Ecocriticism, Multispecies Contact Zones, and Planetary Futures - Einzelansicht

As the current ecological crises and the various forms of oppression, discrimination and injustice around the globe demonstrate, the issues of global warming, species extinction and the loss of biodiversity cannot be regarded as isolated from issues of social and ecological justice, forced migration, and war. These crises have also become regarded as symptoms of the so-called Anthropocene, which also comes with a realisation that the old human-made models of knowledge and power need a thorough revision in order to better understand this contemporary moment, and to envision a socially and ecologically just future on this planet.

This seminar will engage with different modes and methods of cultural and postcolonial analysis, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities, to discuss the socially uneven encounters and entanglements of earthly living, and ask: In which ways are the current ecological challenges entangled with colonial histories and their multiple legacies?

Cultural theorist Marie-Luise Pratt’s notion of the contact zone will serve as an entry point into this discussion: In Pratt’s The Art of the Contact Zone (1991), the aim of the concept was to move the study of empire from the European imperial centre and recentre it at the sites of imperial intervention, in effect to decentre Europe. Her recent book, Planetary Longings (2022), deals with how mass extinction of nonhuman life-forms ows to the impact of humans on their habitats. Here the contact zone helps to critically examine and displace anthropocentrism, as it did Eurocentrism in its original context.

Our first session is on 28 April and will take place on zoom. Information on accessing the zoom session will be communicated to all registered and admitted course participants.