Deadline: December 19, 2022
Contact: Xinmin LIU, Washington State University
Email: xinmin.liu@wsu.edu
Phone: 5093358713
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
Rather than forecasting a bleak future, Weisman’s The World Without Us is mostly uncovering humans’ failures and errors that led the Earth in a downward spiral to doom–the inevitable end to a prolonged human reign of corrosive, toxic and self-destructive domination. Thus, his speculative imaginary has shed fresh light on one pivotal duty of the ecological sci-fi writings which most other sci-fi writers have either overlooked or eluded so far: to humanists and scientists alike, Weisman’s book has brought the causes of the disastrous future front and center to our own time in more urgent and palpable terms, i.e., the lived agency of our professional choices and daily life habits in contributing to the on-going ecological crises. It challenges us to first scrutinize our complicity with endangering the natural environment, which in turn makes it urgent and compelling for us all to get involved in causes of environmental activism here and now. Given the new scientific discoveries on climate change we have come to know today, it also inspires us to direct our common interest to intersected areas between human and biotic life- worlds and “hard sciences” and humanistic values, where synergized inquiries will put us in a position to bring our different insights and shared wisdom to bear on the discussion of issues including, but not limited to, the following:
• When both of Donna Haraway’s cyborgs and the Chthulucene underscore the degree to which are always already posthuman or more than human in contemporary time, she calls for “staying with the trouble of living” and “making kin” is a response to both the discourses of Anthropocene and Capitalocene. Humanity should not only make kin with various species in the ecological environment, but also make kin with all in the human world who are different from us culturally, ethnically, and ideologically. We will relate our analyses of various posthuman episodes in science fiction narratives to the theoretical discussions of posthumanism by such theorists as Donna Haraway, Stefan Herbrechter, and Neil Badmington in order to demonstrate these narratives have shed new light on these theorists’ discussions by emphasizing the persistent existence of humanistic values in a posthuman era and the co-existence of humanity and other species in the Chthulucene.
• In response to Lakoff/Johnson’s statement that “human reason is animal reason,” we explore how humans, being the most evolved of all primates, have always relied heavily on the mirror neurons in our brain in activating simulation of other lifeforms on the earth in order to make progress in human evolution. In the light of this, we discuss in what ways this synergetic bond came to be diffused, neutralized or abandoned in favor of the disembodied modes of cognition and conceptualization in both techno-science and humanism in our own times. More specifically, when we dissect the hegemonic modality of the telescopic gaze in art, media and cinematography, how can we also direct our critical attention to the enactment of human visuality that brings our ecological imaginary back within boundaries that are mostly planet-based and corporeal-scaled? In a word, how can we feel truly at home on the Earth?
• Taking cue from Stephen Kellert’s warning of the risks of “sensory deprivation”–a privileging of the eyesight over other sensory functions in human cognition, we reflect on the lopsided stress of human vision as the primary means for digital instrumentalization in advancing industrial capabilites as shown through the use of infra-red night vision in military weaponry and echolocation in deep-sea mining and its exertion of dominance over other land- and sea-based mammals on the earth. To counter such instrumentalized vision, how can we act responsibly to rely on seeing to expose “the imminent onset of slow violence” (Rob Nixon) on the one hand while, on the other, resisting the empowered human sight in its callous oblivion of those human and biotic communities as collateral payoffs.
We welcome colleagues who have interest in sharing with us their views and approaches to these and other related issues and are considering the possibility of joining us in a pre-formed panel to be held in a conference jointly hosted by the Association for the Studies of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences in Portland, Oregon in July 9-12, 2023. Please submit a proposal of your panel presentation of not longer than 350-400 words to Xinmin Liu and/or Hua Li by December 19, 2022. For detailed information, feel free to contact huali@montana.edu and/or xinmin.liu@wsu.edu.
Posted on October 9, 2022
