New publication: “Navigating (Post-)Anthropocenic Times of Crisis: A Critical Cartography of Hope”
CounterText recently published my latest article on hope for (post-)Anthropocenic times. You can read the article’s abstract below and download said article here:
Departing from the (post-)Anthropocenic crisis state of today’s world, fuelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, various post-truth populist follies, and an apocalyptic WW3-scenario that has been hanging in the air since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this article argues for the possibility – and necessity – of an affirmative posthumanist-materialist mapping of hope. Embedded in the Deleuzoguattarian-Braidottian (see Deleuze and Guattari 2005 [1980]; Braidotti 2011 [1994]) methodology of critical cartography, and infused with critical posthumanist, new materialist, and queer theoretical perspectives, this cartography of hope is sketched out against two permacrisis-infused positionalities: nostalgic humanism and tragic (post-)humanism. Forced to navigate between these two extremes, the critical cartography of hope presented here explores hope in numerous historico-philosophical (re-)configurations: from the premodern ‘hope-as-all-too-human’, to a more politicised early modern ‘hope-as-(politically-)human’ – representing hope’s first paradigm shift (politicisation), and from a four decades-long neoliberal redrawing of hope as ‘no-more-hope’ – hope’s second shift (depoliticisation) – to a critical (new) materialist plea to de-anthropocentrise and re-politicise hope – hope’s third and final post-Anthropocenic shift (re-politicisation). By mapping these (re-)configurations of hope, a philosophical plea is made for hope as a material(ist) praxis that can help us better understand – and counter – these extractive late capitalist, neoliberal more-than-human crisis times.
In these ongoing times of pandemic crisis that are forcing planetary
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beings to disproportionately live and die on the edge(s) of a terrain-losing Anthropocene – a descriptor of the current catastrophic geological era that is, arguably and quite ironically, characterised by the same arrogant human exceptionalism it meant to highlight and denounce – philosophical refuge can be found in the creation of an affirmation-propelled posthumanistmaterialist critical cartography of hope. Or so this article proposes.
Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “Navigating (Post-)Anthropocenic Times of Crisis: A Critical Cartography of Hope.” CounterText 8 (2022) 3: pp. 385-412.
#newpublication #hope #criticalcartography #posthumanism #criticalnewmaterialisms
New upcoming event: “Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning”
I have been invited to the Eco- and Bioart Lab and Queer Death Studies Network‘s international symposium, “Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning”, which will take place on the 23rd of March 2023 at Norrköping’s Arbetets Museum in Sweden.
The event is combined with the official launch of the four-year research project Ecological Grief, Crisis Imaginaries and Resilience in Nordic Lights (2022-26), led by Dr Marietta Radomska and generously funded by FORMAS: a Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.
Check out the program here and the poster below!
#newevent #ecologies #environmentalphilosophy #posthumanism #mourning
New publication: “Reclaiming vital materialism’s affirmative, anti-fascist powers. A Deleuzoguattarian-new materialist exploration of the fascist-within.”
My colleague Delphi Carstens (University of the Western Cape) and I are excited to announce the publication of a new essay in Rick Dolphijn and Rosi Braidotti’s latest book, Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism. You can read the essay’s abstract below:
Fascism, according to the Deleuzoguattarian perspective and new materialist viewpoints, can be conceived of in terms of desire. In mediating desire’s pure flows, the schizoanalytical program attempts to bypass what Deleuze calls ‘the strange detour of the other’ (B, 356). In this respect, concepts developed in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia-cycle are critical to the project of the problematic of desire, the other and (neo-)fascism. In this chapter, we explore how Deleuzoguattarian anti-fascist concepts, such as the Body without Organs (BwO), together with new materialist approaches towards vital materialism, may help us to ‘keep an eye on all that is fascist, even [the fascist] inside us’ (TP, 165). Such a critical-creative analysis, we argue, is needed to distinguish contemporary vitalist new materialisms from so-called Lebensphilosophien (philosophies of life) and frame the rise of neoliberal capitalism-supported regimes of neo-fascism.
In our quests to become intrepid creative agents (who stay with the trouble for life created by neoliberal economising and stand with minoritarian builders of differently-thought-out anti-fascist imagined communities of practice), we need to remain constantly vigilant. Because ‘[f]ascism,’ as Guattari warns us, ‘seems to come from the outside, but it finds its energy right at the heart of everyone’s desire’ (CS, 171). Moreover, as Deleuze and Guattari are at pains to point out in A Thousand Plateaus ([1980] 1987), all aspects of life today are overcoded by capitalism. While this system relentlessly deterritorialises social, political, theoretical and other formations/codes from their original contexts, it simultaneously reterritorialises them elsewhere. Thus, while capitalism has deterritorialised zoē and bios distinctions from the perspective of economics, it has reterritorialised them elsewhere in the form of problematic political fascist revanches.
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Carstens, Delphi & Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “Reclaiming vital materialism’s
affirmative, anti-fascist powers. A Deleuzoguattarian-new materialist exploration of the fascist-within.” In Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism. Edited by Rick Dolphijn and Rosi Braidotti. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 321-340.
#newpublication #Deleuze&Guattari&Fascism #fascism #newmaterialisms #Lebensphilosophien
New call for papers: “The Somatechnics of Violence: Affective, (Im)material and Digital Transformations.”
My colleagues Chantelle Gray (North-West University), Delphi Carstens (University of the Western Cape) and myself are excited to announce a new call for papers, titled “The Somatechnics of Violence: Affective, (Im)material and Digital Transformations.” This is a follow-up to the UrbTerr “(Im)materialities of Violence” conference and will be published as a special issue of Somatechnics.
Abstracts are due by the 31st of October, 2022. For more information, read the fragment below and the call for papers here.
Driven by neoliberal governmentality, extractive capitalism and contemporary (counter-) terrorism, present-day societies of hyper-control are plagued by violent threats from multiple, often crisscrossing, directions engendered by interlinked macrostructures and microevents that combine the (im)material, discursive, digital and affective.
