lightsinthedistance-modernlife

From Ecology and the Environmental Humanities, Rice University, September 13. Larry Butz presiding. Claire Colebrook in attendance. Rice is nice as there are a lot of auditoria in which to do such things. This was in Farnsworth which is a rather attractively octagonal one. Malfunctioning

...from the Wordsworth Conference. Nick Roe, awesome biography of Keats, MCs.

This is my talk from the International Byron Conference. Laugh! Cry! Hear my exasperation at Simon Critchley!

Sound, noise, ambience, OOO, music, with some nice examples (Felix Hess and Subject 13). Really an OOO theory of sound. From Tuned City Brussels. Gernot Böhme, whom I've been wanting to meet for ages, was very into it. And I believe that at some point it will be published. Christoph Cox also spoke: I shall upload my notes as soon as I can. Very nice chap. Earworms

Here are some short details about my contribution, "Earworms." My panel is called "Operative Ambience" and I believe it's on Saturday 6.29 at 11am.

This was a short but very helpful (for me) Q&A from my talk at Yes Naturally.

This is the Yes Naturally talk. It was extraordinary as I've said to see the art of Ai Wei Wei and so on, all exploring the idea of ecology without nature, which was the brief of the exhibition. I was struck by the exemplarity of Person Broersen and Margit Lukacs's movie Mastering Bambi , which was by turns an idyllic pastoral and a horror movie—yet without actors and with only one single shot, simply changes in color and music, a Möbius journey through a dark forest. Wow. I'll post more on everything as time goes by. Q&A mp3 to follow.

C17 and C18 North America variations on themes in cultural history of climate Samuel Williams, “Change of Climate in North America and Europe” (1790) “The whole earth is less subject to extreme cold than it was formerly. Every climate has become more temperature, and uniform, and equal and this will continue to be the cse so long as diligence, industry, and agriculture shall mark the conduct of mankind” 1988: “Since greenhouse gases are chiefly the result of human industry and agriculture, it is not an exaggeration to say that civilization itself is the ultimate cause of global warming” Colonial elites had a stake in talking about climate 1638: descriptions of New England include language about the climate to produce feeling of security Edward Long C18 response to Buffon, 1784: “phlogistic particles from myriads of reeking dunghills, from the fumes of furnaces from the fire s and smoke of ten thousand crowded cities...” He can’t believe humans can change climate Nova Scotia a...

I want to reflect on what we’ve just heard. It began with the proposition that this term isn’t useful for public policy. But I can also see the reverse. Cost benefit analysis as conventionally undertaken seems not all that useful for problems of the Anthropocene. Maybe we need to change the concept!  People’s discount rates are even steeper than economists’: 50 years from now, who cares?  My own topic here is going to be a bit disorganized. I haven’t spoken on this theme before. Stray thoughts on cases for the term.  Agassiz, Vernadsky, Stoppani (the most crucial that Jan mentioned): the Anthropozoic (1873) humans acquired power that they did in modern times Word cropped up 1958 (first of all) according to Google.  becomes part of vocab after Crutzen Journal of the Anthropocene Anthropocene Review Elementa: J. of Anthropocene Science Duetsches-Museum Munich/Haus der Kulturen der Welt National Geographic I’m going to begin with a very theoretical case One...

“Public Policy over Massive Time Scales”  David and I are law professors focused on public policy. How to make the world better through it. My first reaction was that the idea was not useful at all. But this is a topic we can discuss. There is a related issue of massive time scales.  I’m not going to say the word Anthropocene again. But you’ll see why what we say might be relevant.  Question: when the government implements a project, how far into the future should it calculate the costs and benefits?  Amortization rate of benefits: economists assume this Examples: bridge (ca 30 years) Reform of judiciary ( Radioactive waste (lasts 10 000 to 1 million years) Power plants (climate change--indefinite time scale) future benefits discounted by economists; build bridge, or you can set aside money in bank let it accumulate interest then 10 years from now people can use that to benefit themselves 3% growth >> .97 discount factor Discounting: typical project h...

Dipesh: the way to make this work is not to have discussants and respondents Now Jan Zalasiewicz will speak, the only non-social science/humanities scholar here geologist at U of Leicester The Earth after Us (2008) he is part of the push to make the Anthropocene acceptable >> International Stratigraphy Association this is as political as naming something “genocide” or “famine” he will address us on the history of the term and the current status of the concept It’s useful to study this phenomenon not simply in terms of rock!  International Stratigraphic Chart. There is a problem in the study of Earth. We have to deal with 4.5 billion years of complex history. No way to deal without resorting to some means of trickery.  We take dynasties of time and simply categorize them into successive units that we can handle. To give us labels that we can use. It simply tries to represent the major events and turning points in Earth history.  Where are we? Currently we a...

I’m going to give an autobiographical slant.  I started as Scots Enlightenment historian >> environmental history I was often disappointed by US environmental historians Preservation (Muir >> Carson); sustainability, equilibrium ill defined global transnational history not there race, cold war science, etc etc not quite there this scene has changed drastically in the last decade or two “envirotech” historians do draw attention to the social bases of forecasting we are also moving from an ethos of false clarity of preservationist idealism towards a much more pessimistic and anxious recognition of moral and political complexity and failure it’s a dark picture but it’s also a salutary one dubious distinction between human society and pure wilderness must go economy <> geophysics <> ecology how to manage over the very long run pandora’s jar of unexpected and wicked trade offs can we curtail emissions without abandoning human rights and social justi...

