Posthuman Convergences – Programme March 11

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POSTHUMAN CONVERGENCES Theories and methodologies

17.08.2020 - 21.08.2020

Location Address

Course Director: Prof. Rosi Braidotti

Lecturers: Prof. Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University), Dr. Simone Bignall (University of Technology Sydney), add all the others

For all information, please contact Prof. Braidotti’s assistant Onessa Novak: gw.braidottiass@uu.nl

COURSE SUMMARY: The 2020 intensive course will focus on “Posthuman Convergences” and will be based on Braidotti’s new monograph Posthuman Knowledge. The other textbook adopted for the course is the 2018 Posthuman Glossary. The aim of this interdisciplinary course is to track the convergences between different branches of posthuman knowledge production. It starts by offering a selected overview of contemporary scholarship on the ‘posthuman turn,’ notably its applications and implications in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The posthuman turn is defined as the convergence, within the context of advanced or cognitive capitalism, of post-humanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentrism on the other. Although these lines of critical thought often overlap, they are distinct phenomena both in terms of their theoretical genealogies and their practical applications. Their current convergence is triggering a number of qualitative developments of a very original nature, which we will try to study. A related aim of the course is to introduce and apply Braidotti’s specific brand of neo-materialist, critical feminist posthuman theory. This approach rests on two main concepts: the emphasis on the embodied and embedded, relational and affective structure of subjectivity and the grounded and accountable nature of knowledge claims. These aspects will be connected through the emphasis on perspectival politics of locations on the one hand and affirmative relational ethics on the other. To strengthen this aspect of the course, participants will be required to read Braidotti’s classic text The Posthuman (Polity Press, 2013) prior to the start of the course. In order to evaluate posthuman convergences and knowledge(s), the course will present, explore and assess the defining features of a selected number of fields within the fast-growing Posthumanities, such as the Environmental, Digital and Medical Humanities. Key questions are: what is the object of enquiry of these emergent areas of research? How do these new fields of knowledge affect the constitution of subjectivity and practice of academic research today? Mindful of the differences in power and access that structure the debate on the posthuman, we will also investigate how posthuman knowledge(s) can assist us in moving beyond the patterns of exclusion of the sexualized, racialized and naturalized “others” that were not recognized as belonging fully to humanity and were also disqualified as subjects of knowledge. Next to outlining the main features of the Posthumanities and studying their implications and applications, the course will also endeavour to present in a collaborative fashion – through panels and tutorials – a selection of concrete case studies drawn from the Environmental, Digital and Medical Humanities. These cases will be presented by teams of participating scholars from a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary areas of research, notably: literature and cultural studies, pedagogy, media and technology studies, legal theory, philosophy and the arts. Throughout the course, special efforts will be made to highlight the crucial contribution of art practices to all areas of posthuman scholarship and research.

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STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE: Following an established tradition, each day of the course is structured as follows: the mornings are devoted to plenary keynote lectures, by the course director, invited teachers and special guests. The afternoons are devoted to parallel seminar sessions. All of the participants will be sub-divided into smaller tutoring groups, led by a team of tutors who follow the same group throughout. Participants will be notified of the group they have been assigned to and receive the name and contact details of their tutor before the summer school starts. Rosi Braidotti will be present every afternoon and will be on call to assist. Every afternoon after the break all the tutorial groups come together for a full hour plenary session devoted to the presentation of artistic and curatorial practices, chaired by one of the tutors. The tutorials are run using posthuman pedagogical practices. This will be followed by an artists’ laboratory in which participants explore and experiment with creative processes that pay homage to the entanglements and assemblages of posthuman ecologies. The day will be concluded by a closing plenary session in the form of thematic panel presentations by selected course participants. The panels will be chaired by the tutors in turn. In the final panel, all tutor groups will present the work they have done over the course of the week. THE TEACHING STAFF: Rosi Braidotti (B.A. Hons. Australian National University, 1978; PhD Cum Laude, Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981; Senior Fulbright Scholar, 1994;Honorary Degrees Helsinki, 2007 and Linkoping, 2013; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA), 2009; Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE), 2014; Knighthood in the order of the Netherlands Lion, 2005). Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University (2007-2016). Her publications include: Patterns of Dissonance, 1991; Metamorphoses, 2002; Transpositions, 2006 La philosophie, lá où on ne l’attend pas, 2009; Nomadic Subjects, 1994 and 2011a; Nomadic Theory, 2011b; The Posthuman, 2013; and Posthuman Knowledge (2019). She co-edited with Paul Gilroy Conflicting Humanities (2016) and with Maria Hlavajova The Posthuman Glossary (2018). See also: www.rosibraidotti.com. Simone Bignall is a research professor in Jumbunna Indigenous Nations and Collaborative Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. Her book publications include Postcolonial Agency: Critique and Constructivism (2010); Deleuze and the Postcolonial (with Paul Patton, 2010); Agamben and Colonialism (2012); Deleuze and Pragmatism (with Sean Bowden and Paul Patton, 2014); Posthuman Ecologies: Complexity and Process after Deleuze (with Rosi Braidotti, 2019); and Exit Colonialism: Ethics after Enjoyment (forthcoming, 2020).

