PHuN: Posthuman Politics (Inheriting from 1968)

The Second Annual Post-Human Network Graduate Student Conference (2018)

#PHuN, #critical-theory, #posthumanities, #cybernetics, #symposia, #conference, #organization, #post-human-network

collaboration with: Celina Osuna, Jonathan Bratt, Zach Thomas, Asa Sakrison, Emiddio Vasquez

Call for Papers

As we approach the 50-year anniversary of 1968, a high point of activism and protest around the world, we are interested in reflecting on and engaging with 1968’s legacy of activism as it influences theory and practice. While 1968 is often associated with the May protests in France, this time period saw various protests and radical action occurring at places around the world, including the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, student movements in Mexico, the Cultural Revolution in China, and anti-war protests and counter-culture movements in the USA. Many of these events still resonate in our contemporary sociopolitical atmospheres. We are interested in bringing the legacy of 1968 into the present through presentations engaging with any of the following questions:

  • What and how have we inherited from the events of ‘68 and its global figures?
  • How have practices such as ‘activism’ and ‘social movements’ changed in the last fifty years?
  • What practices are sufficient or insufficient to the evolving impositions of climate change, integrated world capitalism, or dominant cultures of technoscience?
  • How can enacted events help us to think about eco- and biopolitical issues outside of apocalyptic or salvific discourses?
  • How can we rethink notions of speed, acceleration, and slowness apart from cybernetic frameworks of accelerationism and transhumanism, or the reified subject of embodiment studies or phenomenology?

CFP Biblliogaphy

Arrighi, Giovanni, Terence Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1989. Antisystemic Movements. London: Verso.

Boggs, Carl. 1994. “Rethinking the Sixties Legacy: From New Left to New Social Movements.” Pp. 331-355 in Social Movements Critiques, Concepts, Case-Studies, edited by Stanford Lyman. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bourg, Julian. 2007. From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Elbaum, Max. 2002. “What Legacy from the Radical Internationalism of 1968?” Radical History Review 82(1): 37-64.

Rootes, Christopher. 2008. “The Environmental Movement.” Pp. 295-305 in 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956–1977, edited by Martin Klimke and

Joachim Scharloth. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Watts, Michael. 2001. “1968 and All That…” Progress in Human Geography 25(2): 157-188.

Keynote: Kavita Philip, University of California Irvine: The Pirate Function: Developmental Lag, Illegitimate Generation,+ Posthuman Contigency

Kavita Philip is Associate Professor of History with affiliate faculty positions in Anthropology and Informatics at UCI. She has worked in environmental studies, colonial history, postcolonial studies, history of technology, political economy, and science fiction studies. She is author of Civilizing Natures (2003 and 2004), and co-editor of four volumes, curating interdisciplinary work in radical history, political science, art, activism, gender, and public policy. She has a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell, an M.S. in Physics from the University of Iowa, and a B.Sc. in Physics (with Chemistry and Mathematics minors) from the University of Madras, India.

Program

Friday, February 23

9:00-10:30 // Panel: Ecologies // Wrigley Hall L1-04

  • "It's the [Toxicity of Pervasive Humanism], Stupid: Using Post-Humanism as a Theoretical Guide to Climate Change Mitigation Efforts", Carrie Clower, University of Alabama
  • "Asbestos to Asphalt: Earthbound Agency from Land Art to Public Fieldwork", Ellie Irons, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • "A Schizophrenic Clattering of the Jaws: Encountering the Face of Climate Change", Angela Sakrison, Arizona State University

11:00-12:30 // Panel: Socialities // Wrigley Hall L1-04

  • "Distortion as Tactic: Psychedelic Sights and Sounds of the 1960s", Celina Osuna, Arizona State University
  • " Mao, Badiou, and Cultural Revolution" Jonathan Bratt, Arizona State University
  • "Technocratic Dreams, Social Management & Abandoning the Left Robert William Poe", Arizona State University

2:00-3:00 // Workshop // Wrigley Hall L1-04

  • "Realizing Transphysical Spaces: Psychogeography, Sensing Urbanisms and Posthuman Ecologies", Josh Grant-Young, University of Guelph

3:30-5:00 // Keynote // Wrigley Hall L1-04

  • "The Pirate Function: Developmental Lag, Illegitimate Generation, and Posthuman Contingency", Kavita Philip, University of California, Irvine

Saturday, February 24

9:00-10:30 // Panel: Technologies // Wrigley Hall L1-04

  • "The Second Phase of Sustainability in the Field of Design: Identifying the Success Factors of Design Innovation Through Design Thinking in the Ethnic Craft Industry in Northern Thailand", Hyojin Lee, Arizona State University
  • "Man’s Wish for a Womb: Alchemical Reproductive Politics in Popular Narratives of Artificial Life", Nat Mengist, Independent Scholar
  • "The P.L.A.C.E. Project: How Transpiring Ways of Situation Affect Agency", David Wilson and Brent Dell, University of Texas at Dallas

11:00-12:30 // Wrigley Hall L1-04 // Panel: Poetics I

  • "The End of the Faustian Man and the Limits of Progress: “The Possibility of Doing the Impossible” and Environmental Concerns in John Cage’s United States Bicentennial Compositions", Joseph Finkel, Independent Scholar
  • "American AIDS Activism in the Media and Arts", Leslie Smith, Arizona State University
  • "I am Not your ‘Boy’ or ‘Gal’ in 2018: Afrofuturist Liminal Space as Praxis and Pushback to Post-Humanism", Sakena Young-Scaggs, Arizona State University

2:00-3:30 // Wrigley Hall L1-04 // Panel: Poetics II

  • "Materiality, Autonomy, Horror: The Deep Play of Theory-Fiction", Cody Jones, University of Chicago
  • "Ethicoaesthetic Critique in Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux", Zachary Thomas, Arizona State University
  • "Kobo Abe and What More can a Human Be, Emiddio Vasquez, Arizona State University

4:00-6:00 // Matthew Center 222 // Arts and Media

  • "Corporeal Financial Liquidity and Gestures of Trans-action: Experimental and Experiential Speculative Economics", Garrett Laroy Johnson, Arizona State University
  • “Underground Weather”: 1968 → 2068, an Algorithmic Speculative Fiction, Noah Travis Phillips, University of Denver
  • " Attuning the Body, Stretching the Feeling. A Coliseum for the Senses", Desiree Foerster, University of Potsdam
  • "Atmospheres Workshop || Exploratory Platform: Caustic Scenography + Responsive Cloud Formation", Nima Navab and Thierry Dumont, Topological Media Lab

8:00-10:00 // Digital Arts Ranch // Performance Session Curated and Produced by Emiddio Vasquez Performers:

  • Gabby Isaac
  • Jack McConnell
  • Anthony Obr
  • Michael Gelinas
  • NPSYCH MFK