another version of Charles Isherwood’s comment that theatergoers in NY want to walk into a theater to see a living room and four people complaining about life. This is much more about different methods, about different methods that must indeed work alongside each other, interrogate each other, as they did these last few days—no one field can tackle ecology! There is always a remainder, a counter-proposition, something that pulls against coherent and conclusive readings of a text. This is another sense of the “entanglement” that came up at multiple points, esp. in Anne Harris’s talk on “Entangled Ecologies.” 4) The nonhuman—and this comes as no surprise—was at the heart of our group reflection: plants (Keyser, Morrison, Dowling, Guevara), stones (myself, Anne Harris), nonhuman animals (Nodin de Saillan on the evolving category of “vermin”; Roya Biggie’s talk on beetles via Dürer, Moffet, and Shakespeare). As Renée Trilling showed, it’s about connecting the human and the cosmos; as Danielle Joyner showed, it’s about connecting living spaces, a plant, a plan, a whole world; as Manon Williams showed, it’s about forests and desire and—in a Michel de Certeau—how we create spaces and places. 5) Harriet Archer’s paper on John Higgins’s Histories of King Forrex (1574 and 1587), brought out, inter alia, the overlap between mining and humanist practices of “digging for wisdom”—which reminded me of a gathering of forces that involved myself and Emily Apter around mining and data mining at NYU last year. In other words—and this perhaps relates back to the question of interdisciplinarity and different methods—we must be aware of our own “ecologies of reading”—Do we mine? Do we cultivate? Do we create waste? Are we aware of entanglements or do we write them out of the story? What do our extraction machines do? Are we responsible “diggers”? Etc. 6) Prompted by a discussion at the bus stop this morning, waiting for the AB Airport bus, with Tobias Hrynick, who gave a rich paper on mill dispute and waterpower in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, I realized that our conference evoked various elements, but more water and earth, than air and fire. In the light of Cohen’s Elemental Ecology, I wonder why—but don’t have an answer here. The conference clearly went more in the direction of the more solid/touchable elements. Does this teach us something? 7) The opening Willard Lecture by Miri Rubin (Queen Mary) on “The Environment of Medieval Cities: Diversity, Identity, Social Fabric,” walked us through many medieval cities, and gave perspectives on how medieval Britons lived with/tolerated those who came from elsewhere. The urban theme stayed with us throughout and kept the question of human difference, social justice, and models and counter-models for living-together in our minds throughout. Much more happened that I don’t recount here. Many other fabulous papers will remain with me. And there will, I’m sure, be future extensions of conversations begun here. A pretty good emblem for the past couple of days might be what I saw in the Natural History museum during one of the breaks (the sun was too hot to stay outside in the Shakespeare theater!), namely a petrified tree trunk—it was Family Day at the museum and children were staring at the trunk, touching it (as a sign invited), marveling at how stony cold it was, how much it looked like a tree even though it “wasn’t”: touching physical reality, struggling to name it because “it” challenges us right back, enjoying that contact, sharing it with others, even as we remain anxious. There is a difference between “idealizing nature” and “wondering at the physical”—the former, as they once said of self-pleasuring, leads to blindness; the latter to full engagement. Very excited about Premodern Ecologies, happening at University of Colorado, Boulder, this week. I'll be speaking about "On the Exterranean" and, more importantly, listening to fabulous keynotes and papers by the likes of Steve Mentz, Miri Rubin, Paolo Squatriti, and many others.