[ADD THE REST WHEN CONFIRMED] VIDEO LECTURERS: [ADD NAMES AND BIOS IF ANY] TUTORS: Ruth Clemens is Lecturer in Literary Studies at Utrecht University, and she is currently finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Leeds Trinity University and the University of Leeds. Her research interests include experimental and avant-garde literature and film, Deleuze and Guattari, textual materiality, translation and multilingualism, critical transnationalism, and midcentury and modernist studies. Fiona Hillary is a lecturer and Industry Fellow in the Master of Arts - Art in Public Space at the School of Art, RMIT University. She is a practicing public artist, collaborating on range of temporary and permanent

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investigative projects. Fiona also is a PhD Candidate at Deakin University exploring the role creative practice holds in our rehearsal of the future. Emily Jones is Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex, UK. She is a feminist international legal theorist working from a critical posthuman perspective. Her current work focuses on: military technologies, feminist and queer methodologies, the granting of legal personality to the environment and the interplay between work, technology, post-capitalism and the law. Goda Klumbyte is a PhD candidate at the University of Kassel and a graduate of Utrecht University, Media and Performance studies (MA cum laude). Her research engages feminist science and technology studies and critical computing. Her PhD research at the University of Kassel focuses on knowledge production in and through machine learning systems. Kay Sidebottom has worked in adult education for 15 years and now manages degree programmes in Learning and Teaching at Leeds Beckett University, England. She is interested in posthuman approaches to curriculum and pedagogy and is using her PhD in Education and Social Justice as a vehicle to both explore this and to instigate change. COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Participants in the course are expected to have read before the start of the intensive course the compulsory texts assigned for the lectures and the tutorials. Attendance to all the sessions is compulsory and the participants are required to sign up formal attendance lists for all the sessions. They are also expected to actively take part in tutorials, prepare questions and discussion points for plenary sessions, both the morning ones following the keynote lectures and the closing plenaries after the afternoon tutorials. CERTIFICATES and CREDITS: Participants who meet all the requirements, attend all the sessions – or can formally justify their absence-, and show active participation in the discussions will be issued with an official Utrecht University Certificate of attendance on the last day of the school. This intensive course grants participants 2.0 ECTS credits. COMPULSORY READING: The basic textbooks for the course are Posthuman Knowledge (Polity Press, 2019) by Rosi Braidotti and selected chapters from Posthuman Ecologies (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), edited by Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall, which all participants are expected to buy. BACKGROUND READING: Please note that all participants are expected to have read Rosi Braidotti’s book The Posthuman (Polity Press 2013), and the introduction and selected entries of The Posthuman Glossary (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, which all participants are advised to buy. REGISTRATION: Applications are now open online: https://www.utrechtsummerschool.nl/register/

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SCHEDULE AND PROGRAM

Saturday and Sunday, 15-16 August

Time Activity Description

12.00-18.00 Key pick up

You will find the exact key pick up location in the pre-departure information, which becomes available after you have paid the course fee. NOTE: You will have to hand in your key on Friday morning

Monday, 17 August

Introduction to Transversal Posthuman Knowledges

Time Activity Description

9.00-9.30 Opening and welcome Official Welcome: Rosi Braidotti Logistics introduction: Onessa Novak

09.30-10.45

Introductory lecture: Rosi Braidotti “Introduction to Posthuman Critical Thought I ”

ASSIGNED READING: Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. “Introduction: Posthuman, All-Too Human”; chapter 1 “ Posthuman condition” ; chapter 2: “Posthuman Subjects”. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 1-74. RECOMMENDED READING Braidotti Rosi, 2013. “Post-Humanism: Life beyond the Self” and “Post-Anthropocentrism: Life beyond the Species”. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 13-104.

