Syllabus
Securing the Anthropocene: Discourses, Knowledge(s) and Techniques
Tuesday 27 February
Part One – Discourses
Seminar 1 (Tu 14:00 - 15:20) - What is the Anthropocene?
Readings:
* Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The Climate of History: Four Theses’, Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009) pp. 197-222. http://www.law.uvic.ca/demcon/2013%20readings/Chakrabarty%20-%20Climate%20of%20History.pdf
* Simon Dalby, ‘Framing the Anthropocene: The good, the bad and the ugly’, The Anthropocene Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2016), pp. 33–51. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053019615618681
Seminar 2 (Tu 15:30 - 16:50) - What does the Anthropocene mean for Knowledge and Security?
Readings:
* Madeleine Fagan, ‘Security in the Anthropocene: Environment, Ecology, Escape’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2017) pp. 267–291. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354066116639738
* Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Audra Mitchell, Simon Dalby, and Daniel J. Levine, ‘Planet Politics: A Manifesto from the End of IR’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2016) pp. 499–523. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305829816636674
Wednesday 28 February
Part Two – Knowledge(s)
Seminar 3 (We 14:00 - 15:20) - Mapping Assemblages – Nonlinear Knowledge
Readings:
* Craig R. Allen and C. S. Holling, ‘Novelty, Adaptive Capacity, and Resilience’, Ecology and Society, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2010) article 24. http://www.buyteknet.info/fileshare/data/analisis_lect/Resilience_Allen-Holling.pdf
* David Chandler, Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene, chapter 2 ‘After Neoliberalism: Mapping Assemblages’. PDF of the book is provided
Seminar 4 (We 15:30 - 16:50) - Sensing, Big Data and the Posthuman – Correlational Knowledge
Readings:
* Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, ‘The Rise of Big Data: How It's Changing the Way We Think About the World’, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2013. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/system/files/pdf/articles/2013/92305.pdf
* Elizabeth R. Johnson, ‘At the Limits of Species Being: Sensing the Anthropocene’, South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 2 (2017) pp. 275-292. http://dro.dur.ac.uk/23130/
Thursday 1 March
Part Three – Techniques
Seminar 5 (Th 14:00 - 15:20) - Hacking and Sympoiesis – Knowing through 'Becoming with’
Readings:
* Donna Haraway, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulhucene: Donna Haraway in conversation with Martha Kenney’, from Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (eds) Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. https://lasophielle.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/ab1cd-artanthro_haraway_proof.pdf
* Invisible Committee, ‘fuck off, google’, excerpt from To Our Friends (2014). https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/system/attachments/2530/original/fuckoffgoogleeng.pdf
Seminar 6 (Th 15:30 - 16:50) - What is after the End of the World?
Readings:
* L Rist et al, ‘Applying resilience thinking to production ecosystems’ Ecosphere (open access) (2014). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/ES13-00330.1/abstract
* David Chandler, Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene, chapter 3 ‘From the “Black Box” to the “Great Outdoors”’. PDF of the book is provided
Annotation
Securing the Anthropocene: Discourses, Knowledge(s) and Techniques
The Anthropocene captures more than a debate over how to address the problems of climate change and global warming. Increasingly, it is seen to signify the end of the modern condition itself and potentially to open up a new era of political possibilities. The focus on a raft of new security problems and new ways of approaching policy-making coincides with a growing array of scientific and technological advances, including algorithmic computation, Big Data and the Internet of Things. Spread over three consecutive days, this intensive course focuses on what security might mean in the Anthropocene. It is divided into three sections, discourses (various ways in which the Anthropocene is understood and discussed), knowledge(s) (how and why new ways of knowing are being advocated) and techniques (new practices and ways of being which seek to go beyond the limits of traditional ways of problem-solving).
The course is run by Professor David Chandler, University of Westminster (UK) who edits the journal Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses and is the author of a number of books on contemporary approaches to international policy governance and new security regimes. His personal webpages can be found here: www.davidchandler.org.