Uppsala, 25 September 2015
Posthumanism: Challenges for the Humanities, a workshop organised by the Mind and Nature node at Uppsala University in collaboration with the HumAnimal Group at the Centre for Gender Research.
Introduction by the main organizers: Anna Samuelsson and Mari Granath Lagercrantz.
Keynote by Manuela Rossini: “What is Posthumanism? Challenges beyond Postmodernism”
The workshop aims to discuss what Posthumanism is, how we understand and use it, what consequences it may have for different disciplines, research topics and for the Humanities in general.
Malta, 15-18 June 2015
SCALE, programme chair: Ivan Callus
The 9th conference of the SLSAeu, the European Society for Science, Literature and the Arts.
There will be a panel with members of the Critical Posthumanism Network and we also plan to launch of The Posthuman Review then/there.
Confirmed CPN participants: Ivan Callus, Bruce Clarke, Stefan Herbrechter, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Manuela Rossini, Cary Wolfe.
Geneva, 4-6 June 2015
APPROACHING POSTHUMANISM AND THE POSTHUMAN
Conference and CUSO Doctoral Workshop, organised by Kimberly Frohreich, Bryn Skibo-Birney, Manuela Rossini and Deborah Madsen.
Keynote Speakers:
Stefan Herbrechter, Coventry University | slides and audio
Cary Wolfe, Rice University | slides and audio
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington University | slides and audio
Margrit Shildrick, Linköping University | slides and audio
Posthumanism continues to spark debates as to how it is and should be defined, particularly in relation to humanism. One might ask whether the posthuman is merely an imaginative, literary, and/or theoretical figure or if we are already posthuman. Is posthumanism simply “after the human” or does it speak to a being beyond, above, within, encompassing, and surpassing what we currently know as “the human”? Moreover, even if we recognize that posthumanism is inextricably bound to and wound up in humanist discourse, does the posthuman figure effectively open up alternative perspectives and positions from which to question, to destabilize, and to decenter the human?
London, 11 March 2015
CCSR Annual Lecture
Rosi Braidotti: “Posthuman, all too Human? A Cultural Political Cartography” video
Coventry, 9 March 2015
Radical Methodologies for the Posthumanities
Seminar 3 of the Centre for Disruptive Media’s “Disrupting the Humanities” series.
Monika Bakke: “Deep Time Environments: Art and the Materiality of Life beyond the Human” video
Mannheim, 12-14 February 2015
MenschMaschineTier: Entwürfe posthumaner Interaktionen
Stefan Herbrechter: “Inhuman”
ICI Berlin, 16 June 2014
Vicki Kirby: “Posthumanism on the line” video
An enduring theme in Jacques Derrida’s work has been a critical interrogation of human exceptionalism. However, Derrida’s purpose appears somewhat contradictory: He questions the conventional ways in which the difference between human capacities and those of the animal world are adjudicated and valued, and yet there is a strong sense in his work that anthropocentrism is inescapable. Derrida enjoins us to “restructure the whole problematic” of the animal and of what is proper to man, but how to do it?
SLSAeu, Turin, 3-6 June 2014
LIFE, IN THEORY, programme chair: Cristina Iuli
Berne, 1-2 December 2013
EXTRA-SUBJECTIVITIES
Manuela Rossini (co-authored by Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter): “Post(humanist) Subjectivities”
Critical posthumanism, as a mode of thinking following after poststructuralism, continues to participate in the deconstruction of subjectivity. It argues, at once, for the continued critical necessity of subjectivity as a concept, as well as for a critical engagement with the possibility of new posthuman or at least posthumanist and postanthropocentric forms of subjectivity.
Aarhus, 14-15 November 2013
NEGOTIATING THE HUMANITIES
Keynote by Associate Rosi Braidotti; invited contributions by Executive Directors Stefan Herbrechter and Manuela Rossini to the panel debate “Post-human Humanities for the Global Era”.
SLSA, Milwaukee, 27-30 September 2012
NONHUMAN
“Posthumanist Approaches to the Nonhuman – A Transatlantic Comparison”, a roundtable with Ivan Callus, Bruce Clarke, Stefan Herbrechter, Manuela Rossini and Cary Wolfe.
