Dear all,
Please consider coming to Wageningen for the second in the series of Annual Lectures for our Centre for Space, Place and Society initiative. Details below. Admission is free and refreshments (including celebratory drinks) are provided. Apologies for x-posting.
Best, Rob
2018 Annual Lecture, Centre for Space, Place and Society<https://centreforspaceplacesociety.com/> (CSPS)
Wageningen University<https://www.wur.nl/en/wageningen-university.htm>, the Netherlands
Thursday 7 June, 16:00-17:30
De Leeuwenborch<[log in to unmask],5.6735999,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x2709e0f32fa1a17a?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP_ruh5PXaAhUBbxQKHVQOBFkQ_BIIoAEwCg" target="_blank">https:[log in to unmask],5.6735999,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x2709e0f32fa1a17a?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP_ruh5PXaAhUBbxQKHVQOBFkQ_BIIoAEwCg>, Hollandseweg 1
Room C64
https://centreforspaceplacesociety.com/2017/12/04/visiting-fellow-and-annual-lecture-erik-swyngedouw/
Interrupting the Anthropo-Obscene: The De-politicized Politics of the Anthropocene as Immuno-biopolitical Fantasy
Erik Swyngedouw, Manchester University
In the presentation, we shall use ‘the Anthropocene’ to denote the proposed new geological era during which humans have arguably acquired planetary geo-physical agency, a term increasingly mobilized by both geologists and Earth Systems scholars. While recognizing a wide-ranging and often contentious debate (see e.g. Castree 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Hamilton, Bonneuil and Gemenne 2015), we hold that the Anthropocene is a deeply depoliticizing notion that off-stages political possibilities. This off-staging unfolds, we contend, through the creation of what we refer to as ‘AnthropoScenes’, the mise-en-scene of a particular set of narratives that are by no means homogeneous, but which broadly share the effect of off-staging certain voices and forms of acting. Our notion of the Anthropo-obScene then, is our tactic to both attest to and undermine the performativity of the depoliticizing stories of ‘the Anthropocene’.
First, we examine how the AnthropoScenes can be viewed as a set of stages that have constructed and engaged the signifier ‘Anthropocene’. While internally fractured and heterogeneous — ranging from those promoting geo-engineering and Earth System science as an immunological prophylactic to our situation to interlocutors developing more-than-human and object oriented ontologies in search of a new politics — there is an uncanny effect of placing things and beings, human and non-human, within a particular relational straightjacket that does not allow for a remainder or constitutive outside. Second, building on post-foundational political thought, we shall articulate in theoretical terms what is being censored and rendered obscene, and how foregrounding this may hold possible paths toward re-politicization. We mobilize theoretical perspectives that have attempted to cut through the last decades of pervasive de-politicization. These views understand the political in terms of performance and, in an Arendtian manner, as constituted through a space of appearance, a performative public acting-in-common that politicizes subjects and spaces (Arendt 1958: 199). From this perspective, the political is understood as forms of acting subtracted from what is gestured to hold socio-ecological constellations together. In other words, the political is manifested in forms of excessive or supernumerary acting that exceeds the internal relational assemblage from which it emerges.
Speaker Bio:
Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at Manchester University. His research interests include urban political-ecology, hydro-social conflict, urban governance, democracy and political power, and the politics of globalisation. He was previously professor of geography at Oxford University and held the Vincent Wright Visiting Professorship at Science Po, Paris, 2014. He recently co-edited (with Nik Heynen and Maria Kaika) In the Nature of the City (Routledge, and (with Japhy Willson) The Post-Political and its Discontents: Spectres of Radical Politics Today (Edinburg University Press, 2014) and is author of Social Power and the Urbanization of Nature (OP 2004) and Liquid Power (MIT 2015), a book that focuses on water and social power in 20th century Spain. His forthcoming books are Promises of the Political (MIT 2018) and, co-edited with H. Ernstson, Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene (Routledge 2017)
About CSPS:
The Centre for Space, Place and Society<https://centreforspaceplacesociety.com/> (CSPS) brings together researchers from five chair groups within Wageningen University (WUR) – Cultural Geography (GEO)<http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Environmental-Sciences/Cultural-Geography-Group.htm>, Health and Society (HSO)<https://www.wur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Social-Sciences/Health-and-Society.htm>, Rural Sociology (RSO)<http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Social-Sciences/Rural-Sociology-Group.htm>, Sociology of Development Change (SDC) <http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Social-Sciences/sdc.htm> and Sociology of Consumption and Households (SCH)<https://www.wur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Social-Sciences/Sociology-of-Consumption-and-Households.htm> – and beyond to advance critical-constructive scholarship within the social sciences. Our particular focus is on issues of socio-spatial and environmental justice. In investigating dynamics of spatial and social rootedness, connections, and circulations, with special attention to questions of inequality, exclusion, difference and plurality, CSPS seeks to translate knowledge into practical action in pursuit of a more just and equitable world.
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