10.45-11.00 Short break

11.00-12.00

Lecture: Rosi Braidotti “Introduction to Posthuman Critical Thought II”

ASSIGNED READING: Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Chapter 5 “How To Do Posthuman Thinking”. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 122-52. Braidotti, Rosi. 2018. “Posthuman Critical Theory”. In : Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (eds.) Posthuman Glossary. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 339-42. RECOMMENDED READING : Alaimo, Stacy. 2018. “Trans-corporeality”. In : Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (eds.) Posthuman Glossary. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 435-38.

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00-14.30 Tutoring sessions ASSIGNED READING

RECOMMENDED READING

14.30-14.45 Short Break

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14.45-15.45 The Artists’ Laboratory

15.45-16.00 Short break

16.00-17.30

Panel 1: Posthuman Pedagogy Moderator: Kay Sidebottom

ASSIGNED READINGS: Strom, Kathryn J. and Martin, Adrian D. 2013. Putting Philosophy to Work in the Classroom: Using Rhizomatics to Deterritorialise Neoliberal Thought and Practice. In: Studying Teacher Education, 9(3), pp. 219-35. Snaza, Nathan, et al. 2014. Toward a Posthumanist Education. In: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30(2), pp. 39-55. Taylor, Carol A. 2018. Edu-crafting posthumanist adventures in/for higher education: A speculative musing. In: Parallax, 24(3), pp. 371-81. Freitas, Elizabeth de. 2019. Love of Learning: Amorous and Fatal. In: Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall (eds) Posthuman Ecologies. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 87-104. RECOMMENDED READINGS: Bozalek, Vivienne. 2018. Socially Just Pedagogies. In : Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (eds.) Posthuman Glossary. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 396-98.

Tuesday, 18 August

Posthuman Literary and Cultural Studies

Time Activity Description

9.00-9.45

Lecture: Rosi Braidotti “The Critical Posthumanities”

ASSIGNED READING: Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Chapter 4 “The Critical PostHumanities”. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 100-21. RECOMMENDED READING Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. “Posthuman Humanities: Life beyond Theory”. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 143-85.

09.45-10.45

Lecture: Anna Hickey- Moody “Why New Materialism now?” Chair: Rosi Braidotti

ASSIGNED READING: RECOMMENDED READING:

10.45-11.00 Short Break

11.00-12.00 Lecture: Ruth Clemens

ASSIGNED READING: RECOMMENDED READING

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[TITLE] Chair: Rosi Braidotti

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00-14.30 Tutoring sessions ASSIGNED READINGS PER TUTORING GROUP

14.30-14.45 Short Break

14.45-15.45 The Artists’ Laboratory

15.45-16.00 Short break

16.00-17.30

Panel 2: Ethics, Poetics, Autopoeisis: Expressing the Posthuman Moderator: Ruth Clemens

ASSIGNED READINGS:

Parikka, Jussi. 2019. Cartographies of Environmental Arts.

In: Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall (eds.) Posthuman

Ecologies. London: Rowman and Littlefield International,

pp. 41-60.

Alaimo, Stacy. 2018. Trans-corporeality. In: Rosi Braidotti

and Maria Hlavajova (eds.) Posthuman Glossary. London

and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 435-38.

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Tuin, Iris van der. 2018. Neo/New Materialisms. In: Rosi

Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (eds.) Posthuman Glossary.

London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 277-79.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1997. Literature and Life. In: Essays Critical

and Clinical. Translated by Daniel W. Smith and Michael E.

Greco. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Wednesday, 19 August Digital Cultures

Time Activity Description

9.00-9.45

Lecture: Rosi Braidotti “We Do Not Know What Bodies Can Do I”

ASSIGNED READING: Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities. In: Theory, Culture & Society, pp. 1-31. Article first published online: May 4, 2018.