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#callforpapers #somatechnics #violence #somatechnicsofviolence
New publication: “Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality“
Gender, sexuality and embodiment in digital spheres have been increasingly studied from various critical perspectives: From research highlighting the articulation of intimacies, desires, and sexualities in and through digital spaces to theoretical explorations of materiality in the digital realm. With such a high level of (inter)disciplinarity, theories, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in relation to digital spheres have become highly diversified. Aiming to reflect this diversity, this special issue brings together innovative and newly developed theoretical, empirical, analytical, and critical approaches in the study of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres. By connecting intersectionality and digitality to one another, it adopts an integrated approach that reflects the intricacy and interconnectedness of social categories and markers of difference, privilege, performance, and discrimination. The contributions explore a range of differently situated digital cultural practices, including intimate and sexual experiences with(in) digital media, online self-presentation, expressions of digital resistance, and forms of backlash and online attacks. What connects all these articles, is their critical approach to intersectional inequalities and privileges in relation to digitality, plus their nuanced perspective on gender, sexuality, and embodiment interferentially. The final article is based on a roundtable discussion and aims to encourage interdisciplinary connections and suggests ways of doing research that builds bridges between academia and activism.
Rahbari, Ladan, De Vuyst, Sara & Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality.” Special issue of Journal of Digital Social Research 4 (2022) 3.
Geerts, Evelien et al. 2022. “Intersectionality, Hybridity, and (Inter)disciplinary Research on Digitality: A conversation among scholars of gender, sexuality, and embodiment.” Journal of Digital Social Research 4 (2022) 3: 86-106. DOI: 10.33621/jdsr.v4i3.140
De Vuyst, Sara, Geerts, Evelien & Rahbari, Ladan. 2022. “Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres. Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality: Editorial”. Journal of Digital Social Research 4 (3): 1-9. DOI: 10.33621/jdsr.v4i3.150
#newpublication #specialissue #digitality #embodiment #gender #sexuality
From the archive: “The Contagious Micropolitics of Alt-Right Memes: A Post-Philosophical Analysis”
The call for a reinvigoration of critical theory has never sounded louder than during the COVID-19 pandemic: Now that the disposability of all things material—starting with those racialized-sexualized-gendered embodied beings that have been made to not matter—has become clearer than ever, anthropocentrism-transcending post-philosophical frameworks and methodologies are shedding new light on extractive late capitalism, neoliberal governmentality, and the oftentimes bio-/necropolitical fascist politics supported by the foregoing intertwined systems. The digital talk below, presented at the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2022 conference, addresses the foregoing issues by focusing on the Flemish identitarian youth movement Schild & Vrienden [Shield & Friends] and their alt-right memes, and that via post-philosophical—or, put differently, critical new materialist, posthumanist, and post-qualitative—perspectives, in order to reveal the contagiousness of their fascist pedagogy and deadly memes-driven micro-spectropolitics.
You can watch the full video below.
Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “The contagious micropolitics of alt-right memes: A post-philosophical analysis”. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29456.48648
#fromthearchive #conferencetalk #memes #micropolitics #post-philosophy
From the archive: Podcast event “The Woke Movement”
I recently got invited by the podcast series Discours to come and talk about ‘wokeness’ – a concept that in my eyes has been usurped and exploited by the political right, slowly but surely becoming synonymous with ‘anti-woke’ sentiment. I sketch the philosophical genealogy of the concept ‘woke’ and criticize the contemporary (over-politicized) ‘woke=anti-woke’-construction.
You can listen to the podcast episode (in Flemish) below.
Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “Filosoof Evelien Geerts & de Woke-Beweging” Podcast Discours
#fromthearchive #podcast #wokeness #identitypolitics #intersectionality
New publication: “Dis/Abling Gender” special issue & “Dis/Abling Gender in Crisis Times: Editorial”
The “Dis/Abling Gender” special issue of Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies just came out. With this issue, Josephine Hoegaerts (University of Helsinki), Kristien Hens (Antwerp University), Daniel Blackie (University of Helsinki), and myself have tried to create a fruitful dialogue between the fields of critical disability studies, gender studies, and critical pedagogies by focusing on topics such as pandemic ablebodiedness, bio-/necropolitics, neurodiversity, and accessibility within the context of higher education and academia. You can find our editorial (which serves as a longread as well, including a detailed bibliography with philosophical and historical sources) here and the full special issue here.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made explicit what many of us already knew and some of us are constantly made to feel: good health and the abilities of our bodies & minds are fluid and uncertain. We can only ever hold them precariously (Butler, 2004; Scully, 2014). In the end, we are all vulnerable beings. And, yet, vulnerability, perhaps especially in times of
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crisis, can never be fully universalised, nor is it distributed equally: the value and definition of what our bodies & minds can do, what they mean, and how they are expected – and often pushed – to function, are intrinsically unstable, as they depend on the socio-cultural, political, and economic context. This is perfectly echoed by the title Rosi Braidotti (2020) gave to one of her recent articles on the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the current posthuman predicament: ‘“We” Are in This Together, But We Are Not One and the Same’.
Geerts, Evelien, Hoegaerts, Josephine, Hens, Kristien, & Blackie, Daniel. 2022. “Dis/Abling Gender”. Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies 25 (2022) 1.
Geerts, Evelien, Hoegaerts, Josephine, Hens, Kristien, & Blackie, Daniel. 2022. “Dis/Abling Gender in Crisis Times.” Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies 25 (2022) 1: 1-18.
#newpublication #TijdschriftvoorGenderstudies #criticaldisabilitystudies #genderstudies #crisistimes
From the archive: “‘Irruptions’ & the 22/3 memorial’s more-than-humanness: Critical new materialist research encounters & lessons“
I recently got invited to partake in the PhEMaterialisms 3rd wave series. My critical pedagogical/posthumanist seminar, “‘Irruptions’ & the 22/3 Memorial’s more-than-humanness: Critical new materialist research encounters & lessons”, focuses on an alternative post-philosophical theorizing of (counter-)terrorism and processes of remembering and commemoration.
