Practices for a Post-Natural History - CFP AAG New York, 23-28 Feb, 2012.
Session Organisers: Gail Davies (UCL), Jamie Lorimer (KCL) and Richard Pell (Carnegie Mellon)
“We had Nature, we had nurture, but we don’t know what it would mean for Nature itself to be nurtured. The problem is, we don’t know how to deal with this gigantic cognitive dissonance: everywhere attachments and yet no other option than emancipation. We seem to be stuck…” (Latour, 2008: 8)
The material and discursive constitution of ‘Nature’, through the orderings of natural history and the practices of nature conversation, has been subject to sustained critique from geographers, environmental historians and scholars in feminist and science and technology studies. The recent BBC Television series, ‘Unnatural Histories’, has begun to popularise this critique, illustrating the practices of colonial possession and media reification, which have shaped spaces like the Serengeti, Yellowstone and Amazon. Yet, Haraway’s earlier observation that in Nature we find something ‘we cannot do without, but can never have’ (1992) still rings true. What Castree (2004) terms ‘Nature talk’ lives on in popular discourses around new medical and agricultural technologies. Imaginaries of wilderness underpin support for nature conservation and the practices of ‘Nature-intoxicated tourists’ (Latour 2008). Accumulations of nature proliferate – in databases, seed banks and zoos – given urgency by the premise that the ‘Nature’ feeding them is disappearing. As Latour suggests, we don’t know how to deal with this dissonance; we seem to be stuck.
For these sessions, we invite papers that explore the potential practices for a more thoroughly ‘postnatural’ history, considering alternatives to emancipatory critiques and exploring methodologies to nurture attachments to more multiple natures. Conceptually, we invite critical engagement with recent appeals for multi-species and multinatural modes of companionship, conviviality and cosmopolitics (Haraway 2008; Hinchliffe et al. 2005; Latour 2010; Stengers 2010). Morton (2007; 2010) proposes a ‘dark ecology’ without ‘Nature’, while Clark (2011) encourages us to consider an ‘inhuman nature’ of asymmetrical geological processes. Such reconceptualisations propose new arrangements between natural science and politics, suggesting new ways of knowing the nonhuman, and resources to articulate other ‘postnatural’ histories. Methodologically, we are interested in the range of practices and projects that might articulate care-ful attachments to species and spaces which are on the move. We invite reflection on collaborations with scientists, conservationists, publics and others, which practice ecology and conservation without recourse to ‘Nature'. We encourage reflections on the role of performance, media and the other arts, which seek to amplify the common places and public cultures of a ‘postnatural’ history. We are interested in the potential of infrastructures – whether databases, wikis or archives – as spaces to stage encounters differently. As critiques of nature gather pace and ideas of nature multiply, we seek a conversation about the potential for practices which are more expansive, perhaps more messy and more perplexing, but ultimately more generative.
The sessions will feature presentation and panel discussion of the work of artist Richard Pell, who established the Center for PostNatural History in 2007 (http://www.postnatural.org/). The mission of the Center for PostNatural History is to acquire, interpret and provide access to a collection of living, preserved and documented organisms of postnatural origin. Drawing on a range of artistic and geographic practices, including mapping, archiving, institutional critique, collecting and photography, the Center for PostNatural History takes its place alongside the knowledge architectures of the traditional natural history museum, inviting reflection on the histories and spaces inhabited by these organisms of postnatural origin. As the Center for PostNatural History puts it: ‘That was then. This is now.’
Please send abstracts to Gail Davies ([log in to unmask]) and Jamie Lorimer ([log in to unmask]) by August 31st, 2011.
References
Castree N (2004) Commentary: Nature is dead! Long live nature! Environment and Planning A 36 191–194
Clark N (2011) Inhuman nature: sociable living on a dynamic planet SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA
Haraway DJ (2008) When species meet University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Hinchliffe S, Kearnes MB, Degen M and Whatmore S (2005) Urban wild things: a cosmopolitical experiment Environment and Planning D-Society & Space 23 643-658
Latour B (2008) “It’s development, stupid!” or: How to Modernize Modernization http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/107-NORDHAUS&SHELLENBERGER.pdf
Latour B (2010) An Attempt at a "Compositionist Manifesto" New Literary History 41 471-490
Morton T (2007) Ecology without nature: rethinking environmental aesthetics Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Morton T (2010) The ecological thought Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Stengers I (2010) Cosmopolitics University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
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