Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time: Violence
23rd February 2016 (with accompanying lecture from Thom van Dooren on 22nd February)
Room 2.03 - Charteris Land. St John Street. Edinburgh EH8 8AQ GB
University of Edinburgh
As the second of three workshops in our Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time series, this workshop asks what the perspective of deep time might bring to environmental humanities approaches to cosmic, planetary, intra-human and inter-species violence. Building on our first workshop, Enchantment, and looking ahead to our final workshop on Haunting, we will explore topics including but not limited to:
- Assessing different responses to violent earthly/cosmic forces that precede or exceed human capacities.
- “Love is evil!” quips Zizek. How can we deal with the fact that violence inheres in acts of love and care, and how much collateral violence can we tolerate in making valued life live?
- How to transform existing, unjust geo-social formations? How might divine violence, revolution, or other forms of politics confront the politics of deep time?
- What wounds does deep time inflict on thinking itself? What comes after blood has been spilled – reconciliation, mourning, or mopping up?
- What happens when different temporalities collide? How can we theorise the violence of deep time as banal, systemic, indifferent, symbolic, bodily, or cosmic?
This workshop is free to attend, but numbers are limited. Places can be booked here.
Please note that the keynote lecture for this event, a public talk from Dr Thom van Dooren, will take place at 6pm on Monday 22nd February. Tickets for the keynote lecture must be booked separately via Event Brite.
David Farrier
Senior Lecturer
Director of Knowledge Exchange and Impact
Department of English
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
University of Edinburgh
50 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9JX
0131 6503607