You can find the full video below.
Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “‘Irruptions’ & the 22/3 Memorial’s more-than-humanness: Critical new materialist research encounters & lessons”, PhEMaterialisms 3rd wave series.
#newevent #PhEMaterialisms #criticalpedagogies #irruptions #morethanhuman
From the archive: “The More-Than-Human Power of Memorials & Memes”
I recently was invited to the “Posthumanism: Cinema, Philosophy, Media: A Roundtable Series”, organized by the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in partnership with Brock University’s Posthumanism Research Institute (Canada). I presented my critical posthumanist and new materialist research on memory, memorials, and memes in the context of my work on political violence. Special attention was paid to my digital cartography of critical new materialisms. You can watch the full event below.
#fromthearchive #criticalposthumanisms #memory #memes #morethanhuman
Geerts, Evelien. 2022. “The More-Than-Human Power of Memorials and Memes.”Posthumanism: Cinema, Philosophy, Media: A Roundtable Series”, Wilfrid Laurier University & Brock University.
New upcoming event: “‘Irruptions’ & the 22/3 Memorial’s more-than-humanness: Critical new materialist research encounters & lessons“
In this PhEminar, I will delve deeper into a critical new materialist exploration of the affect-laden more-than-human Memorial 22/3, located in Belgium’s Sonian Forest and constructed to honor the 32 victims that died during the 2016 Brussels terrorist attacks. The project above is framed by a larger research project that pushes for an alternative post-philosophical theorizing of terrorism and counterterrorism as intertwined material-discursive-affective phenomena, and that thinks through the more-than-human materializations of political, violence, memory & memorials, and commemoration practices.
Check out more detailed (registration) information here and the poster below!
#newevent #PhEMaterialisms #criticalpedagogies #irruptions #morethanhuman
New upcoming event: “Posthumanism, Memory, and Cinema”
I recently have been invited to the “Posthumanism: Cinema, Philosophy, Media: A Roundtable Series”, organized by the Department of English and Film Studies, at Wilfrid Laurier University in partnership with Brock University’s Posthumanism Research Institute (Canada). I will be talking about my critical posthumanist and new materialist research on memory, memorials, and memes in the context of my work on political violence.
Check out the program here and poster below!
#newevent #criticalposthumanisms #memory #memes #morethanhuman
From the archive: Singing sirens: Contemporary pop and rock goddesses and their potentially feminist acts of »chanter hystérique«
In 2013, I got invited to write a piece for Pop-Zeitschrift on female musicians. In this piece that addresses the oeuvres of PJ Harvey, Amanda Palmer, Lady Gaga, and others, I experiment with écriture féminine, Luce Irigaray’s feminist philosophy and what I call “chanter hystérique”. The piece can be read here.
In addition to creating this patchwork of connected catastrophes aLady Gaga’s »Marry The Night« video, on the other hand, deals with hysteria in a less shallow manner (Lady Gaga 2011). The video addresses Gaga’s breakdown after her first record label dropped her, and how she overcame everything by transforming herself into the pop icon we know today. The video’s first two sequences are the most fascinating: during the opening scene, Gaga is shown ranting about reality and fiction, whilst being transported on a hospital bed. She ends up in an asylum ward, and after asking the nurse to put on some music, she recalls her past life experiences, whilst the other female patients break out in hysterical laughter. During the next flashback sequence, we are then all of the sudden confronted with Gaga mentally breaking down in her apparent after being rejected by her record label. We see a naked Gaga completely crashing and making wild gestures, whilst covering herself in Cheerios without almost uttering a word.
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#fromthearchive #feministphilosophy #Irigaray #femalemusicians #chanterhystérique
Geerts, Evelien. 2013. “Singing sirens: Contemporary pop and rock goddesses and their potentially feminist acts of »chanter hystérique«.” Pop-Zeitschrift. https://pop-zeitschrift.de/2013/06/18/singing-sirens-contemporary-pop-and-rock-goddesses-and-their-potentially-feminist-acts-of-chanter-hysteriqueevelien-geerts18-6-2013/.
New publication: “Philosophical post-anthropology for the Chthulucene:
Levinasian and feminist new materialist perspectives in more-than-human crisis times”
Co-written with Amarantha Groen (EUC), this article starts with a vignette about how the COVID-19 pandemic has immensly impacted our day-to-day lives, while also re-spotlighting post-Enlightenment critiques of the human subject.
If these pandemic times are indeed more-than-human, then the clock is ticking for the discipline of philosophical anthropology to face these post-anthropological facts and receive what feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway has aptly called a thorough dose of “epistemological electroshock therapy” (1988, p. 578). Taking Haraway’s foregoing call and the idea of thinking-with the (end of the) Anthropocene seriously, we construct a critical cartography of Emmanuel Levinas’ take on philosophical anthropology in dialogue with other major philosophical anthropologists and feminist new materialists while arguing for a post-anthropology for the Chthulucene.
The full essay can be downloaded and read here.
In addition to creating this patchwork of connected catastrophes and a future-to-come-or-not-to-come, the pandemic’s viral speed is also impacting our feelings of what it means to be (but a) human in a more-than-human world. Meaning-making praxes from the past that positioned the human subject—problematically limited to ‘Mankind’—as the world’s ‘lord and master’, have now partly lost their value. In a crisis-ridden world in which a shared “trans-corporeality” (Alaimo 2016, p. 2) between all lively things of matter is manifesting itself, and the human subject is more and more to be regarded as “solidly located” within “worldly entanglements” (p. 7), as feminist new materialist Stacy Alaimo so aptly puts it, ‘Man’ is not only dethroned but also forced to return his—emphasized on purpose here—crown and scepter.
