[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: An (Un)Easy Alliance - Thinking the Environment with Deleuze|Guattari (3/15/07; anthology)

[suletar at kulturad.org]

An "(Un)Easy Alliance" Thinking the Environment with Deleuze|Guattari

In her seminal study Bodies that Matter (1992), Judith Butler stated  
that "some have
argued that a rethinking of 'nature' as a set of dynamic
interrelations suits both feminist and ecological aims (and has for some
produced an otherwise unlikely alliance with the work of Gilles  
Deleuze." While Deleuze
and Feminist Theory (Ed. Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook, Edinburgh  
UP 2000) can be
read as an answer to the first "unlikely alliance" in Butler's claim,  
a likewise response
to the second one "the alliance Deleuze and ecology" is as yet  
missing. Butler's
statement links with Luc Ferry's critique in The New Ecological Order  
(1993), in which he
accuses French philosophers such as Deleuze, Guattari, and Serres of  
an "anti-humanist"
stance which, according to Ferry, amounts to nothing less than a  
thinly-disguised "new
fascism." For a neo-liberal humanist like himself, it is insane to  
treat animals, beings
of nature and not of freedom, as legal subjects. We consider it  
self-evident that only
the latter are, so to speak, "worthy of trial." Privileging the  
question of "legal
status," Ferry by-passes the more pressing problematics of what it  
means to be "human"
and "free" if these categories cannot anymore be grounded in an  
essentialist and
clear-cut separation of nature and culture, nature and "man," human  
and non-human, as the
work of Deleuze and Guattari  in both their individual and collective  
works suggest: "we
make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of  
nature and the natural
essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or  
industry ...
man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other  
not even in the
sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation,  
ideation, or expression
(cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather they are one and  
the same essential
reality, the producer-product" (Anti-Oedipus 4-5).

This book project aims at addressing the vacancy of a critical  
engagement with the
(un)likely alliance between the work of Deleuze, Guattari [and  
Deleuze/Guattari] and
environmental/ecological studies. Possible topics favorably but not  
necessarily linked to
an American Studies context might include but are not limited to

- Nonorganic Life Environment and the Non-Human in|of Nature
- Deleuze|Guattari and|versus Radical|Deep Ecology
- Deleuze ? Spinozist Ethology|Ecology ? Arne Naess
- Guattari and the Three Ecologies
- Chaosmosis|Ecosophy ? A General ?Science of Ecosystems?
- The New Alliance and the Natural Contract (Deleuze|Guattari and
Serres|Prigogine|Stengers)
- Continental Philosophy|Postmodernism and Environmentalism
- The Ecology of ?Non-Equilibrium?
- Environmental Ethics
- Art d'Eco - Deleuze|Guattari and EcoArt (Land Art, EcoLiterature,etc.)
- The Convergence of Ecology and Politics
- Deleuze|Guattari and EcoFeminism
   etc.

The deadline for abstracts|proposals is MARCH 15, and they should be sent to

Bernd Herzogenrath
Universität Köln
Englisches Seminar
Albertus-Magnus Platz
50923 Köln
Germany

Brundlefly at web.de

http: www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/englisch/berressem/herzogenrath/