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  • Special PRI panel at Congress

    The PRI has a special collaboration in place with EPTC (Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture) through which we hold a special panel each year. This year’s panel will take place in the morning of May 30th and will comprise presentations and interactive activities. See you at York University!

    Posthumanist Entanglements – The Beyond of Embodiment

    Joint panel EPTC/Posthumanism Research Institute

    York University, FC113

    9:00-12:30, May 30, 2023

    Organizer: Christine Daigle (Brock)

    Chair: Trevor Norris (Brock)

    Our panel will explore what it means to exist as entangled and embodied humans and nonhumans. Posthumanist theory and methodology seek to dismantle humanist constructs of human exceptionalism along with dualist thinking that separates the human from the nonhuman, nature from culture, and the mind from the body. Grounding their work in this approach, panelists will present their perspective on what these entanglements signify and
    how they manifest but also will reflect on what methodologies are best suited to explore and communicate such entanglements. The goal of the panel is to expand our thinking about humanness, human and more-than-human connections, and bodily and material entanglements. To this end, we put to work a posthumanist methodological orientation for knowledge creation which champions postdisciplinarity along with a decolonization of research practices. The panel will be a space for idea generation and idea sharing. It will be launched by presentations by each speaker and unfold through grounding and interactive explorative activities. Attendees are asked to read the “Weird Research Manifesto” prior to attending and ask themselves how to think the new thoughts our world urgently needs.

    Fiona Blaikie, “Contemporary Art as Immanent Experiential Praxis”

    Posthuman artworlds shape and are shaped by the intuitive archeological ontologies of humans and non-humans, entangled materialities, spaces, limitations, and potentialities. There is a burgeoning tendency in western contemporary art making and exhibition that moves beyond the conventions of white cube gallery spaces, drawing on and expressing a Deleuzian ontology of immanence alongside Elizabeth St. Pierre’s conceptualization of the post qualitative. Focusing on works by Canadian artist Annie MacDonnell, Marina Abramovic, and artist Sophie Calle, contemporary art will be contemplated as immanent experiential praxis, as collaborative, performative, entangled, situated, and affective.

    David Fancy, “Divination and Bridging Nature/Culture Divides”

    Proceeding gnoseologically rather than epistemologically, the diviner resonates or feels their way through the world in order to bring events and arrangements, seemingly unknowable from the perspective of classical empiricism and its scientistic descendants, into awareness and into the world. The work of divination recalls Deleuze’s affirmation that ‘we must be Egyptologists’ in our reading of signs, an important invitation especially in the context of the Anthropocene where, as a species, we struggle to read, discern and engage with the complex ecologies of which we find ourselves part. The specific figure of the geomancer will be positioned as a key mode of diviner who proceeds via harnessing the complex relationalities between themselves and the earth’s many energetic bodies and forces. The figure of the geomancer will be proposed as a central conceptual persona involved in non-supremacist geophilosophical and geoartistic transindividual activities that can help imagine futures outside and beyond the Anthropocene.

    Chris E. Hurst, “Being-with the Lifetimes and Deathtimes of a Shaggy Mane Mushroom”

    This presentation will explore temporal entanglements with nonhuman kin, and specifically, the material-affectivity of lifetimes and deathtimes of a shaggy mane mushroom at Silent Lake Provincial Park. The presentation will illuminate some of the many ways in which times are entangled in relations of being-with place and being-with nonhuman kin in nature-based tourism, and what that might mean for conservation futures. The presentation will consider the productive possibilities of affective and sensory-based methodological practices for embodied temporal attunements with more-than-human nature places. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on (re)imagining (re)presentations of times in research and what it might mean to response- ably care for times as multiple, overlapping, and relationally entangled with affects, agencies, and other temporalities in nature-based tourism.

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  • Posthumanism and Pedagogy/ies Panel Discussion

    Join us on March 24, 2023, 12:00-14:00 (ET) for this live-streamed panel discussion chaired by Fiona Blaikie, Associate Director of the PRI. Link to the livestream here. For more information email Christine Daigle or Veronique Rousseau.

    Panel description

    Moving beyond the idea that humans are central, this panel presentation will offer contemplation of posthuman pedagogy/ies as entangled, interconnected, and shaped by places, temporalities, situated im/materialities, cultures, and animating entities that impact teaching, learning and scholarship.

