Tuesday, May 19th, 7pm, online
Climate Propagandas
The talk is already available on our Youtube channel, yet, you also can listen and watch the lecture tomorrow at 7pm, followed by a LIVE-Q&A also tomorrow, Tuesday, May19th at 7.45pm on Jitsi, moderated by Gene Ray of the Critical Studies seminar. [N.B. Jitsi operates better on Chrome web-browser.]
The Capitalocene’s burning of fossil fuels has accelerated our becoming fossils-in-the-making. Thus, human propagandas—narratives, imaginaries, and infrastructures—can no longer claim to solely author the world, as if that world was a mere passive resource waiting to be extracted from and molded in our interests. Now other actors and agents in that same world—such as extreme weather—extract from and author us just the same. Nonetheless, our propagandas will still substantially define whether humans will have a place in the future worldings of this world and whether meaningful survival within it remains an actual possibility. Considering the present pandemic, what are the current climate propagandas that compete over the possibility of human existence in our new ecosystem of floods and toxins? And how to understand the role of art and culture in the imaginaries these propagandas aim to bring about?