Premodern Ecologies: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Interaction with the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe October 20-22, 2016 Website THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20 5:00-6:30pm Fourth Annual James Field Willard Lecture: Location: British and Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library Miri Rubin (History, St. Marys University of London) “The Ecology of the Medieval Parish” 6:30-7:30pm Reception FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 (all events in UMC 247 unless otherwise noted) 8:30-9:00am Registration & Coffee 9:00-9:15am Conference Introductions 9:15-10:15am Plenary Lecture 1 Paolo Squatriti (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) “Worrisome Weeds: Exotic Plants and Biological Invasions in the Early Medieval Mediterranean” 10:15-10:30am Short Break 10:30am-12:00pm Session 1: Conditions and Perceptions in the Early Middle Ages Chair: TBA Danielle Joyner (Southern Methodist University) “A Savin Bush in the Cloisters: The Art of Nature in the Plan of St. Gall” Tim Newfield (Princeton Environmental Institute) “Complicating Climate-Dearth Linkages in the Carolingian World” Renée Trilling (University of Illinois at Urbana-Campagne) “Marking time: The Place of the Human in Anglo-Saxon Cosmology” 12:00-1:00pm Catered Lunch 1:00-2:30pm Session 2: Intentional Sustainability in Premodern Woodlands Chair: TBA Richard Keyser (University of Wisconsin at Madison) “Medieval Conservation: Definitions and the Example of French Woodlands” Abigail Dowling (Mercer University) “Pour la grante richesse: Sustainable Natural Resource Management at the Estate of Hesdin, 1302-1329” Sara Morrison (Brescia University College at Western University) “Traditional Woodland Management in Seventeenth-Century Sherwood Forest” 2:30-2:45pm Short Break 2:45-4:15pm Session 3: Rocks and Roots in Early Modern Europe Chair: TBA Harriet Archer (Newcastle University) “Retributive Earth: Exemplary History, Posthumanism, and John Higgins’ Histories of King Forrex (1574 and 1587)” Phillip John Usher (New York University) “On the Exterranean: Towards of Phenomenology of Extraction” Perry Guevara (Emory University) “Milton’s Root Brain: Minimal Cognition in the Garden” 4:15-5:00pm Break with coffee, tea, and cookies 5:00-6:00pm Plenary Lecture 2 Ann Harris (Depauw University) “Entangled Ecologies: Stone and Will in Pre-Modern Brittany” 6:00-8:00pm Reception Location: 5th Floor Lounge and Terrace, UMC Building SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22 (all events in UMC 247 unless otherwise noted) 8:30-9:00am Coffee & Pastries 9:00-10:00am Plenary Lecture 3 Steve Mentz (St. Johns University) “Dissolving Hamlet: An Anthropocene Reading” 10:00-10:30am Short Break 10:30am-12:00pm Session 4: Calamity and Control in the High Middle Ages Chair: TBA Tobias Hrynick (Fordham University) “Water as Labor, Water as Weapon: Mill Dispute and Water Power in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem” Manon Williams (University of Colorado at Boulder) “Rights and Usage of Woodlands in Thirteenth-Century Normandy” Elizabeth Swedo (Western Oregon University) “Mundane Disasters: Icelandic Society and Environment in the Late Middle Ages” 12:00-1:00pm Box Lunch 1:00-2:30pm Session 5: Hagiographic and Literary Landscapes Chair: TBA Britton Brooks (University of Hawai’i at Manoa) “Eco-Criticism and the Natural World: Native Soundscapes in Felix’s Vita Sancti Guthlaci” Andrew M. Richmond (The Ohio State University) “Evaluating the Spaces of Romance: The Savage Nature of Civilized Land in Sir Degrevant” Shannon Garner-Balandrin (Northeastern University) “Into a Cloven Pine: The Ecological Uncanny in Early Modern Romance” 2:30-2:45pm Short Break 2:45-4:15pm Session 6: Birds and Bugs in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Chair: TBA Cristina Martelli (University of Maine at Orono) “Sustainable Practices, Territorial Control and the Capture of Game Animals and Birds: Examples from North and Central Italy between 1300 and 1550” Nodin de Saillan (University of Colorado at Boulder) “Worms, Rats, and Ravens: Charting the Cultural Construction of Vermin from Edward II to James I” Roya Biggie (CUNY Graduate Center) “The Pedagogical Potential of Beetles in Thomas Moffet’s The Theater of Insects and Shakespeare’s Cymbeline” 4:15-5:00pm Break with coffee, tea, and cookies 5:00-6:00pm Reflections by Richard C. Hoffmann (York University) followed by a general discussion open to all conference participants 6:30-10:00pm Conference Banquet Location: Café Aion, 1235 Pennsylvania Ave. Boulder Summer 2016: The World's a Mess; Let's Teach Complexity Awareness- And "On the Exterranean" is done.7/26/2016
It’s been a terrible summer. That’s an understatement.