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#newpublication #philosophicalanthropology #pandemic #post-anthropology #philosophyincrisistimes
Geerts, Evelien & Groen, Amarantha. 2021. “Philosophical Post-Anthropology for the Chthulucene: Levinasian and Feminist New Materialist Perspectives in More-Than-Human Crisis Times.” Internationales Jahrbuch für Philosophische Anthropologie/International Yearbook for Philosophical Anthropology 10 (1), 195-214. DOI: 10.1515/jbpa-2020-0011
From the archive: (Im)materialities of Violence (25-27 November 2021): A series of digital research events
(Im)materialities of Violence (25-27 November 2021, University of Birmingham, UK) has been wrapped up! The Urban Terrorism team had a blast during the conference, and again want to thank all of the wonderful speakers – Prof. Dr. Rosi Braidotti, Prof. Dr. Brad Evans, Prof. Dr. Amade M’charek, Em. Prof. Dr. Nina Lykke, and Prof. Dr. Susanne Krasmann – all of our panelists, team members, and everyone that helped us out along the way. You can find a day-to-day overview of the conference via the Urban Terrorism’s Twitter page here. Also keep watching this space and the Urban Terrorism blog, as we will eventually release a call for papers for an edited volume based on the conference!
Announcement: (Im)materialities of Violence (25-27 November 2021): A series of digital research events
The keynotes and book presentations are open to the public. You can find the registration link & more details here.
(Im)materialities of Violence (25-27 November 2021, University of Birmingham, UK) is an interdisciplinary series of digital research events dedicated to addressing contemporary violence in its haunting (im)material manifestations, and that specifically through the entangled foci on the bio-/necropolitical framework and outcomes of terrorism, counterterrorist law, and securitization processes. This particular research events series has been organised by Dr. Katharina Karcher and Dr. Evelien Geerts, and is part of the Urban Terrorism in Europe (2004-19): Remembering, Imagining, and Anticipating Violence ERC-project (University of Birmingham).The UrbTerr project documents and analyzes a range of voices in contemporary debates on urban terrorism in Europe via concepts and methods from memory studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, and anthropology while problematizing the narrow concept of imagination and creativity underpinning recent counter-terrorism measures and a great part of the academic literature on this subject. (Im)materialities of Violence investigates how (terrorist) violence does something to embodied subjects and the environments they inhabit. At the same time, it frequently provokes acts, processes, and praxes of radical undoing, dispossession, and disposability and complete erasure that tend to go hand in hand with politically exploited dehumanizing discourses. This double-layeredness of violence – its doing and undoing – is mirrored by the fact that violence involves both human and more-than-human actors, and moreover engenders material and immaterial effects.
By means of intimate research panels, keynotes by Prof. Dr. Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University), Prof. Dr. Amade M’charek (University of Amsterdam), and Prof. Dr. Susanne Krasmann (University of Hamburg), and book presentations by Prof. Dr. Brad Evans (University of Bath) and Em. Prof. Dr. Nina Lykke (Linköping University), (Im)materialities of Violence wants to do justice to the abovementioned triple complexity, that is – violence’s (un)doing, (more-than-)humanness, and (im)materiality. It does so by spotlighting contributions from disciplines as diverse as philosophy, feminist theory, memory studies, cultural studies, history, and anthropology, while making space for new materialist, posthumanist, and affect theoretical approaches and conceptual frameworks.
More information about this series of events and the project itself can be found on the Urban Terrorism’s blog here.
New publication: “Political violence since 9/11: Hypermediatization & the creation of disposable bodies”
Kif Kif recently published my longread, titled “Political violence since 9/11: Hypermediatization & the creation of disposable bodies”. The piece touches upon political violence, 9/11’s aftermath & disposable bodies against the backdrop of contemporary pandemic crisis.
The full essay, written in Dutch, can be read here.
The current neoliberal capitalist system that time and time again prioritizes economic gains over ecological and collective wellbeing seems to be untouchable. The same thing could be said about the constant hyperindividualizing emphasis on the perpetrators—but also on suspected and potential perpetrators—of political terrorist violence. This instead of analyzing their actions in connection to the multiple interwoven socio-economic and other conditions that co-engender this type of violence.
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#newpublication #politicalviolence #9/11 #disposablebodies #philosophyincrisistimes
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “Politiek geweld sinds 11 september: hypermediatisering en de creatie van wegwerplichamen.” Kif Kif. https://kifkif.be/cnt/artikel/politiek-geweld-sinds-11-september-hypermediatisering-en-de-creatie-van-wegwerplichamen
From the archive: Event on critical cartography & on new materialist philosophies in times of crisis
In November 2020, I was invited by the Posthumanities Hub to present some of my research. The digital lecture (and conversation), titled, “New Materialist Hope-Focused Interventions in Times of More-Than-Human Crises: A Critical Cartography”, is now available here and via the embedded video below.
#fromthearchive #events #videos #newmaterialisms #criticalcartography #philosophyincrisistimes
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “New Materialist Hope-Focused Interventions in Times of More-Than-Human Crises: A Critical Cartography.” The Posthumanities Hub. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUWq2mArwko&t=168s
From the archive: Event on critical cartography & on new materialist philosophies in times of crisis
During the 2021 summer, I was part of two philosophical events. I gave a digital lecture (in Dutch) on the COVID-19 pandemic & the new materialist perspectives of Haraway and Braidotti at the Internationale School voor Wijsbegeerte (NL) and a digital talk, titled “The Importance of Critical Cartographies & Situated Knowledge Production” at the Institute of Cartopology’s (NL) CORRECTIONVILLE 1 event. You can watch both videos here and here, and via the embedded videos below.