    Speakers

    Bretton Varga “Material (Re)shapings within Unspeakable/Uninterrupted Territories of Violence”

    Abstract: If history has taught us anything, it is that anti-Black violence is deeply embedded within the material, social, and political landscape of the United States. This presentation unfolds within the (latest) occurrence of anti-Black violence in the United States: the unspeakable and senseless murder of Tyre Nichols. Using a posthuman lens, Bretton Varga brings into focus the non-human actors that continue to play a role in the (un/re)foldings of countless deathworlds and the way which they (re)animate a far-reaching arc of act(ion)s: trauma, racism, death, joy, love, and hope. Bridging (critical) social and material analysis, he (re)positions non-human entities as entry points into discourses of/around unspeakable acts of violence while also suggesting how materialism can also foster educational conversations that are rooted in desire and hope.

    Bio: Bretton A. Varga, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of History-Social Science at California State University, Chico. His research works with(in) critical posthuman theories of race, materiality, and temporality to explore how visual methods and aesthetics can be used to unveil historically marginalized perspectives and layers (upon layers) of history that haunt the world around us. His work can be found across a range of disciplines including arts-based research, environmental studies, curriculum studies, social studies, and post-qualitative inquiry.

    Kay Sidebottom “[Birdsong]: Pedagogies of Yearning, Surrender, and Learning from More-Than-Human Teachers”

    Abstract: Educating for and about a world that is not only “for us” but one that elevates animals, plants, and the wider eco-systems on which we rely is a vital shift in times of ecological destruction. For Wallin, this is a pedagogy that teaches using “the filthy lesson of symbiosis” (Wallin, in Carstens 2018). However, at present much education focused around environmental issues continues to reinforce nature/culture binaries; the environment is at the service of humans, and neo-liberal ideals of sustainability are pervasive.  Our current predicament calls for a curriculum that encourages notions of kinship with non-human others; accepts complexity; and reframes our attachment to a shared world. In this presentation I offer a diffractive re-telling of a research project, in which participants (both human and non-) came together to explore what happens when we de-centre humans as educators. Ceasing to privilege ourselves as the ultimate instructors and holders of knowledge through artistic provocations and fabulations, we aim to inspire others to begin similar processes of noticing, de-centering and surrender in order to enact posthuman ideas in their own pedagogical practice.

    Bio: Dr Kay Sidebottom is a Lecturer in Education, and Programme Director for a new MSc Education at the University of Stirling. Her current research explores how teachers can work with posthuman ideas to facilitate meaningful and disruptive education spaces for our complex times. With a background in community and adult education, her pedagogical specialisms include critical, radical and anarchist education, arts-based practice, and community philosophy.

    Katie Strom and Shakhnoza Kayumova “Toward Pluriversal Praxis in Science Education”

    Abstract: Despite multifaceted reform efforts in science education, inequities continue to persist among youth from non-dominant communities (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2019). These inequities are perpetuated in part by the rational humanist perspectives that underlie scientific knowledge and practices in schools, which impose western, colonial epistemology and ontology (i.e., ways of knowing and being) as universal and correct, while rendering marginalized youth’s linguistic, cultural, and everyday resources as inferior or illegitimate. In this presentation, we map key features of western colonial thinking-being to dominant science knowledge and practice, showing how these logics continuously construct youth from non-dominant groups in deficit terms. We then explore what it might mean to construct a pluriversal praxis in science education by embracing an ontoepistemological shift based on relationality, interdependence, embodiment, ethics, and care toward youth, diverse communities, and more-than-human collectives.

    Bios:

    Dr. Kayumova is an Associate Professor in the Department of STEM Education and Teacher Development at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, a Research Scientist at the Kaput Center for STEM Education Research and Innovation, and the founder of the STEAM Language, Learning, and Identity Research lab. Dr. Kayumova’s research closely examines the ways in which STEM education could be a context for empowerment and positive science identity development of linguistically and ethnically/racially diverse learners, and thereby increasing the representation of people of color in STEM fields.

    Kathryn (Katie) Strom is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at California State University, East Bay, Director of CSUEB’s Center for Research on Equity and Collaborative Engagement (CRECE), and co-founder of the Posthuman Research Nexus (a global organization that supports and connects scholars engaging in posthuman and other complexity perspectives). Dr. Strom’s research combines multiple critical and complex/neomaterialist theories to study teacher learning and practice (particularly in support of minoritized youth), as well as to advocate more broadly for more relational, difference-affirmative ways of thinking-being-doing in education and academia.

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  • Interconnections vol. 1 no. 2 is now published!

    We are proud to announce that issue 2 of Interconnections. Journal of Posthumanism/Interconnexions. Revue de posthumanisme is now published. You can access the issue here.

