Please circulate this conference Call for Papers to interested colleagues:
Annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers, London, 27th -29th August 2014
Sponsors: History and Philosophy of Geography Research group
Session convener: Patrick Weir (University of Exeter)
Speculative Realism and Speculative Materialism in Geography
This session seeks to discuss the contributions of Speculative Realism for contemporary geographical research. Speculative Realism emerged around the mid 2000’s in part from a desire to extricate philosophy from a seemingly intractable divide between the continental and analytic traditions, but also as a deeper questioning of the correlation between thinking and being in philosophy more generally (Meillassoux, 2009; Bryant, Srnicek & Harman, 2011). In this brief period it has been the source of vigorous debate across the humanities and social sciences. The status of geography as a hybrid discipline mean that it has perhaps been best placed to both speak to and work with some of the key insights of speculative realism, particularly those philosophers identified with it who seek to unsettle the nature/culture divide (Bryant, 2010, Morton, 2007) or to grant a fuller metaphysical status to non-human “things” (Harman, 2005).
Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter (2010) and Nigel Clark’s Inhuman Natures (2011) are both examples of works recently popularised in geography, whose intellectual lineage can be directly traced to these strands of speculative realism. The various philosophies of access, object-metaphysics and social ontologies that these figures seek to bring into question have been and continue to be of particular interest for geography as it continues to seek to supplement its existing critiques of power, language and identity with more nuanced philosophical outlooks. This session invites contributions on any aspect of speculative realism/speculative materialism as it relates to geography, social/cultural theory or philosophy broadly conceived. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to:
o Speculative Realism and the Anthropocene
o Object Oriented Ontologies and geopolitics
o Geophilosophy
o Geocriticism
o Correlationism and the philosophy of geography
o Speculative Realism and Political Ecology
o Linkages between Actor-Network Theory and Speculative Materialism
o Ethics in Speculative Realism
Please send paper titles, abstracts of no more than 300 words and contact details to Patrick Weir (University of Exeter) [log in to unmask]
DEADLINE: 17th February 2014
References:
Bryant, L. R., Srnicek, N., & Harman, G. (Eds.). (2011). The Speculative Turn.
Bryant, L. R. (2011). The democracy of objects.
Harman, G. (2005). Guerilla metaphysics. Phenomenology and the carpentry of Things.
Meillassoux, Quentin. (2009) "After Finitude, trans." Ray Brassier.
Morton, T. (2013). Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality.
Patrick Weir
PhD candidate
Geography
D386 Amory
Rennes Drive, University of Exeter
EX4 6RJ
http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/
https://twitter.com/#!/exetergeography
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