#fromthearchive #events #videos #newmaterialisms #criticalcartography #philosophyincrisistimes
Geerts, Evelien. 2021, August. “The Importance of Critical Cartographies & Situated Knowledge Production.”. Presented at The Institute of Cartopology’s CORRECTIONVILLE 1 event (NL). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvifdqV-MxM&t=864s . DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12679.27048
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “De COVID-19 crisis en het huidige mensbeeld: De nieuw materialistische perspectieven van Donna J. Haraway en Rosi Braidottiduction.” Presented at the Internationale School voor Wijsbergeerte (NL). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI69ZUKj7eg&t=2351s. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.34489.65124
New Publication: Interview with the PENTACLE on new materialisms & cartography
PENTACLE: Posthuman Entanglements in Culture, Literature, and Environment recently published an interview with myself on my critical new materialist work, my interest in the methodology of critical cartography, and the digital critical cartography of new materialist thought I designed a while back.
You can find the interview here in Turkish and English.
Constructing such a digital cartography was easier said than done, however: It wasn’t only an immense challenge to figure out how to collect the ‘raw’ data needed for said cartography but deciding how to for instance visualize the intricate differences between various strands of thought gave me many sleepless nights! I moreover became haunted by what Mirka Koro-Ljungberg and others refer to as “the ontological status of data” (2018: 462), and, more particularly, the uncontestable fact that data never really come to us as ‘untouched’ and thus ‘untainted’.
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#publication #interview #PENTACLE #newmaterialisms #criticalcartography
“Interview with Evelien Geerts.” Interview by Başak Ağın (in both Turkish and English). PENTACLE: Posthuman Entanglements in Culture, Literature, and Environment (July 2021)
New Publication: “Belgium & the Conings case: Pandemic politics and extreme right terrorism”
A new UrbTerr project publication has just been published. This longread, written in Dutch, re-spotlights the Conings case and Belgian pandemic politics, but does so by zooming in on the Flemish extreme right, processes of terrorist and extremist (non)-labeling, and some of the conspiracy theories that were circulating right after the announcement of Conings’ death.
The piece has been published by Kif Kif, and can be found here.
#publication #TheConversation #UrbTerr #extremism #pandemicpolitics
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “België en de zaak Conings: pandemiepolitiek en extreemrechts terrorisme.” Kif Kif.
New Publication: “Jürgen Conings: the case of a Belgian soldier on the run shows how the pandemic collides with far-right extremism”
A new UrbTerr project publication on pandemic politics and Belgium’s far-right extremism in the context of the Jürgen Conings case has just been published by The Conversation.
The article addresses the Conings case – a Belgian soldier, currently wanted for threatening Belgium’s top virologist Marc Van Ranst and the illegal possession of weapons in a terrorist context. It moreover argues for a more situated analysis of Belgium’s far-right extremism by looking at its complex political climate. You can read the piece here.
The pandemic climate has proven to be an excellent breeding ground for extremists. It has provided them with an excuse to go after what they see as the “freedom-destroying” establishment.
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#publication #TheConversation #UrbTerr #extremism #pandemicpolitics
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “Jürgen Conings: the case of a Belgian soldier on the run shows how the pandemic collides with far-right extremism.” The Conversation.
New Publication: “New materialism: A cartography“
My piece on the various constellations of contemporary new materialist thought, written in Dutch for Wijsgerig Perspectief it out now. In this article, I explore the various differences between critical new materialisms, OOO, ANT, speculative realisms, and other related strands of thought, while delving into issues of power and the flat ontology phenomenon. The piece also includes the self-created cartography below, which is a shortened version of my digital critical cartography of new materialisms, which you can find here:
Buy and read the article here.
Since the arrival of Foucauldian post-structuralism — often put to use by feminist thinkers appreciating Michel Foucault’s “(le) pouvoir-savoir” or the intertwining of power and knowledge — new post-poststructuralist philosophies, spotlighting worldly phenomena and their entanglements, have made themselves known.
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(…) This essay consists of a critical cartography that is based upon how various new materialist (sub)sets differ when it comes to their engagement with these current-day more-than-human crisis times, subject-object conceptualizations, and their (present or absent) focus on power.
#publication #WijsgerigPerspectief #philosophy #newmaterialisms #OOO
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “Nieuw materialisme: Een cartografie.” Wijsgerig Perspectief 61, n. 2, 34-41.
From the archive: Video of (Bio)art & ecologies of non/living matters: A conversation between visual artist Emanuela Cusin and philosopher Marietta Radomska
The captioned video of the (Bio)art & ecologies of non/living matters event has now been uploaded to the UrbTerr’s Youtube page. You can check out the video with myself, Emanuela Cusin and Marietta Radomska here or via the embedded video below!
#fromthearchive #event #video #UrbTerr #posthumanisms #bioart
From the archive: “Performativity”
In this almanac entry for the digital New Materialism Almanac (COST ACTION IS1307), I wrote about (agential realist interpretations of) performativity. The piece is digitally available here.
For Barad, performativity is not only linked to the coming into being of the human subject and the (gendered) materialization of bodies, and the socio-political interpellation process that goes along with it (i.e., Butler’s more recent understanding of performativity as articulated in Bodies), but is about the processes of the materialization of “all bodies” and the “material-discursive practices” that engender differences between for example human and non-human bodies (Barad 2003, 810). And the matter that is central to these processes of materialization for Barad is much less passive than Foucault and Butler have purported it to be.
GEERTS 2016: N. P.
#fromthearchive #publication #newmaterialisms #almanac #performativity
Geerts, Evelien. 2016. “Performativity” . New Materialism Almanac.
New notification: “Humanities for the Future: A New European Agenda” report
The Youth Forum on the Future of the Humanities’ report titled “Humanities for the Future: A New European Agenda” has now been released. The report itself was co-written by Humanities scholars in the European Union in the context of the European Humanities Conference 2021.
Check out the document here.