On June 23, 2016, 51.89% of the British electorate voted to leave the European Union in the shameful shambles known as Brexit, which lead to the pound falling to its lowest value in thirty years, the resignations of the British Prime Minister David Cameron and of the UKIP leader Nigel Farage, a new Prime Minister, Theresa May who elected Boris Johnson to the post of Foreign Secretary—so that he could keep on insulting the world on behalf of the UK… It’s a catastrophe for the UK, its economy, its politics, and ethics. It’s also a personal catastrophe for so many folks who grew up, like me, never having not been European—our passports used to open up nearly thirty countries; we grew up learning European languages, making European friends and lovers; building our personal and professional lives around being European. That all ended. The future for the UK is not bright. In July, the police shot dead Alton Sterling in Louisiana; the police shot dead Philando Castile as he reached for his driver’s license, as he had been asked—his girlfriend live-streamed the whole thing; the police shot a black Florida man, Charles Kinsey, a behavioral therapist caring for his autistic patient, who, was lying down on the floor with his arms up; a terrorist driving a truck killed more than eighty people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice; a terrorist in Germany armed with an axe and a knife injured four people on a train, followed by the shooting at a Shopping Mall in Bavaria—nine killed and twenty-one people dead, by a machete-killing in Reutlingen (one dead) and an explosion at a German music festival, which killed one man and injured twelve; much blood was shed during and after a coup d’état in Turkey; a priest was killed during an ISIS-sponsored hostage-taking situation in Rouen; and on and on and on. Meanwhile, the US presidential elections go from bad to worse. Little need be said of Trump—Brexit proves he could get elected, that the worst could happen. There are various camps of people who will likely vote for HRC, from the lovers to the haters, but the DNC’s crooked and dishonest support for her, as shown in the Wikileaks’ release of DNC emails, sully this second convention. All summer, it’s been a slow erasure of that easy response: “Well, yes, this place is a mess, at least there’s….”—but no, all the places I call home are a total mess. Which has made it particularly trying to keep thinking about global warming, about the Anthropocene, to keep writing about that—yet we must. If the summer’s left me one thought beyond despair, it’s the thought that education is the only way forward for the world. Whether you study Physics of 8th-century German poetry, whether you’re into the history of optics or cancer research, whatever you study, you’re going to be less likely to accept other people’s opinions, to ignore when facts don’t fit together, and more likely to think for yourself, to learn how to disagree with people in a way that doesn’t demand a gun or a machete. Education’s main goal—and main takeaway—is the realization that there are no simple answers, that things are complex, and that if someone is offering you a simple solution, it’s probably the wrong one. I finished my book on extraction, “On the Exterranean”—it’s now with a publisher. Watch this space.
Big fan of Evariste Richer’s work “Fulgurite” (2008), seen at the Musée des arts et métiers in Paris this weekend. When lighting—very hot lightening—strikes silica or other common (semi-)conductive minerals or substrates, it creates a fulgurite (<Lat. fulgur = lightening), strangely shaped rock-like objects. But here, the fulgurite is crossed through by a beautifully industrial blue neon tube. The museum notice sees in all this an emblem of Latour’s nature/culture problem…
They’re gone. There are no more of those rodents known as Bramble Cay melomys (or alternatively as mosaic-tailed rats). They are extinct. The Guardian notes that this event is “the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change.” Last seen in 2009, and after extensive searches, these Bramble Cay melomys have been judged gone, once and forever. A moment to remember that to still talk of the “environment” is to perpetuate the problem, as Michel Serres argued long ago, for the word “assumes that we humans are at the center of a system of nature” and thus that we look out and see “the” environment suffering. Ecology, Ecology, Ecology is the way to go.
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