Counter Narratives

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Kathleen Birrell, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow

COUNTER NARRATIVES

Jason deCaires Taylor
@jasondecairestaylor

This project is focused on encounters between juridical, political and cultural narratives in the context of climate change.  This moment of thresholds, in which climate change propels us toward an epoch of ‘apotheosis’ or ‘erasure’, prompts a critical consideration of the place of laws, and of laws in place.  The Anthropocene thesis, originating in geological and earth systems science, controversially proposes the inauguration of a new geological epoch, in accordance with which the impact of the anthropos has assumed geological proportions.  This concept has provoked widespread contestation, yet other accounts suggest the existential crisis prompted by imminent climatic catastrophe impels the relinquishment of modernist claims to mastery and necessitates a juridical recalibration to accommodate ecological and atmospheric degradation and associated structural inequalities.  Whereas Anthropocene scholarship has tended to rehearse the violent demarcations and exclusions of empire and has coincided with the troubling emergence of a depoliticised ‘ideal of resilience’, this project is attentive to counter narratives of epistemological rupture.

Drawing upon Indigenous jurisprudences, literature and the environmental humanities more broadly, the project contrasts the determinacy of rights and its institutions with a recuperation of obligation and an acknowledgement of multispecies entanglements.  My work considers ways in which the Anthropocene thesis can illuminate rather than perpetuate the hierarchies implicit within its nomenclature and thereby create intellectual space and generate political energy for the recalibrations required for the ‘new climatic regime’.  These recalibrations require reflection upon the ambivalence of rights language, an attentiveness to the juridical emplacements and displacements effected by climate change, and the enactment of modes of ethical conduct in encounters between laws.

PAST EVENTS

• Tuesday17 November2020
  
  8:30 - 10:00 pm AEDT

  • Ecocide in a Pandemic: Laws of Exposure and Encounter in the Anthropocene

    In this seminar, we will explore the confluence of colonisation and ecocide in the Anthropocene thesis, and the challenge to modernist claims to mastery posed by the existential threat of a global pandemic.  Whereas the language of battle dominates political and scientific narrativisation, viral zoonosis and microbial agency provoke a radical recalibration for our contemporary moment.  We will be in conversation with Dr Vito De Lucia, Professor Anna Grear, and Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos.

• Friday10 May2019

  • Writing Place, Writing Laws: Law and the Humanities in the 'Anthropocene'.

    This workshop, featuring Professor Alexis Wright, award winning author, Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature, University of Melbourne, provided scholars with an interdisciplinary forum in which to critically consider intersections and encounters between laws and the humanities in the context of the proposed Anthropocene epoch.

• Friday12 May2017

  • The Mythology of Modern Law: At 25 Years

    This conference seeks to bring together scholars in many discipline to consider the (still unfinished) legacy of The Mythology of Modern Law and the continuing importance of its intellectual and ethical imperatives for our times.

• Thursday11 May2017

  • Book Launch - Indigeneity: Before and Beyond the Law

    Join Routledge and IILAH to celebrate the release of Kathleen Birrell's book. Launched by Professor Peter Fitzpatrick

• Thursday11 May2017

  • Early Career Workshop with Peter Fitzpatrick

    Early Career Researchers and PhD candidates are invited to participate in this intimate workshop, to develop works in progress and to engage with questions concerning the foundations of modern law, its relationship to myth, and its pretensions to coherence, secularity and universality.

• Thursday15 December2016

  • Indigeneity in Waiting: Elusive Rights and the Power of Hope

    This event was an informal roundtable, in which Dr Lindroth and Dr Sinevaara-Niskanen discussed their research project, Indigeneity in Waiting: Elusive Rights and the Power of Hope, and invite comment and discussion.

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ANTHROPOCENE READING GROUP

We invite you to join an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional reading group, focused on encounters between laws and cognate disciplines in the context of the Anthropocene.  We are exploring the ontological shifts prompted by the Anthropocene, human and inhuman entanglements, and critical approaches to rights and obligations.

Our reading group meets fortnightly, Wed 1-2pm, with online and in person options.  A schedule of readings is available here. Alongside our fortnightly reading group sessions, we also organise workshops, invite guest speakers, and occasionally share works-in-progress in an informal setting.  If you would like to join us or be added to our email list, please email Dr Kathleen Birrell.

Dr Kathleen Birrell

McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow

Melbourne Law School