This Friday and Saturday. Click for the very nice schedule .

"What Vegetables Are Saying about Themselves." Thanks again to Ian for a very cute ouroboros... What Vegetables Are Saying about Themselves

Brooke: at the place of boundaries there must be some preservation of difference at one time This is a very way of thinking sympathy What is the common ground on which these encounters take place Laura's talk pushes back to the atomistic or molecular Ancient notions of sympathy: nature as overarching transcendental whole Without that how does the common ground get established? Through temporality, evolution This came up in both talks Can we be sure when we evolution that we are creating sympathies when in fact we might be perversely misaligning, and that misalignment is labeled sympathy? Marks: it's a great suggestion but I don't think I have anything to say. Szabari: the seed banks are not corporate but owned in part by the state. Legally it is protected. Meeker: evolution in the context of incompletion. Coming to grips with the infinity of the empirical world. Contemplating and facing the problem of evolution. Marks: There is something shared. Tension between creative ev...

We will intertwine our speeches in a plant-like fashion de Bergerac: narrator explains heliocentric theory--pip of apple as sun when man is not center of cosmos: new kind of diplomat Timaeus: gods created plants as another nature distinct from mankind Vegetal alterity: plants as so unlike us that they elicit fantasies of communication sci fi: early modern period gives birth to botanophilia; animation of plant idea of plants as easily manipulable objects the vegetal uncanny: plant conjures up solitude and extinction precisely as it resembles us Bergerac >> The Thing from Another World plant as apocalyptic object and subject of our sympathies "plants express our sense of who we are" yet they are not like us plants come to resemble humans and vice versa de Bergerac: understanding reality though science; all that escapes is unconscious premodern thought didn't assign such autonomy to the human being literature animates plant to enable us to go before the human Amilek of...

Brooke: Ensoulment. How one might imagine that in plants. Flower as virus: plant-like motion of tendrils. Marks: What a delight it is to be here. "Aromatic Events: How Plant Communication Makes Us More than Human" video of student addressing, "What might plant prehension be?" Bergson: need to draw on all evolutionary heritage if we are going to evolve creatively cultivate plant nature not to repeat what they have already done but to produce singularities and unpredictable gatherings beauty and pleasure << plants Pierce, Whitehead, Grosz; biochemistry Pierce: he gets a bit of short shrift; an important figure in the thought of Deleuze and Whitehead too signs circulating among all kinds of creatures and entities every entity makes and interprets signs an ever transforming growing and dying sign system thought is not necessarily connected with the brain: bees, crystals "seen from the outside, things appear as magic; seen from the inside, they appear as consc...

Jeff: you may have heard the plants singing in the background. "Ballad Rhizomatics, Planty Mesh: Toward a Compositionist Poetics" ecology without nature: a post-natural moment. Are we post-plant? I would say that in many ways I am pre-plant. Yet you have to interact with them to live. I might have to think of the plant unconscious. Not unrelated to Jameson! Plants have been thinking poetry for a long while and continue to. Michael Martyr, plant thinking. My own work is infested with plants. Louise Glück, "The Red Poppy": "The great thing / is not having / a mind" phytomorphism "OK Fern"by McLane "Tell me what to do / / With my life" << critique >> composition no way out of projection--this indeed is the medium for acknowledgment of common life pathetic fallacy: an implicit mapping of interdependence, "the mesh" Up with vibrant matter! Latour. We are closer to 16th than 20th century. Deleuze and Guattari: "foll...

Brooke: sympathy as a different paradigm, not as ground? Jane: I have a pragmatic approach: how can we live this? These channels are already at work. It is happening. Anything that will prick me to pay more attention to what I'm already encountering. Shape. Sound. Whatever gets the job done. Now when I see water dripping I'm more attentive to it. Jeff: Why would a plant be helpful with caffeine withdrawal? And so on? The lobe could be a culmination, tip of a leaf, but also a drop, ending, falling. Pendant. Jane: An ontological imaginary of some kind of viscous fluid. Serres. Form drips out of things. Q: On illustrations. Directionality of the drip. At least from C16 you illustrate the plant's entire lifespan in a single image. Practical: it may not be in bloom when you come to identify it. Q: I'm curious about what gets the job done. What is the job? But before that: my version of political theory--the interest is how to constitute if not a monist account of relations, ...

A series of experiments Nils has been making with students. The redesigned school bus. Early 2000s. The geocruiser. Designed with a blacksmith. What would happen if you made plants mobile? An artistic experiment to see what might happen. A library in the middle. On gardening, utopias, alternative energy, gardening etc. At front: meeting and presentation area. Early on in using biofuels: recycled vegetable oil, too difficult to use all the time. Now of course access is much better. Traveled across Europe for two years. Schools, museums, town halls, universities. At back: plants and composting bins. Sleeping in a bus can be cold and damp. Starting up engine, bus would shake: condensation would water plants by shaking off ceiling. The plants loved being in the vehicle: light, always moving, and vibration. Permaculture garden in the Hague. Using public art budget. Create in the middle of a municipal, very formal park. Messy garden. Valuable educational tool. How different it is to the park...