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1. Fictionality in Critical Posthumanism: Why some Philosophies Need Genres of Invention

   This paper explores the pervasive presence of literature, film, speculation, fabulation, and other genres of invention in the theoretical writings also known as “critical posthumanism.” Identifying a set of different appropriations of fictional discourse in theoretical work by, amongst others, Astrida Niemanis, Stacy Alaimo, Rebekah Sheldon, Donna Haraway, and Jane Bennett, the paper asks why theorists united by a common interest in “getting real”, to use Karen Barad’s phrase (1998), often turn to a type of discourse that is defined precisely by not committing itself to reality. What, in other words, do genres and rhetorical devices that deliberately and explicitly make stuff up allow thinkers within critical posthumanism to do that traditional academic styles of writing do not?

   Cecilie Klingenberg - 24.02.2021 - 15:01

2. Seeking Pleasure in the Confusion of Boundaries: Reading Posthumanism in Children’s Literature

   Literature and art forms contribute significantly to the discussion of epistemological concerns of posthumanism. Which is to say that, literature and art imagine, interrogate and nurture the subjective and embodied attributes of the nonhuman experience. It is through such exploration of the experiential aspects that sensitivity and other similar personal engagements can occur, which can augment our comprehension of nonhuman beings and entities, that in turn can lead to conspicuous epistemological and ethical consequences.

   To consider critical posthumanism as established only within critical theory and philosophy, wherein the idea of the human has been the moot point, is to neglect the significant role of popular culture and literature in the revaluation of the concept of the human.

   Cecilie Klingenberg - 24.02.2021 - 16:24

3. Textual entanglements & entangled texts: On relationality and narrative

   The notion of entanglement is central to critical posthumanist thought. It might be said to have replaced the ubiquitous network metaphor or even the paradigm of the global in a number of contexts; at the very least, it stands in a tense relationship to them. While the figure of the globe is undeniably linked to human(ist) construction practices and the European colonial project, and a network-like connectedness implies links between objects that are ultimately thought of as separate, the topos of entanglement entails a fundamentally different, relational form of (intra)connectedness with other ethical implications. When fctional texts generate connectivity, e.g. by linking storylines that are separated in terms of their geographies, literary studies often habitually refer to these texts as "global novels" or "network narratives".

   The implications of these tropes of connectivity themselves - as briefy outlined above - are rarely given much thought; and as labels, they cannot account for more complex and meshwork-like formations. In this talk, I will be thinking about the poetics and aesthetics of entanglement.

   Cecilie Klingenberg - 26.02.2021 - 12:21