9.45-10.45

Lecture: Goda Klumbyte [TITLE] Chair: Rosi Braidotti

ASSIGNED READING RECOMMENDED READING

10.45-11.00 Short break

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11.00-12.00

Lecture: TROY [TITLE] Chair: Rosi Braidotti

ASSIGNED READING RECOMMENDED READING

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00-14.30 Tutoring sessions ASSIGNED READING

RECOMMENDED READING

14.30-14.45 Short Break

14.45-15.45 The Artists’ Laboratory

15.45-16.00 Short break

16.00-17.30 Panel 4: Algorithmic Culture Moderator: Goda Klumbyte

ASSIGNED READINGS:

Flaxman, Gregory. 2019. Out of Control: From Political

Economy to Political Ecology. In: Rosi Braidotti and Simone

Bignall (eds.) Posthuman Ecologies. London: Rowman &

Littlefield International, pp. 205-21.

Simondon, Gilbert. 1965/2015. Culture and Technics. In:

Radical Philosophy, 189,

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/culture-and-

technics-1965.

Hörl, Erich. 2018. General Ecology. In: Rosi Braidotti and

Maria Hlavajova (eds). Posthuman Glossary. London and

New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 172-75.

Rieder, Bernhard. 2018. Digital Citizenship. In: Rosi

Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (eds). Posthuman Glossary.

London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 101-04.

Terranova, Tiziana. 2018. Hypersocial. In: Rosi Braidotti

and Maria Hlavajova (eds). Posthuman Glossary. London

and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 195-97.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

Rouvroy, Antoinette and Stiegler, Bernard. 2016. The

Digital Regime of Truth: From the Algorithmic

Governmentality to a New Rule of Law. In: La Deleuziana,

(3), pp. 6-27, http://www.ladeleuziana.org/wp-

content/uploads/2016/12/Rouvroy-Stiegler_eng.pdf.

Striphas, Ted. 2015. Algorithmic Culture. In European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(4-5), pp. 395 –412.

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17.30-18.00 Break

18.00-21.00 Film screening, discussion and drinks (optional)

Thursday, 20 August Posthuman Legal Theory/Facing the Law

Time Activity Description

9.00-9.45 Lecture: Rosi Braidotti : ‘We Do Not Know What Bodies Can Do II”

ASSIGNED READING: Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Chapter 4: “Posthuman Knowledge Production”. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 75-99.

RECOMMENDED READING

09.45-10.45

Lecture: Simone Bignall ‘Shared Sovereignty: Colonial Humanism, Posthuman Law and Excolonial Jurisprudence’ Chair: Rosi Braidotti

Australia stands alone amongst the CANZUS countries

formed through British imperialism, as the only settler-

colonial state never to have entered into treaty with

Aboriginal First Nations as original sovereigns. Having

become a signatory to the UN Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples in 2009, this situation seems set to

change as Australia struggles to materialise its

commitment to observing the Indigenous right to self-

determination and to ratify this principle within domestic

law. While the Federal Government maintains its long-

term reluctance to entertain the notion of an overarching

treaty with Indigenous Australians, some regional state

governments have begun treaty processes with the

Indigenous Nations within their jurisdictions. Since treaties

imply a sovereign-to-sovereign relationship, Australia

faces a situation where the singular system of law

imposed with British rule at the time of colonial invasion

must give way to an arrangement that accommodates

shared sovereignty in the relational coexistence of

multiple politico-legal authorities. This opens

opportunities for contesting colonial humanism as the

conceptual scaffolding supporting the singular sovereignty

of the Australian nation-state, and for the innovative

development of a posthuman legal pluralism. In this

session, we will discuss how treaty jurisprudence

potentially signals a movement of ‘exit’ from colonialism,

by enabling a posthumanist conceptualisation of legal

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personality and establishing a more inclusive notion of

political community as the basis for Australian common

law.

ASSIGNED READINGS McMillan, M., & Rigney, S. (2016). The Place of the First

Peoples in the International Sphere: A Necessary Starting

Point for Justice for Indigenous Peoples. Melbourne

University Law Review, 39(3), 981-1002.

Bignall, S. (2014). “The Collaborative Struggle for

Excolonialism”, J. Settler Colonial Studies, 4:4, 340-356.