In English Departments and beyond, ‘theory’ and its aftermaths have been dominated by US- and UK-based institutions, publishers, journals and academics. Yet the influence of theory in its Anglo-American forms has always been reliant on Continental European ideas. Similar patterns can be discerned within the latest theoretical paradigm, posthumanism. Theorists such as Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Cary Wolfe and Bruce Clarke have developed their thinking through prolonged engagement with Continental European philosophical traditions and theorizations of system-environment interaction. This roundtable mapped and critically examined the genealogies, geographies, practices of appropriation, and politics of translation which have been at work in the rise of posthumanism and its figurations of the nonhuman.
MLA Annual Convention 2011, Los Angeles
NARRATING LIVES
“Whither Posthumanism?”, a panel convened by Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter.
This special session revisited some of the foremost concerns within posthumanism: posthuman(ist) subjectivity; finitude and the prospect of ‘life after people’; shifting relationships among humans, animals, and machines; the politics and ethics of the posthuman, the idea of a “post humanism without technology”, etc.
The presentations resulted in the special issue Posthumanist Subjectivities of the journal Subjectivity (5.3, 2012).
SLSAeu, Riga, 15-19 June 2010
TEXTURES, programme chair: Manuela Rossini
“Addressing the Humanities: cognitivism, neuroscience, deconstruction, …”, a panel with position papers by Yves Abrioux, Stefan Herbrechter, Vicki Kirby, Joseph Tabbi, Elizabeth Wilson.
CCCT, Cardiff, 12-14 May 2010
ZOONTOTECHNICS (ANIMALITY/TECHNICITY)
More recently philosophical-ethical revaluations of the ‘animal’ and renewed reflections on various aspects of technology and technics, both within and beyond the emerging framework of posthumanism, have provided two of the most stimulating developments in critical and cultural theory. If Aristotle’s definition of ‘man’ was that he is a zoon logon ekhon (animal having speech) and a zoon politikon (political animal), in what ways has he become a zoon tekhnikon? Is this ultimately necessary to ensure the survival of the species or is it conducive to its transformation?
SLSAeu, Amsterdam, 13-16 June 2006
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, programme chair: Manuela Rossini
Relevant streams:
Revisions of Humanism – Visions of Posthumanism (organized by Manuela Rossini):
This stream invited contributions that dealt with the manifold articulations of the posthuman and with post/humanist responses in science, art (including literature), philosophy and theory to the ontological and epistemological crisis of what it means to be human. It also addressed the institutional question of how to move the humanities into the posthumanities.
Feminism, Science, Science Fiction (organized by Manuela Rossini)
The aim of this stream was to promote conversations between scientists, artists, writers, literary critics, philosopher, and historians of science whose re- search and teaching is informed by feminism – in theory and practice – in order to move beyond the well-worn debate between essentialism vs. constructivism or nature vs. nurture.
The New Aesthetics (organized by renee c. hoogland)
This stream looked at developments in contemporary aesthetics that both take into account the demise of a traditional humanist aesthetic that merely sees art as a civilizing force, and that open up a space for (re)thinking the demonic and destructive power of the aesthetic – of violence, for instance, or of dehumanizing technological practices and bio-engineering. The “new aestheticists” not only raise urging questions about the practices of critical theory, but also about the kinds of knowledge or modes of knowing that aesthetic practice, on the one hand, and science and technology, on the other, enable as well as preclude.
Companion Species: Ecology and Art (organized by Manuela Rossini and Cor van der Weele).
Guided by Donna Haraway’s figure “companion species”, this stream told a story of co-habitation, co-evolution and cross-species sociality, which is also a story about biopower and technoscience, and about how to forge livable politics and ontologies in current life worlds or naturecultures.
SLSA Conference, Chicago, 10-13 November 2005
EMERGENT SYSTEMS, COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENTS
“Posthumanist Metamorphosis”, a panel convened by Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini. With presentations by Neil Badmington on the posthumanities, Ivan Callus/Stefan Herbrechter on theorizing a critical posthumanism ‘without technology’, Manuela Rossini on feminist new-materialist and postanthropocentric readings of literary metamorphs).
CongressCATH, Bradford, 30 June – 3 July 2005
THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF VIRTUALITY AND INDEXICALITY
“Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, Posthumanism: Encounters, Engagements, Evasions, Exclusions”, an open session organized by Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter.
With papers by Ivan Callus, Laurent Milesi and Manuela Rossini.
European Feminist Research Conference, Lund, 20-24 August 2003
GENDER AND POWER IN THE NEW EUROPE
“Science/Fiction: Imagineering Posthuman Bodies“, presentation by Manuela Rossini.