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Led by IAS Junior Research Fellows Dr Aline-Florence Manent and Dr David Jeevendrampillai.
The following events were organised by the research group:
Planetary Poetics Workshop (21-23 September 2017)
This workshop was held in collaboration with the Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney. This three-day event investigated the paradigm of the planetary, understood variously in terms of aesthetics, affectivity, geophysical systems, political community, materiality, and technology.
Planetary Poetics brought together a group of specialists from different disciplines to debate and consider a variety of critical, theoretical and creative approaches to the idea of the 'planetary', exploring the nonhuman, the post-human and humanism; singularity, the universal and the limits of cosmopolitical thought; animal studies and ecocriticism; affect, new materialism and the politics of representation; 'nature', earthly finitude and speculative realism. Each of these themes addresses planetary (and extra planetary) narratives, imaginations, experiences and worldings, and their relationships with the fractal figure of the human. Throughout the poetic and the aesthetic was explored as means through which to engage with, dramatize and produce new knowledge about our relationship to the planetary.
Speakers included: Andrew Barry (Department of Geography, UCL), Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University and Distinguished Visiting Researcher at the IAS), Ute Eickelkamp (Sydney Environment Institute), Ann Elias (Sydney Environment Institute), Briony Fer (History of Art, UCL), Tamar Garb (History of Art and the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL), Jennifer Hamilton (Sydney Environment Institute), Rye Holmboe (History of Art, UCL), Tariq Jazeel (Department of Geography, UCL) Julia Jordan (Department of English, UCL), Iain McCalman (Sydney Environment Institute), Cat Moir (Sydney Environment Institute), Florian Mussgnug (School of European Languages, Culture and Society, UCL), Astrida Neimanis (Sydney Environment Institute), Mignon Nixon (History of Art, UCL), Killian Quigley (Sydney Environment Institute), Peg Rawes (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL), Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (The School of European Languages & Culture, UCL) and Kirsten Wehner (Sydney Environment Institute).
Towards an Anthropology of Space: Orientating Cosmological Futures
An epochal 'move to space' (Olivier 2015) has been articulated by various commentators as a crucial historical turn for all mankind, from Sputnik, through the Apollo missions to the recent realigning of NASA's primary mission from Space Exploration to Space Settlement (Augustine Commission 2009). The effect of images of Earth from Space has produced 'globe talk' (Lazier 2011:606) where horizons of social worlds are now planetary in scale. These universalising rhetorics nonetheless also hide the hegemony of normative frames of reference used to define humanity's 'final frontier', along with the concept of 'humanity' itself.
David Valentine (2012) describes how Space demarks a spatial edge used to distinguish the limits of the globe, which can be both revealed and transcended by techno-science. Space exploration then, is able to act as an 'empty signifier' (Ibid) holding the promise of a spatial fix to the future of humanity whilst simultaneously delimiting this same future as it masks the endurance of the forms of relations it claims to transcend. As Debbora Battaglia suggests, the figure of the extra-terrestrial is a symptom of failures to critically understanding the conditions of social life (2005:9), perhaps symptomatic of an inability to conceive of an adequate 'constitutive outside' (Butler 1993), which is often a euphemism for a political or social 'other'.
The binary that extra-terrestrial implies may thus also be contested ethnographically. For example, Suzanne Blier (1987) has observed how dwellings of the Batammaliba track the passage of celestial ancestors through various light apertures whilst Lisa Messeri (2016) notes how Mongolian shamans have been visiting space for many years. Authors such as Alice Gorman (2005), Peter Redfield (2002) and others note how the local world of Space Centres, rocket launch sites or telescopes assume 'translocal', often neo-colonial, dreams (Redfield 2002:808) effacing local concerns. And whilst Soviets and Americans positioned Space as a location to enact utopian futures, different kinds of utopian ideological expansions may also occur through modern space narratives in places such as Ghana, China and Brazil.
What can we make of the new space race ethnographically? How would the consideration of relations between earth and off-earth life enable a fruitful theoretical development of social science enquiry? And, ultimately, in what ways can Anthropology think through the political, the material and the transcendent dimensions of an epochal turn to Space? In this workshop we will investigate the heuristic devices used in the creation of new forms of connectedness and separation that a relation with the extra-terrestrial could enable.
Planetary Futures Seminar Series
What is the future of the planet? Whether the impending ecological crisis, the movement of hegemonic ideological socio-political realms or the techno-scientific promises of life on mars, the Planetary Futures Seminar Series engaged a broad range of disciplines Participation was welcomed from all who had interest in the planetary, whether as a scale of inquiry or an object of study. The talks were of interest to those in the social sciences, particularly Anthropology, Sociology, History, Politics, STS, Geography as well as the Sciences, particularly Physics, Astronomy, Geology and Space Science. The goal was also to spur a reflection among the broader interested public on the construction of planetary imaginaries and interrogate our current academic apparatus for thinking about planetary futures.
The Series will opened on 26 January 2017 with a lecture from Nahum Mantra on the role of art and the imagination in space exploration. Nahum is an artist, musician and curator. He curates KOSMICA, an international festival for earth-bound artists, space engineers and artists, and is co-ordinator for ITACUSS (International Astronautical Federation's Technical Committee on the Cultural Utilization of Space).
Programme
- Thursday 26 January 2017 (5-7pm): Nahum Mantra (Kosmica & ITACUSS)
- Thursday 9 February 2017 (5-7pm): Jill Stuart (LSE)
- Wednesday 22 March 2017 (5-7pm): Allen Abramson (UCL) (IAS Seminar Room 20, First Floor, South Wing)
- Wednesday 26 April 2017 (5-7pm): Or Rosenboim (Cambridge)
- Wednesday 10 May 2017 (5-7pm): Mira Siegelberg (Queen Mary University)
Planetary Futures Reading Group: Envisioning Planetary Futures: From the Apollo Mission to SpaceX
What is the future of the Planet? How is it envisioned and constructed? Does it lie in outer-space, on other planets, or does and should it remain intrinsically tied to Earth? The Planetary is an emerging focus of critical enquiry that bridges traditionally entrenched disciplinary divides across the humanities and social sciences. The Planetary is a central yet under-theorised aspect of a wide array of research engaging with the socio-political histories of the Anthropocene, the techno-scientific and intellectual imaginaries of interplanetary futures, or reflections on global warming and impending ecological crises.
Convened by Aline-Florence Manent and David Jeevendrampillai at the IAS, this informal reading group met fortnightly to discuss critical literature and future research directions in this exciting area of study.
Planetary Futures Conference: Political Pasts and Democratic Futures - Interdisciplinary Perspectives (1 June 2017)
The year 2016 further discredited the notion that Western democratic societies have reached the end of history. At a time when liberal democracy seems to be resting on ever more precarious foundations this conference sought to spur an interdisciplinary conversation about the manifold ways in which political futures can and have been imagined. How have people in the past envisioned the future of democracy? What might be learned from these intellectual imaginaries for our political futures? Where and how are democratic futures reinvented and built today?
This conference aimed to build on current work that highlights the historicity and plurality of democracy - whether as an idea, a political regime, or a practice. Contributions were particularly welcomed that explored the construction of democratic imaginaries beyond the strictly political realm, for instance through moral, aesthetic, scientific or commercial enterprises.