Laws and the Humanities for the Anthropocene Reading Group
ANTHROPOCENE READING GROUP
We invite you to join an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional reading group, focused on encounters between laws and different scholarly traditions in the context of the Anthropocene. In 2021, we are exploring texts that engage with ‘the inhuman in the humanities’. We are examining the ontological categorisation of matter central to modern law, the co-constitution of materiality and subjectivity, and the role of the inhuman in the humanities.
The group is co-convened by Kathleen Birrell and Tim Lindgren. We meet fortnightly, with online and in person options. The reading schedule and library links are available below. If you are unable to access library texts and for all non-library texts, please email Tim Lindgren.
To RSVP, or to be added to the email list please email Kathleen Birrell. Please specify preference for online/in person participation.
We are associated with and share common intellectual and activist pursuits with the Environmental Arts and Humanities (EAH) Network, which is a part of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.
Berndnaut Smilde
Nimbus D'Aspremont 2012
photo: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk
Reading Schedule
Semester 1, 2021
Wednesday17 March2021
Elizabeth Grosz, Kathryn Yusoff, Nigel Clark, “An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz: Geopower, Inhumanism and the Biopolitical” (2017) 34(2-3) Theory, Culture & Society 129-146.
RSVP to Connor Foley to access the reading.
Wednesday31 March2021
Elizabeth Povinelli, “Can Rocks Die? Life and Death Inside the Carbon Imaginary” in Elizabeth Povinelli, Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (2016) 30-56.
RSVP to Connor Foley to access the reading.
Wednesday14 April2021
Elizabeth A Povinelli, Mathew Coleman, Kathryn Yusoff, “An Interview with Elizabeth Povinelli: Geontopower, Biopolitics and the Anthropocene” (2017) 34(2-3) Theory, Culture & Society 169-185.
RSVP to Connor Foley to access the reading.
Wednesday28 April2021
Jane Bennett, “The Force of Things” in Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010) 1-19.
Wednesday12 May 2021
Craig N Cipolla, “Earth Flows and Lively Stone: What Differences does ‘Vibrant’ Matter Make?” (2018) 25(1) Archaeological Dialogues 49-70.
RSVP to Connor Foley to access the reading.
Wednesday26 May2021
Mark Jackson, “For New Ecologies of Thought” in Mark Jackson (ed), Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman (2018) 19-38.
Wednesday9 June2021
Mark Jackson, “For New Ecologies of Thought” in Mark Jackson (ed), Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman (2018) 38-56.
Wednesday23 June2021
Rosi Braidotti, “Posthuman Humanities: Life Beyond Theory” in Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) 143-185.
Semester 2, 2021
Wednesday11 August2021
Kathryn Yusoff, “Insurgent Geology: A Billion Black Anthropocenes Now” and “Writing a Geology for the Storm Next Time” in Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2018) 87-101 and 103-108.
Wednesday25 August2021
Maria de Lourdes Melo Zurita, “Challenging sub terra nullius: a critical underground urbanism project” (2020) 51(3) Australian Geographer 269-282.
RSVP to Connor Foley to access the reading.
Wednesday8 Sept2021
Zoe Todd, “Refracting Colonialism in Canada: Fish Tales, Text, and Insistent Public Grief” in Mark Jackson (ed), Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman (2018) 131-146.
Wednesday22 Sept2021
Virginia Marshall, “Removing the Veil from the ‘Rights of Nature’: The Dichotomy between First Nations Customary Rights and Environmental Legal Personhood” (2020) Australian Feminist Law Journal DOI: 10.1080/13200968.2019.1802154.
RSVP to Connor Foley to access the reading.
Wednesday6 Oct2021
Arturo Escobar, “The Earth-Form of Life: Nasa Thought and the Limits to the Episteme of Modernity” in Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (2020) 46-66.
Wednesday20 Oct2021
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “Nishnaabeg Internationalism” in Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (2017) 55-70.
Wednesday3 Nov2021
Cait Storr, “Space is the Only Way to Go: The Evolution of the Extractivist Imaginary of International Law” in Sundhya Pahuja and Shane Chalmers (eds), Routledge Handbook of International Law and the Humanities (2021).
Access to this item will be available soon.
Past Reading Schedules
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Semester 1, 2020
24 March
20207 April
2020Anna Grear, “Anthropocene ‘Time’?” – A Reflection on Temporalities in the ‘New Age of the Human’” in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (ed), Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory (Routledge 2019) 297-315.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Anthropocene Time: The Seventh History and Theory Lecture” (2018) 57(1) History and Theory 5-32.
21 April
2020Walter D Mignolo and Catherine E Walsh, “Introduction” and “The Decolonial For: Resurgences, Shifts, and Movements” in On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (2018) 1-32.
Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene” (2017) 16(4) An International Journal for Critical Geographies 761-780.
5 May
2020Kathryn Yusoff, “Geology, Race and Matter” in A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (University of Minesota Press, 2019) at https://manifold.umn.edu/read/6b94c453-792a-4a6e-8aea-5a2c8c8155bd/section/6243cd2f-68f4-40dc-97a1-a5c84460c09b#ch01
Alf Hornborg, “Colonialism in the Anthropocene: The Political Ecology of the Money-Energy-Technology Complex” (2019) 10(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 7-21.
