Crossing Borders, Weaving Connections: On Posthumanism

November 13, 2024

10:00 am EST

attend virtually: Livestream Link

“Weird Matter. Towards an eco-ontology”

Victor J. Krebs | Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

PRI Associate Director Dr. Elizabeth Neswald of Brock University will respond to Dr. Krebs’ presentation.

Abstract

In this presentation I trace the philosophical shift from Galileo’s view of Earth as an inert, objective entity to a contemporary perspective that recognizes Earth as a living, interconnected system. Galileo’s approach, which separated Earth from its sensory qualities, laid the foundation for modern scientific methods. However, this view is challenged by James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which, according to Bruno Latour’s account, reintroduces the idea of Earth as a vulnerable, animated system. In the Anthropocene, there is a growing awareness of humanity’s deep connection with Earth’s history, highlighting the limitations of an anthropocentric viewpoint that ignores the planet’s living character. I argue for a perspective that sees life as fluid and interconnected, moving beyond the separation of humans from the world. The concept of “weird matter” helps us in this direction, challenging traditional Western thought by embracing the mysterious and unknowable aspects of reality. The presentation will critique the modern tendency to reduce the world to what can be known and controlled, advocating for an ontology that acknowledges the agency inherent in all matter. It calls for a new understanding of psychic reality, viewing the world as animated and interconnected, and suggests that we must move beyond rationality to fully embrace these aspects of existence. I conclude by arguing for a fundamental change in our understanding of reality, advocating for a holistic, ecologically aware perspective that recognizes the interconnected nature of the world and our place within it.

Biography

Victor J. Krebs (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, USA) is a professor of Philosophy in the Humanities Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Author of Del alma y el arte (Editorial Arte, 1997), La recuperación del sentido (Equinoccio, 2007), La imaginación pornográfica (Lápix, 2014), and (with Richard Frankel) Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations (Routledge, 2022) (Gradiva Book Prize 2022, from the National Association for the Promotion of Psychoanalysis, and “Courage to Dream Book Prize, 2023” from the American Psychoanalytic Association). He is also contributing editor (with William Day) of Seeing Wittgenstein Anew (Cambridge U. Press, 2010). He is a philosophical curator, founder of the Jungian Circle of Peru, Coordinator of the Latin American Posthuman Network  and of Hermes, a Contemporary Philosophy research group at the Center for Philosophical Studies at PUCP.

Elizabeth Neswald is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. She is the author of two books: Medien-Theologie. Das Werk Vilém Flussers(Böhlau Verlag, 1998) and Thermodynamik als kultureller Kampfplatz. Zur Faszinationsgeschichte der Entropie, 1850-1915 (Rombach, 2006) and numerous essays on thermodynamics, the history of nutrition physiology and the history of popular science in nineteenth-century Ireland.