#humanities #EU #futureofthehumanities
New publication: Being Haunted by—and Reorienting toward—What ‘Matters’ in Times of (the COVID-19) Crisis: A Critical Pedagogical Cartography of Response-ability
The Higher Higher Education Hauntologies edited volume is out now and can be accessed here. My essay, titled “Being Haunted by—and Reorienting toward—What ‘Matters’ in Times of (the COVID-19) Crisis: A Critical Pedagogical Cartography of Response-ability” and of which an AM is available here and an institutional copy is available here, presents a critical cartography of critical pedagogies & new materialist and posthumanist philosophies of response-ability in times of pandemic crisis; a crisis that not only demands a pedagogical but also ethico-political reorientation toward the hauntological powers of past-present-future injustices, the thick material present, and a more response-able engagement with the world.
While the whole world is being haunted by moments of complete disorientation caused by COVID-19—or, differently phrased, the collapsing of our onto-epistemological frames of existential sense-making, leading ‘us,’ humans, to question our presumed unrivaled place (with)in an-always-already-more-than-human spacetime, and, hopefully, reorient ourselves—the (in)direct encounters between this tiny uncanny virus and its potential hosts, have been felt far less equally. The question that comes to mind here is what we could learn from this global pandemic if we were to connect this event to the critical pedagogical and ethico-political.
GEERTS 2021: 157-8.
#publication #hauntology #newmaterialisms #criticalpedagogies #response-ability
Geerts, Evelien. 2021. “Being Haunted by—and Reorienting toward—What ‘Matters’ in Times of (the COVID-19) Crisis: A Critical Pedagogical Cartography of Response-ability.” In: Higher Education Hauntologies: Living with Ghosts for a Justice-to-come, 155-169. Edited By Vivienne Bozalek, Michalinos Zembylas, Siddique Motala, Dorothee Holscher. Routledge.
New upcoming event: “(Bio)art & ecologies of non/living matters: A conversation between visual artist Emanuela Cusin and philosopher Marietta Radomska”
Check out the flyer below for more information about an upcoming research seminar that is being organized in the context of the Urban Terrorism in Europe (2004-19): Remembering, Imagining, and Anticipating Violence project at the University of Birmingham. During this research seminar, visual artist Emanuela Cusin and philosopher Dr Marietta Radomska will present their artistic and philosophical engagements with the matter(s)—and materialisation—of (bio)art and ecologies of the non/living. These presentations are then followed up by what surely will be a thought-provoking discussion. More information and registration details can be found here.
#event #UrbanTerrorism #newmaterialisms #bioart
New call for papers:
Dis/abling Gender
The call for papers for a new special issue of Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies/Journal of Gender Studies is now online. You can read the full call for papers here. Manuscripts that focus on critical disability studies & posthumanist, new materialist, and affect theoretical approaches are particularly welcome. Abstracts should be sent in by the 1st of May 2021, and can be written in either English and Dutch.
#callforpapers #genderstudies #criticaldisabilitystudies
New upcoming event: Digital panel Radicaal-rechtse Seks
I will be joining a panel of speakers during the digital book launch of Katrien Jacobs’ Radicaal-rechtse Seks, which has recently been published by EPO. The event will be held in Dutch on the 27th of March 2021. You can find more information here.
#event #KatrienJacobs #feminism #theradicalright
New publication: Posthumanities Hub blog essay
The Posthumanities Hub just started its blog series and I had the honor to write the first blog essay, titled “The more-than-human materializations of violence, remembrance, and times of crisis”. This essay contextualizes my current research project a bit more as a Research Fellow of the Urban Terrorism ERC project at the University of Birmingham and a Posthumanities Hub affiliated researcher. You can read the piece here.
Pushing for an alternative critical new materialist reading of urban (counter)terrorism as a material-semiotic phenomenon with affective, haunting qualities—qualities that by the way cannot be completely captured by theories that either solely center the lived experience of the human subject or stick to representationalist framings that continuously rip the knower, phenomenon-to-be-discovered, and knowledge produced apart—allows us to theorize something that already partially escapes our often too rigid regimes and strictly demarcated imaginaries of intelligibility. A more-than-representationalist, more-than-human reading furthermore provides us with the opportunity to better map the affect-laden lived experiences, intricate networks of power, inequalities, and exclusions, and legal-political structures that those (in)directly involved in (counter)terrorism are inhabiting and impacted by.
GEERTS 2021: N. P.
#publication #posthumanism #terrorism #PosthumanitiesHub
Geerts, Evelien (2021). “The more-than-human materializations of violence, remembrance, and times of crisis.” The Posthumanities Hub blog series.
New special issue & publications: “Pedagogies in the Wild – Entanglements between Deleuzoguattarian Philosophy and the New Materialisms” (Matter)
The special issue Delphi Carstens and I curated for Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research has just been released! You can find the TOC and full issue here. We are delighted to have been able to include contributions by Francisco B. Trento, Elina Oinas, Andy Broadey, Susan O. Cannon & Maureen A. Flint, Jacqueline V. Moulton, Raewyn Martyn, jan jagodzinski, Iris van der Tuin, Sam Skinner, Chantelle Gray & Aragorn Eloff, Katie Strom & Tammy Mills.
Here is a short excerpt from the special issue’s editorial, which you can download here.
Whether we are said to be living in the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, or are witnessing the start of the Chthulucene, as feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway (2016) would describe the current post-anthropocentric era, there is a demonstratable need for affective, entangled, transversal forms of thinking-doing today. Writing this editorial almost a year after the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and that as inhabitants of Belgium and South Africa—countries with complex ongoing capitalist-colonial legacies, socio-political presents, and heavily but also differently hit by said pandemic—we more than ever feel that these are times of entwined crisis, chaos, and hardship, overflowing with cravings for pedagogical-philosophical responses that are affirmative, productive, and future-oriented. Reactions that are moreover part theory, part praxis, counter the nihilistic, and are future-focused while still grounded in the present, as to not defer responsibilities to future times.
