爆料王

This month鈥檚 material:

Amitav Ghosh 鈥撎�The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable听(U of Chicago 2016)

For some thinkers, climate change, and the processes it metonymically invokes, pose critical challenges for imagination, representation, and narration. In this text, Ghosh describes how 鈥渓iterary鈥� fictions and conventional histories have proven insufficient interpreters of climate crisis.听The Great Derangement听touches questions of story, form, event, individualism, and individualism鈥檚 alternatives.

Proposed materials:

Wanuri Kahiu 鈥撎�Pumzi听(Inspired Minority 2009)

Kahiu鈥檚 short film inhabits a placed called Maitu, East African Territory, a few decades after World War III (鈥淭he Water War). It is preoccupied by climate change, scarcity, the instrumentalization of bodies, utopian possibilities, and much more besides.

Michael Marder & Ana茂s Tondeur 鈥撎�The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness听(Open Humanities 2016)

This formally ambitious work gathers thirty 鈥渇ragments鈥� 鈥� text and image 鈥� generated, so to speak, by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. These fragments analogize 鈥渁n exploded consciousness,鈥� a term that reflects both the disorienting and disempowering consequences of disaster补苍诲听the potential to 鈥渢hink the unthinkable and represent the unrepresentable.鈥�

Nnedi Okorafor 鈥� 鈥淢OOM!鈥� (Hartmann 2012)

鈥淢OOM!鈥� is one of several stories in Okorafor鈥檚 oeuvre to engage the environmental and social consequences of petroleum extraction and transportation in West Africa. It was inspired by a 2010 Reuters headline, 鈥淪wordfish Attack Angolan Oil Pipeline.鈥� It would become the opening chapter of her 2016 novel听Lagoon.

Philip Samartzis 鈥撎�A Surrender to Wind in 9 Parts听/听脡loge du Vent en 9 Mouvements(France Culture 2017); David Dunn 鈥� 鈥淎coustic Ecology and the Experimental Music Tradition鈥� (NewMusic 2008)

鈥淲hat is wind and how does it shape the way we listen?鈥� For a recent radio series with France Culture, Samartzis, co-founder and Artistic Director of the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture in Victoria, attended to wind-sounds to access 鈥渘ew knowledge鈥� of circumstances like Antarctic blizzards and Australian wildfires.

This month鈥檚 material:

Wanuri Kahiu 鈥撎�Pumzi听(Inspired Minority 2009)

Kahiu鈥檚 short film inhabits a placed called Maitu, East African Territory, a few decades after World War III (鈥淭he Water War鈥�). It is preoccupied by climate change, scarcity, the instrumentalization of bodies, utopian possibilities, and much more besides.

View the film听

Reference Material

听in Quartz (2016)
听by the novelist Nnedi Okorafor (2009)
听from a brand-new issue of听Studies in the Novel听(50.1, Spring 2018).

This month鈥檚 material:

Michael Marder & Ana茂s Tondeur 鈥撎�The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness听(Open Humanities 2016)

This formally ambitious work gathers thirty 鈥渇ragments鈥� 鈥� text and image 鈥� generated, so to speak, by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. These fragments analogize 鈥渁n exploded consciousness,鈥� a term that reflects both the disorienting and disempowering consequences of disaster听补苍诲听the potential to 鈥渢hink the unthinkable and represent the unrepresentable.鈥�

Elizabeth Povinelli & Peter Cho 鈥�听Digital Futures听

Elizabeth Povinelli & Peter Cho鈥檚听听expresses an awareness of the ways that archives pertaining to indigenous and other communities have sometimes reproduced听colonial power, and indeed colonial violence.听Digital Futures听attempts something different, choosing not to make archival information 鈥渋mmediately available to the user; rather, it unfolds piece by piece, asking that the user undertake a principled engagement with representations of lived spaces and embodied histories.鈥�

This month鈥檚 suggested material:

Nnedi Okorafor 鈥� 鈥淢OOM!鈥� (Hartmann 2012)

鈥淢OOM!鈥� is one of several stories in Okorafor鈥檚 oeuvre to engage the environmental and social consequences of petroleum extraction and transportation in West Africa. It was inspired by a 2010 Reuters headline, 鈥淪wordfish Attack Angolan Oil Pipeline.鈥� It would become the opening chapter of her 2016 novel听Lagoon.

Julio Cort谩zar 鈥� 鈥淎xolotl鈥� (1956)

听In this short fiction, Cort谩zar鈥檚 narrator encounters a group of reptiles living in a tank at the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris. What proceeds is a tangle of recognition, identification, 鈥渟ensibility,鈥� and metamorphosis.

Elisa Aaltola 鈥� 鈥淓mpathy, Intersubjectivity, and Animal Philosophy鈥� (Environmental Philosophy听10.2 (2013); 75-96)

听Aaltola considers the possibilities of intersubjectivity, and problematizes the place of 鈥減ropositional language鈥� in human-more-than-human relations. Inspired in part by Simone Weil and Barbara Smuts, Aaltola describes a practice 鈥� and ethic 鈥� of 鈥渁ttention.鈥�

Eduardo Kohn 鈥� 鈥�Runa Puma鈥� (Introduction to听How Forests Think听(2013))

听Kohn鈥檚 text derives from work conducted in the Upper Amazon. It discovers and seeks novel 鈥渃onceptual tools鈥� for thinking, writing, and practicing beyond an anthropocentric anthropology.

