Winds of Change Blowing in the Humanities

1. Winds of Change Blowing in the Humanities Post-modernism ALL EXPRESSIONS OF Post-humanism RHETORIC A PROFOUND Post-colonialism PHILOSOPHYOVERTURNING OF De-colonization LITERATURE MODERNITY Vital materialism POLITICAL THEORYAgency (and politics) of things

2. What is Modernity? Different definitions in different fields Art history—20th-century painting/sculpture, e.g., Picasso Architecture—20th-century functionalism, e.g. Le Corbusier Literature—20th-century novel, e.g., Hemingway Philosophy—17th-/18th-century, e.g., Hobbes, Descartes, Kant

3. Hallmarks of Modern Philosophy—Dualisms Mind/Body—Mind more essential and more valuable Man/Nature—Man the knower and master of Nature Man/Woman—Man rational/mental; Woman emotional/bodily/natural White-man/Color-man—(same as Man/Woman dualism + sauvage) Euro-man/Other-man dualism (same + “orientalism” à la Edward Said) Nature: inert, material, atomic, mechanical, quantitative, passive, deterministic, intelligible, comprehensible, controllable Mind & Man: immaterial, active, autonomous, free

4. Post-modern Resistance Modernity overturned not by unhappy romanticists, but by the unruly resistance of the dark sides of these dualisms Independence movements (India and elsewhere) Civil-rights/Anti-apartheid movements (N. America, S. Africa) Feminist/Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transexual movements Animal liberation and environmental movements.

5. Revolt of Nature: Coup de Grace of Modernity Environmental Crisis = Nature’s Resistance Movement Technological human mastery of nature —> untoward “side effects,” unintended consequences: Air and water pollution, carcinogens, soil erosion, desertification, species extinction, biodiversity loss, erosion of stratospheric ozone, global warming/ climate change, increasingly violent weather, rising sea levels, ocean acidification

6. Hallmarks of Post-modern Philosophy Agency and politics of things à la Bruno Latour Unruly intractability and unpredictability of Nature is agent-like—like dealing with another free, active, autonomous being. Latour envisions Nature as being represented politically by scientists who decypher Nature’s moods and desires and environmentalists who advocate for nature in a multi-species “parliament of things.”

7. Nature Epistemologically Untrammeled US Wilderness Act of 1964: places “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man” Now in one sense—the ontological sense—nowhere: human impact ubiquitous in the Anthropocene. Now in another sense—epistemological sense—everywhere: human mind cannot trammel nature, cannot net and capture it all with our skein of ideas. Nature is ultimately unknowable, un-namable, uncontrollable

8. Hallmarks of Post-modern Philosophy Epistemological humility and pluralism No Cartesian-Newtonian dream of attainting Certainty about Reality by means of a rational/experimental method Therefore, no epistemological hegemony: many ways of knowing, many partial knowledges, none with an exclusive claim to truth—à la Walter Mignolo Decolonization—a form of epistemological independence as well as political independence for oppressed peoples

9. Hallmarks of Post-modern Philosophy Reintegration of mind and body—We engagethe world . . . First via the media of our human senses, Then through the media of the “deep grammar” of human cognition (space, time, unity, causality, identity), Then through the media of culturally constructed concepts (God, soul, ghosts, race, biological & chemical taxa), Finally through the media of how others construct us culturally in terms of race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability

10. Hallmarks of Post-modern Philosophy As mindful bodies we encounter the “vibrancy of matter” à la Jane Bennett and “material feminism” à la Stacy Alaimo and a recognition of the “force of things” as they impinge on and penetrate our bodies. Greater awareness of the food we eat—its sourcing, method of production, processing, cost in terms of human labor and animal suffering Greater awareness of the insidious chemical assault of our bodies in plastics, dissolved in water, as aerosols, etc.

11. Hallmarks of Post-modern Philosophy The emergence of “post-humanism”—humans are animals Other animal bodies also evidently mindful. In Cartesian modernity their bodies were not inhabited by a “thinking thing”; thus they were not agents but mere automata, subject to our will—just as peoples of color were subjected to the wills of colonial masters Interest in animal consciousness, animal subjectivity, animal agency, and animal ethics

12. A Parallel Philosophical Universe of Discourse For 40 years environmental philosophy has been thinking similar thoughts. Critiqued modern Cartesian/Newtonian philosophy of nature + legacy of ancient Greek philosophy and the Judeo- Christian worldview. Explored alternative non-Western worldviews/epistemologies —both Asian and indigenous Developed ecofeminist and environmental-justice critiques of modernist hegemonies

13. Opportunity for Philosophical Convergence Environmental philosophy has long explored non-anthropocentrism (similar to post-humanism) Has long characterized Nature as alive and organic and has extensively developed animal and environmental ethics Post-modernism, post-humanism, post-colonialism, vibrant (vital) materialism, and a political ecology of things has much in common with the 40-year corpus of work already existing in the field of environmental philosophy

14. Geneology of Parallel Philosophical Traditions