International Symposium at Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France
June 17, 2016
Organizers: Claire Cazajous and Wendy Harding
American
culture, like all cultures, is not of exclusively human making; other
species play an essential role in its development. It is difficult to
imagine what stories would be told of America without horses, buffalo,
dogs, corn, or apple trees, to mention just a few of the species that
have shared the land with humans. Such mutual co-evolutions might be
compared to Deleuze and Guattari’s example of the assemblage constituted
by the orchid and the wasp. Contact with other species (as pets, beasts
of burden, food, ornaments etc.) modifies human culture and
reciprocally alters the species concerned. Rather than falling into neat
divisions this encounter creates contested territories and complicated
lines of suture between species. Instead of drawing boundaries between
nature and culture, the human and the animal, contemporary theorists
(Haraway, Latour, Barad) have drawn attention to their inseparability
and their multiple forms of co-dependence. Donna Haraway goes so far as
to use the portmanteau word “naturecultures” to draw attention to the
intimate, mutating associations of different species.
We
invite participants to consider whether and how the arts can make a
place for other species, rather than affirming the separation of nature
and culture. How do cultural productions represent inter-species
contact? Does the homocentricity of language confine them to
anthropomorphic projection? Do artists and writers necessarily affirm
man’s superiority? Do they replicate the biblical schema, making man the
steward? Can other kinds of relation be imagined that take into account
reciprocity and foster respect? In what ways is it possible to attend
to what Haraway calls the “significant otherness” of non-humans? Is
there such a thing as otherness and difference if we are caught in
meshworks of relationships? What ethical stand can we think of when self
and other have become “molecular”? What new meanings can we infuse into
the word compassion when the other-self division has been discarded?