     

    Categories: news

  • Posthumanism in Practice: A Talk by Dr Matthew Hayler

    Please join the Posthumanism Research Institute for our upcoming event:

    Posthumanism in Practice: A talk by Dr. Matthew Hayler,

    University of Birmingham and Series Editor for Posthumanism in Practice (Bloomsbury)

    April 21, 2022 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm (ET)

    LifeSize event link: https://stream.lifesizecloud.com/extension/12627650/edf0a4e1-a920-44e8-8744-5dacc2c88b7c

    What might we mean by posthumanism? What kinds of practice are available? What does it mean to do posthumanism?

    In this session, Dr. Hayler asks what it might mean to put posthumanist ideas into practice. Working with Professor Christine Daigle and Dr. Danielle Sands, Dr. Hayler has launched a new book series, Posthumanism in Practice, with Bloomsbury Academic and is excited to see how researchers interpret this idea. But there’s still a lot up for grabs – what might we mean by posthumanism? What kinds of practice are available? What does it mean to do posthumanism? In outlining his own approach, Dr. Hayler argues that posthumanism might not be a coherent philosophical stance, anymore than poststructuralism or postmodernism. Instead, like these broad moves in thought, the benefits and possibilities of posthumanism might be found in combinations of: i) outlining more nuanced thinking, ii) the defamiliarization of common sense, iii) identifying new ways of doing things, iv) bringing together insights from across disciplines that are doing related work, but not always with the same languages or frameworks. He will draw examples from a couple of recent publications on bioethics and the digital humanities in order to think about questions that might be raised for practical application, and also how some parallel discourses and disciplines might usefully be brought under a posthumanist umbrella.

    Categories: event, news

  • Round-table: More than Human: Posthumanism, Human-Technological Relations, Bioethics

    The ‘Posthumanism: Cinema Philosophy Media’ Roundtable Series presents:

    MORE THAN HUMAN: Posthumanism, Human-Technological Relations, and Bioethics

    March 29, 2022 @ 7:00 P.M.

    Zoom Meeting: https://wilfrid-laurier.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEsduqtpzsoGdBH4VOdDieN4ykgVKgw4GKK

    Biohacking, biomedical advancements, bioengineering, and transhumanist hopes, aspirations and fixations – How do technological advancements extend what it means to be human?

    This roundtable discussion seeks to break down the barriers between different perspectives upon and methods of analysis of transhumanism, biohacking, and bioethics. From film studies, to a cultural studies lens on biohacking as a subculture, to the latest mind-body interface technologies, how we take up our relationships to and with technological advancements is central to how we understand what it means to be (or not to be) human.

    Join an engaging roundtable with:

    • Jeremy Hunsinger, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
    • Andrea Austin, Associate Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
    • William Brown, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre and Film, University of British Columbia
    • Alex Pearlman, Communications Director, Science and Technology Reporter, Research Affiliate at MIT Media LabConcentric by Ginkgo

    For more information contact: Russell Kilbourn rkilbourn@wlu.ca or Julia Empey empe3530@mylaurier.ca

    Categories: event, news

  • Talk by Dr. Myra Hird on Waste

    Dr. Myra Hird (Queen’s University) will be giving a talk on “Waste: a Tale of Two Problems” on March 21st, 2022, 11:00-12:00 ET. This talk is jointly hosted by the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, the Sustainability, Science and Society program (SSAS) and the Posthumanism Research Institute (PRI) and will be live-streamed here.

    Categories: event, news

  • Decentering the Nature-Culture Divide in Diplomacy

    The North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative (NACDI) invites you to attend our virtual panel, Decentering the Nature-Culture Divide in Diplomacy, which carries forward the issues and debates that foregrounded our 2021 summit, Players: We Are All Practitioners. Hosted by NACDI in partnership with the Posthumanism Research Institute, our virtual event will be held on 16 February 2022 at 2:00 – 3:30 pm (ET), 1:00-2:30 pm (CT), and 11 am-12:30 am (PT).

    **Click here to register to attend this free event!*

    Building on the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative’s work to address the question of culture’s role in diplomacy, this event focuses on statist diplomacy as a Eurocentric practice to advance a discussion of diplomacy that is refracted by applying posthumanist and post-anthropocentrist lenses. Taking as a starting point forms of diplomacy on the North American continent that were, and continue to be practiced by Indigenous Peoples, the panel also brings into play Islamic perspectives and posthumanist discourses.

