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*Posthuman Political Ecology* Fourth Annual Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference on Nature/Society Lexington, KY February 27th – March 1st www.politicalecology.org Session Organizer: Daniel Cockayne (University of Kentucky) “How would we feel if it is by way of the inhuman that we come to feel, to care, to respond?” - Karen Barad (2012:216) In an era of increasingly integrated natural-social systems, advanced bio/technological innovation and intense commodification of ecological processes, there is growing consensus that political ecology scholarship cannot unproblematically assert a distinctive or coherent category of “the human” as a useful unit of analysis or investigation. Jane Bennett's (2010) “vital materialism,” Rosi Braidotti's (2011, 2013) figuration of the “posthuman” nomadic subject as a counter to the Eurocentric Vitruvian man and Donna Haraway's (1991, 1997) cyborgs along with their biotechnological companions, Oncomouse, FemaleMan and Dolly the sheep attest to a commitment to a feminist ethics: the necessity to imagine subjective positions beyond naïve humanist understandings. These authors argue that such humanism so often (however inadvertently) reinforces a negative understanding of difference *between *same-species humans, rather than standing in simply as a distinction between humans and animals species. Humanist positions fall too easily into an essentialist designation of the human subject based on the standard akin to Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) majority – white, male, urban dwelling, speaking a dominant language - upon which all other humans come to be measured. Thus when humanism measures the category of human against a Eurocentric standard of the white male, it comes to manifest with racist, sexist and homophobic connotations. In relation to this, we can see that humanist perspectives have contributed to an arrogant privileging of a *specific kind of human subject*: certain, selected bodily arrangement and orientations, making spatial allowances for certain kinds of legitimated bodies, and designating which organizations of matter themselves come to matter. With respect to political ecology, responses to this scholarship have been empirical, ethical and conceptual. Clearly, political ecology is well placed on the empirical front, having since its inception enrolled a broad understanding of phenomena which are not reduced to human explanation but include a wide range of integrated physical, social, economic and cultural processes; dynamic natural/social systems; and enrolling non-human, inert, machinic and animals others into its explanation of phenomena. Conceptually and ethically on the other hand, I suggest that there is room for further engagement with posthuman ideas, imperatively forcing us to confront subject positions which are at once more and less that the humanist ideal. Thus, this session explores the growing attention being paid among political ecology scholarship to the concept of the posthuman. With posthuman points of view, questions regarding the commodification of certain kinds of natures; the edible qualities of certain animals and plants over others; and necropolitical regimes of what or who it is appropriate to kill become easier to examine. Possible topics might suggest answers (though should not be limited to) the following questions: - How are posthuman bodies being altered, augmented and adapted to their environment by technological, social and ecological processes and encounters? - How do we understand the ways in which we place value on certain ecological, social and technical systems over others? - How might posthuman and animal points of view encourage us to *take care* or *take responsibility *for a planet which we co-habitate with others? - Can we include posthuman ideas in an activist frame? - How might we re-imagine co-habitation on the planet to include the diversity of other living and non-living material arrangements? - What do we do with concepts such as agency in a posthuman understanding? - How do posthuman perspectives influence our understanding of border politics? - By what mechanisms do certain things become edible, commodifiable, or killable? - How can we think about the posthuman as an ethical injunction to care for ecological others? - How can we engage with affect (as non-human becomings) in political ecology scholarship? This session encourages a broad range of responses. It welcomes both empirical and conceptual papers. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted to [log in to unmask] by December 2nd. Remember that you also need to register and pay to attend at politicalecology.org. -- Daniel Cockayne PhD Student University of Kentucky Department of Geography [log in to unmask] @insistondoubt