Anthropology, post-humanity and hyperobjects

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

Expository lessons and seminars to discuss the research proposals of the students.

Learning Outcomes

The student should acquire skills and knowledge that allow her/him to think / rethink the modern and contemporary world taking into account a set of theoretical and conceptual reflections on the post-human condition of our present (with references to a philosophical arc that goes from Michel Foucault to Peter Sloterdijk). The student should know how to articulate these discussions with the problems resulting from the complexity of the production of hyper-objects (Timothy Morton). He should also know how to develop an original investigation on the contemporary anthropological knowledge and the production of hyper-objects, with special reference to climate changes and the way in which they show complex processes that can be better understood in the light of the notion of hyper-object formulated by Morton.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

The teaching unit aims to investigate the present condition of contemporary anthropology with the decentralization of the human or with its overcoming. One of the central problems under discussion is the proliferation of "hyperobjects", to use the designation of the ecologist Timothy Morton (2013), that is, objects that present themselves in such a massively distributed way in time and space that transcend their location, such as, for example, climate change, plastic bags or styrofoam. It is intended to show how this present condition requires a profound conceptual redefinition of the discipline, which is an urgent exercise in order to respond to the challenges facing us today. The teaching unit has as its aim the development of an original investigation around an hyper-object (climate change) which should promote experimental responses to the its proliferation and systematization.

Head Lecturer(s)

Luís Fernando Gomes da Silva Quintais

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Project: 25.0%
Synthesis work: 75.0%

Bibliography

Latour, Bruno (2017) Facing Gaia: eight lectures on the new climatic regime, Oxford, Polity Press.

Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of the world, Minneapolis, Londres, University of Minnesota Press.

Morton, Timothy (2018) Dark ecology: for a logic of future coexistence, Nova Iorque, Columbia University Press. 

Rabinow, Paul (2003) Anthropos today: reflections on modern equipment, New Jersey, Princeton University Press.

Sloterdijk, Peter (2011) Bubbles: spheres I, Nova Iorque, Semiotext(e).

Sloterdijk, Peter (2014) Globes: spheres II, Nova Iorque, Semiotext(e)

Sloterdijk, Peter (2016) Foams: spheres III, Nova Iorque, Semiotext(e).   

Nancy, Jean-Luc (2014) A equivalência das catástrofes (após Fukushima), Lisboa, Nada.

Wolfe, Cary (2010) What is posthumanism? Minneapolis, Londres, University of Minnesota Press.