    This panel suggests that to properly examine “cultural diplomacy,” the centrality of a nation-state-based understanding of “culture” that excludes other ways of knowing and stands in opposition to “nature” must be problematized. Viewing diplomatic practice and orientation through the lens of what Glen Coulthard (2014) terms “grounded normativity”, this session challenges the ways in which Cartesian dualism of nature and culture provide a limited understanding of being in and relating to the world. Re-orientating our relationship to time and place, grounded normativity centers histories, practices, and ways of relating to one another which contest the state-centric and settler-colonial orders and broadens the scope of diplomacy to include non-human players.

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  • New play i/O by partner theatre company Post Humains on stage Nov 16 – Dec 4

    Thanks to a SSHRC Partnership Engage grant, the PRI has collaborated with the Montreal theatre company Post Humains for the research-creation that led to the elaboration of their play i/O. The play is presented at the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, salle Michelle-Rossignol, from November 16 to December 4, 2021, in Montreal. For an interview with the playwright and director of the company, Dominique Leclerc, see here.

    Categories: news

  • Public talk by Rick Dolphijn – October 7, 2021

    Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht) will give a presentation related to his most recent book on October 7, 2021. The talk takes place 10:00-11:30 (EDT) on Zoom. Please see link below to log on or contact Mitch Goldsmith (mg12vh@brocku.ca).

    “The Wounds that Matter” 

    In my recently published monograph, The Philosophy of Matter; a meditation, one of the key concepts is ‘the wound’. Much inspired by literature and the arts, this talk aims to explore woundedness in different ways; how wounds bring us together? How are we “born to embody” our wounds, as Joë Bousquet would say it? And what is pain teaching us about the non-fascist life?

    Dr. Rick Dolphijn is an Associate Professor at Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, and a Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (2017-2023). He published widely on new materialism, posthumanism and affect theory. His monograph The Philosophy of Matter: a meditation was published with Bloomsbury Academic in August 2021.

     

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  • 20th Anniversary of Atanarjuat – “Posthumanism: Philosophy Cinema Media” inaugural event

    The first of a series of events in the “Posthumanism: Philosophy Cinema Media” series takes place on October 6, 2021. This event celebrates the 20th anniversary of Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat. Kunuk and team members will take part in the round-table also featured a panel of international scholars. Registration here or by scanning the QR code on the poster.

    Posthumanism: Cinema Philosophy Media: A Roundtable Series

    Announcing the Inaugural Event:

    ‘Running Time’: Atanarjuat 20th Anniversary Roundtable and Celebration

     Oct. 06, 2021, 6:00-9:00 pm EST (via Zoom)

    Twenty years ago this fall saw the release of Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner: “an exciting action thriller set in ancient Igloolik, the film unfolds as a life-threatening struggle of love, jealousy, murder and revenge between powerful natural and supernatural characters” (IsumaTV). The first-ever feature fiction film in Inuktitut, written, directed, produced, and performed by an Inuit cast and crew, Atanarjuat went on to win six Genie awards, including Best Picture and the Camera d’or for best first feature film at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival, among many other awards. In 2015 it was voted the best Canadian film of all time.

    Well before contemporary debates around identity politics, cultural appropriation, and equity, diversity, and inclusivity, Atanarjuat set the terms of the discussion while laying out a vision for the future of Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world—a vision of self-determination, however, that has yet to be fulfilled. The past twenty years has seen Atanarjuat’s significance manifest in several different ways: as a story the film continues to resonate all over the world with Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences alike; as cultural object the film stands as one of the most significant achievements of Indigenous self-representation; as a film Atanarjuat represents a great work of art cinema.

    This roundtable brings together key members of the original team behind the film—writer-director Zacharias Kunuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk (Puja)—with an international panel of scholars: Erich Fox Tree (Associate Professor, Religion and Culture, WLU); Jenny Kerber (Associate Professor, English and Film Studies); Pauline Clague (Associate Professor, Manager of Cultural Resilience Hub, Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research, University of Technology, Sydney); Simone Bignall (Senior Researcher in the Jumbunna Research Hub for Indigenous Nations and Collaborative Futures, University of Technology, Sydney).

    For more information contact: Russell Kilbourn > rkilbourn@wlu.ca

    Zoom registration link: https://wilfrid-laurier.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrcOqgpz8jGtazM3ZJ4HbhSV11jvpAf3nc

    The organizers wish to thank SSHRC, the Posthumanism Research Institute, the WLU Student’s Union, the Faculty of Arts, and the Department of English and Film Studies for supporting this event.

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