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Whitney A. Bauman IRAS 2014 wbauman@fiu

Object - and Event- Oriented Understandings of Meaning Making: Pluralism and Meaning Making Practices.

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Whitney A. Bauman IRAS 2014 wbauman@fiu

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  1. Object- andEvent- Oriented Understandings of Meaning Making: Pluralism and Meaning Making Practices “There is emerging a planetary spirituality of the interstices. No locality can be located apart from its interrelations. Close and alien, intimate and systemic, they add up to the whole.” (Keller, God and Power, 130) Whitney A. Bauman IRAS 2014 wbauman@fiu.edu

  2. Religion: Re-ligare/legere (to bind fast / re-read) • Religion as Human (Human’s are meaning-making creatures and created by meaning (Heidegger)) • What do I mean by “Religion”? • Religion and Function (Durkheim) • Religion as Environmental History (Merchant, Cronan, Glacken) • Religion as Western Construct • Lifeways, cultures, practices, etc.

  3. Science/ scientia (knowledge/knowing; root scire: to separate one thing from another) • Focus on material-energy flows • Includes chemistry, biology, physics, neuroscience, ecology, cosmology (Dilthey) • Includes relationship between data and theory (Philosophy of Science) • Includes technology (medical, agricultural, energy, etc.) • What do I mean by “Science”?

  4. Factors of the Post-Colonial, Planetary Context: Globalization and Climate Change What does Globalization mean? Creation of the Space-Time Crunch The Glocal Assemblages Contextualization of Meaning-Making Hybrid Identity Formation Globalatinization What does Climate Change mean?: End of ‘Nature’ End of Mastery Social Natural, Bio-Historical, Nature-Cultures Resurgence of Unknowing

  5. Two Epistemological Models: Globalization vs. Planetarity • Globalatinization is the continuation of the logic of domination • Christianization • Enlightenment / Secularization (Reason) • Development/ Bretton Woods / Green Revolution • This is the imposition of one truth regime over the face of the planet and it relies on some type of transcendent reality: God, Revelation, Nature, Reason.

  6. The Post-Colonial, Planetary Context • “I propose the planet to overwrite the globe. Globalization is the imposition of the same system of exchange everywhere…If we imagine ourselves as planetary subjects rather than global agents, planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us; it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away.” (Spivak, Death of a Discipline, 72-73).

  7. Epistemological Implications of the Planetary Context • Multiperspectivalism • paticcasamuppada • Anekantavada • Creature among Creatures (Perspectivism) • Viable Agnosticism • Existential: in between spaces of unknowning • Syadvada • Apophasis / Negative Thought • The “secularizing” moments of religions (John Cobb) • Deconstruction

  8. Epistemological Implications of the Planetary Context • Polydoxy • Hybrid Identities • No closure/Orthodoxy • Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Queer Theory, Environmental Hermenetics = There has never been One interpretation • Silk Road, Convivencia, Colonial Era, Tributaries to “Modern Science” • Identity in and through difference, otherness; connecting the terrains of a planetary context.

  9. New assumptions for meaning-making in a Post-Colonial, Planetary Context • We have never been modern • Beyond Narratives of Progress and Development, or Decline • Beyond Self / Other divide • Relational selves • Beyond Organism / Machine (Cyborgs) • Beyond Human / Rest of the Natural World: creaturely assemblages • (e.g: paper) • Beyond Religion / Science to meaning-making practices

  10. Planetary Truths • Heisenberg’s Uncertainty vs. Bohrs Indeterminacy • Self-Organization, Poesis, Emergence, Non-Equilibrium • The science of something more, from nothing but • The science of non-reductive physcialism • The science of the New Materialism (Vibrant Matter) • Ideas Matter, Matter Imagines • Regimes of Truth • Lines of Flight • Planetary Becomings • The point is that there are multiple possible ways of becoming; we are not necessarily living any more or less Real than peoples 1000 years ago or 1000 years from now, just under different truth regimes.

  11. The Emergence of Planetary Pluralism: Between Absolutism and Relativism • “Pluralists are not relativists in the first instance because our image of culture encourages us to embrace certain things in this particular place, to be indifferent to some, to be wary of others, and to fight militantly against the continuation of yet others.” (William Connolly, Pluralism, 41). • There is no Omni-God/Telos/Ultimate Reality (that we have access to) • Scientific laws are loose approximations and incomplete summaries • There are more agents than humans in the world

  12. Globalization and Climate Change: Thinking with our Hybrid, Evolving, Trans Context • Wicked Problems (Rittel and Weber) • Hyper-objects (Morton) • Object-Oriented Ontologies (Harman) • Event-Oriented Ontologies (Whitehead; Deleuze and Guattari)

  13. The Ethics of Movement • Nomadic Ethics • Journey over abstract arrivals; Intergenerational • Polyamory of Place • Multiple loves vs. monogamy of place • Trans and Post Humanisms • Ethics beyond the reification of the human species; Cyborg Ethics • Ethics of Pace over Ethics of Place • Are our dreams, imaginings fossel-fueled and outstripping the carrying capacity of the planet? • Beyond Precautionary Principles: At what pace should we move?

  14. The Ethics of Uncertainty • “To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, it must be constantly won.”(Simone de Beavoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 129) • Unknowing at the Edges • Deconstructive Ethics • Iconoclasm • Trickster Ethics • Etc.

  15. The call for planetary Ethics • Spatial Analysis vs. Temporal Analysis (Nixon) • Navigating multiple possibilities for becoming (D&G) • Recognizing that we are co-response-able organisms emerging with many other organisms toward multiple possibilities for becoming • Taking seriously the possibilities of a trans-human future (Haraway, et al) • Imagining multiple “lines of flight” for possible futures to become toward • Collecting toward certain ways of becoming in recognition that no way will ever be final or complete (Bruno Latour) • Keeping our eye on those things which get left out of any one way of organizing the emerging community of life so that those others can re-open the collective at a later date toward a different way of becoming. • Performativity and Abjection (Queer Theory and PostColonial Theory: Beyond Identity Ethics and Ethics of “Imagined Communities”)

  16. Ganjuran Church, Javanese Jesus: Planetary Religious Identities • Hybrid Identities and • Planetary Flows • Colonization • Catholicism • Javanese Traditions • Hinduism • New Meaning

  17. -Eco-Halal -Environmental Pesantren -Sulawese-Catholic, Dutch-Jewish / Hippie / Balinese turned Muslim (via Sufism) - “In order to be Halal today, you must be an environmentalist” Bumi Langit Institute: Making Meaning in a Planetary Context (Iskandar Waworuntu)

  18. Lapindo: The mud disaster (Planetary Ethics for Planetary Problems) • Ethical Responses • Fossil Fuels • Geology • Evolution • Economics • Politics • Nationalism • Ecology • Anthropocentrism • Human Rights

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