19 May
2020Samid Suliman, Carol Farbotko, Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Karen Elizabeth McNamara, Fanny Thornton, Celia McMichael & Taukiei Kitara, “Indigenous (im)mobilities in the Anthropocene” (2019) 14(3) Mobilities 298-318.
Phil Henderson, “The Poetics of Settler Fatalism: Responses to Ecocide from within the Anthropocene” (2019) 7(1)1 Pivot 5-32.
2 June
202016 June
2020Elena Blanco and Anna Grear, “Personhood, Jurisdiction and Injustice: Law, Colonialities and the Global Order" (2019) 10(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 86-117.
Maria Ackchurin, “Constructing the Rights of Nature: Constitutional Reform, Mobilization, and Environmental Protection in Ecuador” (2015) 40(4) Law & Social Inquiry 937-968.
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Semester 2, 2020
5 August
202019 August
20202 Sept
202016 Sept
202030 Sept
2020
Reading Group Break
14 Oct
202028 Oct
202011 Nov
202017 Nov
202025 Nov
2020
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Semester 1, 2019
27 February
201913 March
2019Critical Environmental Law as Method
in the AnthropoceneAndreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, “Critical Environmental Law as Method in the Anthropocene” in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and Victoria Brooks, Research Methods in Environmental Law (2017) 131-155.
Environmentalism and
an Anarchist Research MethodPeter Burdon and James Martel, “Environmentalism and an Anarchist Research Method” in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and Victoria Brooks, Research Methods in Environmental Law (2017) 316-337.
27 March
2019Feeling the Djang:
The Camp of Senior Law Man NeidjieChristine Black, “Feeling the Djang: The Camp of Senior Law Man Neidjie” in Christine Black, The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with Indigenous Jurisprudence (2010) 23-42.
The End of the Journey:
A Camp of Contemporary ConcernsChristine Black, “The End of the Journey: A Camp of Contemporary Concerns” in Christine Black, The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with Indigenous Jurisprudence (2010) 167-184.
10 April
201924 April
2019No Reading Group
Easter Break
8 May
201910 May
201922 may
2019Slow Violence, Neoliberalism,
and the Environmental PicaresqueRob Nixon, “Slow Violence, Neoliberalism, and the Environmental Picaresque” in Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011) 45-67.
The Power and Purpose of Literature
Alexis Wright, “The Power and Purpose of Literature” (2018) 77(4) Meanjin (pp)
5 June
2019Problems with Making and Governing Global Kinds
of KnowledgeMike Hulme, “Problems with Making and Governing Global Kinds of Knowledge” (2010) 20 Global Environmental Change 558-564.
Cosmopolitan Climates:
Hybridity, Foresight, MeaningMike Hulme, “Cosmopolitan Climates: Hybridity, Foresight, Meaning” (2010) 27(2-3) Theory, Culture & Society 267-276.
Gaps’ in Climate Change Knowledge: Do They Exist?
Can They Be Filled?Mike Hulme, “‘Gaps’ in Climate Change Knowledge: Do They Exist? Can They Be Filled?” (2018) 10(1) Environmental Humanities 330-337.
19 June
2019Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness
Thom van Doreen, Eben Kirksey and Ursula Münster, “Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness” (2016) 8(1) Environmental Humanities 1-23.
Lively Ethography: Storying Animist Worlds
Thom van Doreen and Deborah Bird Rose, “Lively Ethography: Storying Animist Worlds” (2016) 8(1) Environmental Humanities 77-94.
3 July
2019
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Semester 2, 2019
7 August
2019Bruno Latour, “Fourth Lecture: The Anthropocene and the Destruction of (the Image of) the Globe” in Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017) 111-145.
Jeremy Baskin, “Paradigm Dressed as Epoch: The Ideology of the Anthropocene” (2015) 24 Environmental Values 9-29.
21 August
2019Louis J. Kotzé, “Reflections on the Future of Environmental Law Scholarship and Methodology in the Anthropocene” in Ole W Pedersen, Perspectives on Environmental Law Scholarship: Essays on Purpose, Shape and Direction (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 140-161.
Vito De Lucia, “Beyond Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: A Biopolitical Reading of Environmental Law” (2017) 8(2) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 181-202.
4 Sept
201918 Sept
2019- break - no reading group
2 Oct
201916 Oct
2019Anna Grear, “Deconstructing Anthropos: A Critical Legal Reflection on ‘Anthropocentric’ Law and Anthropocene ‘Humanity’” (2015) 26(3) Law and Critique 225-249.
Zoe Todd, “Indigenizing the Anthropocene” in Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin (eds), Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environment and Epistemology (2015) 241-254.
30 Oct
2019Kathryn Yusoff, “Geologic Life: Prehistory, Climate, Futures in the Anthropocene” (2013) 31(5) Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 779-795.
Sarah Whatmore, “Geographies of/for a More Than Human World: Towards a Relational Ethics” in Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (London: Sage, 2002) 146-167.
13 Nov
2019Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene” in Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017) 30-57.
Donna Haraway, “Making Kin: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene” in Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017) 99-103.
Thom Van Dooren, “Temporal promiscuities in the Chthulucene: A Reflection on Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble” (2018) 8(1) Dialogues in Human Geography 91-93.