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The Nonhuman Turn

May 3, 2012 - May 5, 2012

Conference website

This conference takes up the “nonhuman turn” that has been emerging in the arts, humanities, and social sciences over the past few decades. Intensifying in the 21st century, this nonhuman turn can be traced to a variety of different intellectual and theoretical developments from the last decades of the 20th century:

  • actor-network theory, particularly Bruno Latour’s career-long project to articulate technical mediation, nonhuman agency, and the politics of things
  • affect theory, both in its philosophical and psychological manifestations and as it has been mobilized by queer theory
  • animal studies, as developed in the work of Donna Haraway, projects for animal rights, and a more general critique of speciesism
  • the assemblage theory of Gilles Deleuze, Manuel DeLanda, Latour, and others
  • new brain sciences like neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence
  • new media theory, especially as it has paid close attention to technical networks, material interfaces, and computational analysis
  • the new materialism in feminism, philosophy, and marxism
  • varieties of speculative realism like object-oriented philosophy, vitalism, and panpsychism
  • systems theory in its social, technical, and ecological manifestations
  • Such varied analytical and theoretical formations obviously diverge and disagree in many of their aims, objects, and methodologies. But they are all of a piece in taking up aspects of the nonhuman as critical to the future of 21st century studies in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

    Running roughly parallel to this nonhuman turn in the past few decades has been the “posthuman turn” articulated by such important theoretical works as Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman and Cary Wolfe’s What Is Posthumanism? Thinking beyond the human, as posthumanism is sometimes characterized, clearly provides one compelling model for 21st century studies. But the relation between posthumanism and humanism, like that of postmodernism to modernism, can sometimes seem as much like a repetition of the same as the emergence of something different.

    Thus, one of the questions that this conference is meant to take up is the relation between posthumanism and the nonhuman turn, especially the ways in which taking the nonhuman as a matter of critical, artistic, and scholarly concern might differ from, as well as overlap with, the aims of posthumanism. In pursuing answers to such questions, the conference is meant to address the future of 21st century studies by exploring how the nonhuman turn might provide a way forward for the arts, humanities, and social sciences in light of the difficult challenges of the 21st century.

    Plenary speakers include:

    Jane Bennett (Political Science, Johns Hopkins)
    Ian Bogost (Literature, Communication, Culture, Georgia Tech)
    Wendy Chun (Media and Modern Culture, Brown)
    Mark Hansen (Literature, Duke)
    Erin Manning (Philosophy/Dance, Concordia University, Montreal)
    Brian Massumi (Philosophy, University of Montreal)
    Tim Morton (English, UC-Davis)
    Steven Shaviro (English, Wayne State)

    In addition to the plenary speakers, the conference will hold several breakout sessions on the following topics: Objects, Death, Ethics, Animals, Mediation, […] Human, Arts, Performance, Rhetoric, and Queer/Feminism/Gaga.

    Art: Weather Patterns

    Investigations: Think Make Digital

    Twitter hashtag: #c21nonhuman

    Details

    Start:
    May 3, 2012
    End:
    May 5, 2012
    Event Category:
    Website:
    http://www.c21uwm.com/nonhumanturn/

    Venue

    Curtin 175
    3243 N Downer Ave
    Milwaukee, WI 53211 United States
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