RECOMMENDED READING

10.45-11.00 Short break

11.00-12.00

Lecture: Emily Jones “ Posthuman Law” Chair: Rosi Braidotti

This lecture will begin by outlining the liberal humanist underpinnings of international/law. Focusing in on recent debates around autonomous weapons systems, the humanist underpinnings of these debates and the legal frameworks surrounding them will be analysed. The lecture will then go on to think through what a posthuman analysis of contemporary military technologies can add to these legal-ethico debates, drawing on examples of technologies in use, including technologies used in drone warfare and human enhancement technologies (HETs) among others, to challenge distinctions currently made between autonomous and automated technologies. The lecture will conclude by searching for the (im)possibility of a posthuman law. ASSIGNED READINGS Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. “The Inhuman: Life Beyond Death”. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 105-42. Wilcox, Lauren. 2016. Embodying Algorithmic War: Gender, Race and the Posthuman in Warfare. In: Security Dialogue, pp. 1-18. Heathcote, Gina. 2018. War’s Perpetuity: Disabled Bodies of War and the Exoskeletons of Equality. In: Australian Feminist Law Journal, 44(1), pp. 71-91. RECOMMENDED READINGS On the colonial/gendered/humanist underpinnings of

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International Law/Legal Personality: Rose Sydney Parfitt, ‘Theorizing Recognition and International Personality,’ in Anne Orford and Florian Hoffman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 583-99. Mussawir, Edward. 2019. A modification in the subject of right: Deleuze, Jurisprudence and the Diagram of Bees in Roman Law. In: Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall (eds.) Posthuman Ecologies. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 243-64.

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00-14.30 Tutoring sessions ASSIGNED READINGS

14.30-14.45 Short Break

14.45-15.45 The Artists’ Laboratory

15.45-16.00 Short break

16.00-17.30

Panel 3: The Medical Post-Humanities and Posthuman Law Moderator: Emily Jones

This lecture will analyse the humanist underpinnings of the debates and the legal frameworks on autonomous weapons systems. The lecture will then go on to think through what a posthuman analysis of contemporary military technologies can add to these legal-ethico debates, drawing on examples of technologies in use, including drone warfare and human enhancement technologies (HETs) among others, to challenge distinctions currently made between autonomous and automated technologies and the human and the machine. The lecture will conclude by searching for the (im)possibility of a posthuman law. ASSIGNED READINGS Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. “The Inhuman: Life Beyond Death”. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 105-42. Wilcox, Lauren. 2016. Embodying Algorithmic War: Gender, Race and the Posthuman in Warfare. In: Security Dialogue, pp. 1-18. Heathcote, Gina. 2018. War’s Perpetuity: Disabled Bodies of War and the Exoskeletons of Equality. In: Australian Feminist Law Journal, 44(1), pp. 71-91. RECOMMENDED READINGS Mussawir, Edward. 2019. A modification in the subject of right: Deleuze, Jurisprudence and the Diagram of Bees in

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Roman Law. In: Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall (eds.) Posthuman Ecologies. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 243-64. Jones, Emily. 2018. A Posthuman-Xenofeminist Analysis of the Discourse on Autonomous Weapons and Other Killing Machines. In: Australian Feminist Law Journal, 44(1), pp. 93-118. On the colonial/gendered/humanist underpinnings of International Law/Legal Personality: Rose Sydney Parfitt, ‘Theorizing Recognition and International Personality,’ in Anne Orford and Florian Hoffman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 583-99.

Friday, 21 August

The Ethics of Posthuman Knowledge Production

Time Activity Description

9.00-9.30 Doors open; handing in keys; picking up certificates

09.30-10.45

Lecture: Rosi Braidotti “Posthuman Affirmative Ethics”

ASSIGNED READING: Rosi Braidotti: Chapter 6: “ Affirmative Ethics” and chapter 7: “ The Inexhaustible” in : Posthuman Knowledge . RECOMMENDED READING: Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

o Chapter 2: On Difference between the Ethics and a Morality

o Chapter 3: The Letters on Evil (correspondence with Blyenbergh)

o Chapter 6: Spinoza and Us

10.45-11.00 Short break

11.00-12.00

Panel with lecturers and tutors: “Posthuman Convergences and Affirmative Ethics Moderator: Rosi Braidotti

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00-15.00 Closing panel by tutor groups

15.00-15.30 Closing remarks: Rosi Braidotti

End of Summer School course

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