Seminário de investigação que tem como objectivo abordar e questionar as fronteiras da noção de humano.

Mind the Gap II: Dialogues beyond the human

Research Seminar

A growing body of work between social sciences and the humanities has been questioning foundational categorical oppositions. The analytical gaps between mind and body, nature and society, individual and collective, local and global, spiritual and material, social and economic, and long and short duration, on which the modern western epistemic order is founded, have become increasingly unable to address some of the most crucial problems of our time. One of these theoretical borders is that which is drawn around the very notion of human. Mind the Gap II will discuss contributions from authors who question this border.

In this seminar series we will discuss texts on vitalism, new materialism, more-than-human societies, post-humanism, and others, exploring concepts such as things, cyborgs, hybrids, actants, networks and meshworks. In a time in which the circulation of water, viruses, carbon fumes, plastic waste, information, and capital intertwines ever more closely with human life, social theory has been moving away from anthropocentric theories of social and historic action . As they grapple with the notion that humans have taken up the agentic power of planetary geological forces, social sciences and humanities are redefining the meaning and impacts of more than human associations and post-human worlds.

Every fortnight we will meet online to discuss an article or book chapter circulated in advance. The sessions will start with a 20-30 minute presentation, followed by discussion.

Everyone is welcome.

🔗 Free registration here

📎 Download full programme (PDF)

Programme:

04 April  |  Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts. Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
Presented by Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)

19 April  |  Patrick Joyce & Tony Bennet, Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (London: Routledge, 2010)
Presented by Elisa Lopes da Silva (CRIA — Iscte-IUL)

03 May  |  Christophe Bonneuil & Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us (London: Verso, 2016)
Presented by Marc Jacquinet (CEG — Universidade Aberta)

16 May  |  Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021)
Presented by Catarina Neves (CEPS — Universidade do Minho)

30 May  |  Bruno Latour, We have never been modern (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)
Presented by Sanjay Seth (Goldsmiths, University of London)

13 June  |  Tim Ingold, Being Alive. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London: Routledge, 2011)
Presented by Toby Austin Locke (University of Roehampton)

27 June  |  Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (1st Edition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010)
Presented by Des Fitzgerald (University of Exeter)

11 July  |  Donna Haraway, Staying with the trouble. Making kin in the Chthulocene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016)
Presented by Amy Slaton (Drexel University)

25 July  |  Rosi Braidotti, Posthuman knowledge (Utrecht: Utrecht University Press, 2019)
Presented by Ana Oliveira (CES — Universidade de Coimbra)

Organisation:

Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Elisa Lopes da Silva (CRIA — Iscte-IUL)
Francisco Calafate Faria (CSJGR — London South Bank University)
Gonçalo Morais (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Marc Jacquinet (CEG — Universidade Aberta)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)