Nora Conference

Kuvaus

The Politics of Matter: Affect, Materiality and an Ethics of Care ― Preproposed Panel

Given human contributions to the devastating, and intensifying, effects of environmental disaster, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, over-consumption, and the mass extinction of species, this panel asks what can ethico-political engagements with matter achieve? We explore the ways in which affective relations with and between human and nonhuman matter engenders ethics and politics that enable us to think, live, organise and act differently. Drawing on feminist writings, we suggest that affective relations between humans and nonhumans surface ethical and political questions for living, and living differently, a critique of the Capitalocene. Living differently, thinking differently and changing our relations with the earth – or ‘staying with the trouble’ as Haraway put it – involves, we argue, connecting to feminist ethics of care. Such ethics emerge from affective relations and gives rise to political intent.
The contributors think with matter, revealing our material engagements with waste, rocks and mycelium respectively. The panel begins with Kinnunen’s discussion of Bokashi practices to show the onto-ethico-political potential of waste and how ethics emerges from relations with waste. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s notion of kin affective relations are developed with waste. The panel then moves on to thinking about how affective materialities surface between human and nonhuman. Through autobiographical reflections of rocks, Valtonen and Pullen discuss the emergence of an ethics of care which has the productive potential to help think and live differently. In the final presentation, Lund employs the metaphor of Mycelium to explore the relations between fungus, identity, language and materiality. It offers an embodied critique of capitalism’s focus on growth and excess. Bringing the panel together we bring feminist thinking to the fore to suggest that collective, affective materialities with matter become the site for ethico-political engagements for change in thought and practice.

Aikajakso	23 toukok. 2019
Tapahtuman tyyppi	Konferenssi
Sijainti	Reykjavik, IslantiNäytä kartalla
Vaikuttavuus / laajuus	Kansainvälinen