This month鈥檚 suggested material:

Philip Samartzis & Daniela d鈥橝rielli 鈥撎�A Futurist鈥檚 Cookbook听(Galaverna听)

This project involves sonic and photographic engagements with Pollinaria, a large farm in Italy鈥檚 Abruzzo region. The work affords new ways of thinking about relations among land and sound, agriculture and environment, urban and rural, industry and the countryside, and so on.

Matthew Burtner 鈥� 鈥淐limate Change Music: From Environmental Aesthetics to Ecoacoustics鈥� (South Atlantic Quarterly听116.1 (2017):145-61)

As a composer and a critic, Burtner is interested in how 鈥渃hanging environmental conditions鈥� might be enlisted 鈥渁s instruments and procedures鈥� for making and performing music. The article articulates 鈥渁 new musical tonality鈥� which emerges at the intersections of ecoacoustic technique and climate change.

Max Ritts, Stuart H. Gage et al. 鈥� 鈥淐ollaborative research praxis to establish baseline ecoacoustics conditions in Gitga鈥檃t Territory鈥� (Global Ecology and Conservation听7 (2016): 25-38)

This paper explains the results, as well as the practice, of establishing an 鈥渁coustic baseline鈥� in Gitga鈥檃t Territory (British Columbia, CA). It鈥檚 an explicitly ecological study, but the paper opens numerous philosophical, methodological, and other concerns which have relevance for our group. These include the significance of nonvisual sense, collaborations among indigenous and non-indigenous methods knowledges, and the nature of 鈥渧ernacular鈥� science.

Environmental-humanist work, and environmental speech more generally, frequently explore relations of critique, resistance, and grief. Late last year, the ecopoetry journal听Plumwood Mountain听orchestrated an 鈥渙nline day of action鈥� to oppose the Adani Group鈥檚 planned mine and rail project in Queensland. Part of that action involved assembling 鈥淧oets Speaking up to Adani,鈥� a mustering of more than forty poems. In this meeting of Reading Environments, on November 20th, we鈥檒l discuss these poems and the project they collectively comprise, as well as broader relations between activism, creative practice, and scholarship. How does this collection model a polyvocal, multi-directional way of thinking and responding? What worlds do these poems address and open?

The poems can be found here:听

In the words of听Plumwood Mountain, from October 2017: 鈥淧oets, in the spirit of Judith Wright and Val Plumwood, are joining a groundswell of resistance that the听听and the related听听campaigns represent.听Follow along as we post poetry today, some protest, some dystopia, some speaking simply to a world view different from a corporate mining one.鈥�

We鈥檒l also discuss, Audre Lorde鈥檚 鈥溾�� 补苍诲听Kathy Jet帽il-Kijiner and Aka Nivi芒na鈥檚 鈥�,鈥� and as usual, we鈥檒l be thinking about the ways that these texts resonate in and around our own work.

This month's听Proposed Readings:

1. Jill Gatlin, 鈥淭oxic Sublimity and the Crisis of Human Perception: Rethinking Aesthetic, Documentary, and Political Appeals in Contemporary Wasteland Photography,鈥澨�ISLE听22.4 (2015): 717-41.
2. Tony Birch, 鈥淭he ghost river,鈥澨�Griffith Review听42 (2013) ()

This month's听Proposed Readings:

1. 听John Broome, 鈥淭he Public and Private Morality of Climate Change,鈥� The Tanner Lectures on Human Value, talk delivered at the University of Michigan, March 16, 2012.
2. N茅le Azevedo, 鈥渕onumento m铆nimo: arte como emerg锚ncia鈥� (2005-present), artwork:听

Optional accompaniment:听

1. Santiago Zabala, 鈥淭urning to Art鈥檚 Demands鈥�, e-flux conversations (June 1, 2017):听.

This month's听Proposed Readings:

1. Eva Giraud, Greg Hollin, Tracey Potts and Isla Forsyth, 鈥渁 feminist menagerie,鈥� feminist review 118.1 (2018): 61-79.
2. Laura Aguilar, photographs: from Michelle Hart, 鈥淎 Mexican-American Photographer鈥檚 Body, On Display and Invisible,鈥� The New Yorker, November 29, 2017 (); and Giselle Defares, 鈥淭he Authenticity of Laura Aguilar,鈥� BESE, April 27, 2018 ().

This month's听Proposed Readings:

Inspired by听The Radical Hope Syllabus 2018: Kieko Matteson, 鈥淧lanting seeds of hope: environmental education for the present & future鈥�.

1. Selections from Brian Wattchow and Mike Brown, A Pedagogy of Place: Outdoor Education for a Changing World (Monash University Publishing, 2011).
2. Trish O鈥橩ane, 鈥淲hat the Sparrows Told Me,鈥� The New York Times, August 17, 2014 ().