GEERTS & CARSTENS 2021: I
#publication #newmaterialisms #Deleuze&Guattari #criticalpedagogies #Matter
Geerts, Evelien & Carstens, Delphi (2021). “Pedagogies in the Wild – Entanglements between Deleuzoguattarian Philosophy and the New Materialisms”, special issue of Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research 2 (2021) (1).
New publication: Review essay (Redescriptions)
My review essay of Miri Rozmarin’s thought-provoking Vulnerable Futures, Transformative Pasts: On Vulnerability, Temporality, and Ethics (2017) just got published in Redescriptions. The special issue (by Mónica Cano Abadía & Tuija Pulkkinen) is worth checking out as well.
#publication #feministphilosophy #vulnerability #Redescriptions
Geerts, Evelien. 2020. “Book Review: Vulnerable Futures, Transformative Pasts: On Vulnerability, Temporality, and Ethics by Miri Rozmarin, Peter Lang, 2017, 194 Pages. ISBN 978-1-78707-392-0 (epub) (also Available in Print, Epdf and Mobi)”. Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 23 (2): 165–69.
From the archive: “Diffraction & Reading Diffractively”
In this almanac entry for the digital New Materialism Almanac (COST ACTION IS1307) , Iris van der Tuin and I sketched a cartographical map of diffraction as a philosophical idea and methodology. The piece is digitally available here, and has been republished as an edited version as part of Matter‘s special issue on Pedagogies in the Wild, which you can find here.
Thinking diffractively steps out of the phallogocentric, reflective logics of producing the Same all over again by acknowledging the differences that exist, while at the same time pointing at where the problematic reductions and assimilations of difference have taken place. Haraway in Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium (1997) later on expands on this new form of optics and way of thinking by using diffraction as “an optical metaphor:” Diffraction here is even more contrasted with the traditional way of producing (scientific) knowledge, namely “[r]eflexivity.” Such a practice “only displaces the same elsewhere,” according to Haraway, and creates oppositional distinctions between the real and the figural, whereas diffraction – now reformulated as seeing and thinking diffractively – is all about making “a difference in the world” by paying attention to “the interference patterns on the recording films of our lives and bodies” (ibid., p. 16).
GEERTS & VAN DER TUIN 2016: N. P.
#fromthearchive #publication #newmaterialisms #almanac #diffraction
Geerts, Evelien & van der Tuin, Iris. 2016. “Diffraction & Reading Diffractively” . New Materialism Almanac.
From the archive: “Zonder de Ander, ook geen Zelf (Without the Other, no Self).”
In this article (written in Dutch) for Wijsgerig Perspectief on identity, identity politics, and the sometimes complex relation between Self/Other, I trace the genealogy of the various philosophical phases in identity politics, to eventually bring intersectional and new materialist interference thinking into conversation with one another. The piece is digitally available here.
#publication #Filosofiemagazine #philosophy #newmaterialisms #alterity
Geerts, Evelien. 2019. “Zonder de Ander, ook geen Zelf (Without the Other, no Self).” (in Dutch). Wijsgerig Perspectief 59 (2019) 1: 14-24
New event: A Critical Cartography of New Materialist Constellations & Interventions in Times of Terror(ism). November 5, 2020. The Posthumanities Hub Seminar Series.
I am honored to have been invited by the Posthumanities Hub to give a digital seminar on critical new materialisms, crisis & terror(ism). You can find more details here & register for the seminar on November 5, 2020 (13-15hrs CEST) by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by November 3, 2020 the latest.
#event #thePosthumanitiesHub #criticaltheory #newmaterialisms #terror(ism)
New call for papers: Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality
My colleagues Ladan Rahbari (University of Amsterdam), Sara De Vuyst (Ghent University) and I just released a call for papers for a special issue of the Journal of Digital Social Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality. You can find the (now closed) cfp as a PDF here. There is plenty of room for exploring posthumanist, affect and new materialist analyses & the critical pedagogical! Do spread the word!
#callforpapers #digital #journalofdigitalsocialresearch #criticaltheory #newmaterialisms
From the archive: Public philosophy lecture on Donna Haraway’s cyborgian feminism
My public philosophy lecture on Donna Haraway’s cyborgian feminism (in Dutch) on invitation by the public philosophy group Felix en Sofie at Perdu in Amsterdam (2019) is now accessible via Soundcloud. With this lecture, I addressed some of the basic tenets of Haraway’s work, and her critical situated knowledges politico-epistemology in particular, while focusing on the role of figurations, such as the cyborg, in her overall-critical new materialisms-anticipating-oeuvre.
#lecture #Haraway #newmaterialisms #FelixenSofie
Geerts, Evelien. 2019. “Donna Haraway’s cyborgian eco-feminism: A critical new materialist perspective” (in Dutch). Felix & Sofie event on the cyber philosophy of Haraway. Perdu. Amsterdam (NL)
New podcast: The Wellness Formula Sunday Service: on the work of Karen Barad. With Candice Jacobs
UK artist Candice Jacobs recently invited me to participate in her Wellness Formula podcast series to talk about the ethico-politics behind new materialisms and Karen Barad’s agential realist work. You can find the postcast here.
#podcast #newmaterialisms #diffraction #CandiceJacobs
Geerts, Evelien & Candice Jacobs, 2020. The Wellness Formula Sunday Service: on the work of Karen Barad. Podcast. Part of The Wednesday Wellness Formula installation by artist Candice Jacobs. Five Years Gallery London (UK)
New publication: “Ethico-onto-epistemology” (Philosophy Today)
I recently published a co-written piece in Philosophy Today-the whole special issue, titled “New Concepts for Materialism,” is now fully available online (open access!). To view this special issue, click here. The article, “Ethico-onto-epistemology,” which I co-wrote with Delphi Carstens (University of the Western Cape), argues for a transversal posthumanities-based pedagogy, rooted in an attentive ethico-onto-epistemology, and does so by reading the schizoanalytical praxes of Deleuzoguattarian theory alongside the work of various feminist new materialist scholars.
