This research project is informed from and sets out to test, interrogate and build upon the speculations of some key thinkers:
Object-Oriented Ontologist Timothy Morton[1]; in particular his thinking on the symbiotic real, solidarity with nonhuman people and of collectivity[2] as active and uneasy cohabitation. I have collated a small section of Morton’s 2017 book Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People. Timothy Morton
A good introduction to the book can be found at: Timothy Morton in Conversation with Verso Books , in particular sections ‘the individual and the collective’ and ‘the ontological is political’ at time point 9:40 – 15:45.
Science Studies writer/philosopher Bruno Latour articulation of the third place[3]. which he articulates in Why Gaia Is Not the Globe, 2016,
Nature/culture writer Michael Pollan on nonhuman agency and taking a non-anthropocentric view of evolution and symbiosis.
Donna Haraway, feminist, science and technology scholar and storyteller, in particular, the tentacular complexity Haraway acknowledges in making-do with nonhumans[4]. A few excerpts of Haraway’s 2016 book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures). Donna Haraway
Haraway considers how we this as inextricably entwined with what we think. this is articulated in this video:SF: String Figures, Multispecies Muddles, Staying with the Trouble. In the four minute section from 20:00 – 24:40min Haraway talks through her process of thinking with other thinkers, highlighting the importance of how we think and what platforms we think from. It is this self-reflexive mode of thought that I hope to foster in Conversation Pit.
Levi R Bryant, philosopher, Lacanian Psychoanalyst and champion of all things ontic. A formative thinker in defining the field of Object Oriented Ontology, currently researching a line of object-oriented thought, called which he terms ‘onticology’. Bryant keeps a thought provoking blog: Larval Subjects. this post UnrulyHeritage is particularly relevant to my project.
I welcome your suggestion of thinkers and resources to add to the mix to expand and complicate the discussion.
[1] Morton, Timothy, Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (London. New York: Verso Books, 2017).
[2] Verso Books, ‘Timothy Morton in Conversation with Verso Books’, accessed 26 April 2018, .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AEy2KmHwh0&index=10&list=PLtMuLv9S_8G2LcGUUcJJhCTQ3lqr683L6&t=1681s
[3] Faculty of Arts, Aarhus Universitet, Bruno Latour: Why Gaia Is Not the Globe, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AGg-oHzPsM&feature=youtu.be.
[4] Donna Jeanne Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Experimental Futures Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices (Durham London: Duke University Press, 2016).
JILL SORENSEN 