In the networked media-drenched world of semiological, chemical, and neuroaffective capitalism “attention has become the most highly prized commodity,” writes Steve Goodman (2010: 194), reiterating the Deleuzoguattarian call to work towards seizing back imagination and affect from destructive systems of capitalist modeling. The schizophrenic double-pull of capitalist relations ensures that while it frees or deterritorializes us, it simultaneously reterritorializes us in a culture of “machinic enslavement” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 457). In higher education systems around the world, machinic enslavement takes the form of a neoliberal profit-based logic (which has dealt particularly heavy blows to the Humanities and Liberal Arts-related academic disciplines—see, for example, Fisher 2009; Braidotti 2013).
GEERTS & CARSTENS 2019: 916
#publication #ethicoontoepistemology #newmaterialisms #philosophytoday
Geerts, Evelien & Delphi Carstens. 2019. “Ethico-Onto-Epistemology.” Philosophy Today. Special issue ‘Materialist Concepts.’ 63 (4): 915-925.
From the archive: “Re-vitalizing the American Feminist-Philosophical Classroom: Transformative Academic Experimentations with Diffractive Pedagogies” (Posthumanism and Higher Education)
In April 2019, I published a piece on posthumanist new materialist pedagogies, and my experiments with diffractive pedagogical tools in particular. This chapter furthermore touches upon the damaging impact of neoliberal reason on institutions of higher education, and my efforts as a teacher to help turn things around by re-vitalizing the classroom. After a critique of current neoliberal ‘borderline times’, I take the reader on a journey of diffractive re-imaginings in which I share some of my experiences of co-learning with undergraduates in an American feminist-philosophical classroom. My central argument is that the neoliberalism-induced crisis in education can be affirmatively counteracted through experimentations with various posthuman and new materialist theories, and the Harawayan-Baradian methodology of diffraction in particular.
Feel free to buy the piece here & get the book, edited by Carol A. Taylor and Annouchka Bayley, here.
Explicit feminist new materialist pedagogies, such as the aforementioned diffractive pedagogical strategies and principles, rise up from within the classroom, and materialize themselves in entanglement with the physicality of the classroom, the socio-cultural capital that is (re-)produced and/or disrupted, and the co learners (students-and-teacher) participating in the course. The syllabus and midterm project are, in my view, particularly important diffractive pedagogical approaches. They both pull the teacher and students out of their self-reflexive minds and neoliberal-propelled hyper individualized learning attitudes and, instead, accentuate the flows, passions, affects and intensities between them as co-learners. Furthermore, they express the new materialist idea that the teacher and the student, plus the teaching apparatuses and environment, are all interconnectedly involved (and transformed) when intra-actively collaborating with one another in the classroom.
GEERTS 2019: 135-6
#publication #fromthearchive #newmaterialisms #criticalpedagogy #posthumanpedagogy
Geerts, Evelien. 2019. “Re-vitalizing the American feminist-philosophical classroom. Transformative academic experimentations with diffractive pedagogical tools.” In Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research. Edited by Carol A. Taylor & Annouchka Bayley, 123-140. Palgrave Macmillan.
From the archive: “Materialist Philosophies Grounded in the Here And Now: Critical New Materialist Constellations & Interventions in Times Of Terror(ism)” (UC Santa Cruz dissertation)
In December 2019, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation at UC Santa Cruz. For those that are interested, check out the longer abstract here.
This dissertation, located at the crossroads of Continental political philosophy, feminist theory, critical theory, intellectual history, and cultural studies, provides a critical cartography of contemporary new materialist thought in its various constellations and assemblages, while using diffractive theorizing to examine two Continental terror(ist) events. It is argued that such a critical cartography is not only a novel but also much needed undertaking, as we, more than almost two decades after the Habermas-Derrida dialogues on terror(ism), are in need of a Zeitgeist-adjusted conceptual framework, and, thus, a revitalization of philosophizing as such, that could lead to an analysis of the complex ontological, epistemological, and eco-ethico-political entangled aspects of global crises, and, specifically, terrorist events, the actual terror they produce, and the bio-/necropolitical repercussions they often engender.
It is clear that Haraway’s philosophy differs significantly from idealistic modern philosophical models. Rather than philosophizing on top of fluffy clouds or within the strict confines of the academic ivory tower, Haraway brings things back down to earth and problematizes the philosophical distinctions between theory and praxis, subject and object, and transcendence and immanence—moves that could almost be considered Deleuzian in nature. Seen from the perspective of Haraway’s situated knowledges, we need to act in the immanent here and now, cultivate an “eco-ethico-political” awareness—as I would like to call it—and create some “serious fuss”.
GEERTS 2019: 111-13
This position is shared by many contemporary critical new materialists, who are interested in various urgent contemporary issues and their impact, such as the Anthropocene and its environmental crises, the ongoing effects of (neo)colonialism, the global rise of neofascism, the right-wing recuperation of recognition-based identity politics and rights, and the (oftentimes literally annihilating) toxicity of extractive neoliberal capitalism. One particular urgent issue that seems central to these critical new materialisms relates to Butler’s new materialist-sounding question of why certain bodies—and thus, embodied subjects—come to matter more than others. In rethinking perennial philosophical debates—for example those regarding subjectivity, agency, and what it means to be assigned the label of “human-enough”—many of today’s critical new materialist thinkers focus on how certain material forms and manifestations of embodied being are considered culturally illegible, non-conforming, different from, commodifiable, and often exploitable and annihilable. In a world that appears to be invested in promoting a global lethargic attitude, contemporary (critical) new materialist thought could make a real difference by cultivating an affirmative eco-ethico-political attentiveness to the world.
#publication #fromthearchive #dissertation #newmaterialisms #philosophy #criticaltheory