“Your skin holds inside it all kinds of unlikely cooperations, and to survive you depend on any number of interspecies operations going on within you all at once. We are societies made of societies; there are nothing but societies. This is shocking news—it demands a whole new world view.”
- Kim Stanley Robinson
“If devastation is ongoing, so must be resurgence.”
- Isabelle Stengers
“The central motif for the history of living beings,” writes German philosopher Isabelle Stengers, “is no longer the selectivist motif of individual lineages competing for survival.” At the very moment when civilization is cracking open into the universe and systems have come tumbling down, another ground, another world has come into view: a ‘milieu of belonging.’ It has become harder to ignore the impossibility of this tension. It has meant to live in this gap, and bear the weight of its paradoxes.
The history of life on Earth is a tale of ecological interbeing. We observe, as Stenger writes: “interdependent being and intertwined living beings, at all scales, each making a living in its own manner, yet with others and thanks to others.”
Now, in an era of mass extinction and climate collapse, what does it mean to make a life—with others, thanks to others—in the ruins of the capitalist present?
What is ours to do in this meta-crisis?
“If devastation is ongoing,” writes Stengers, “so must be resurgence.”
This course is designed as a ‘carrier bag’ for academics, artists and professionals who see themselves working in the threshold between worldviews and realities. It is crafted in the spirit of ecological resurgence.
Together we will examine key works of art, philosophy, and literature that help us truly land in the troubled present. It is in this present where worldmaking and ecological futuring have also become living possibilities.
While Part I familiarizes us with the major ontological and epistemic themes of our meta-crisis and worldview shift, Part II examines where these key themes are becoming ‘Earthbound’ in constructive forms as cultural mutation and institutional transformation.
Part III prepares the groundwork for students to develop their own ecological self-fashioning and worldmaking practices.
Each week, students are encouraged to be gathering up their own ecological medicine bundles and carrier bags composed from the conversations and climate narratives explored in class.
Through the recommended practice of journal keeping and engagement with the key readings, you will be invited to voice your own experience of living in an era of liminality and worldview shift, as well as what it means for you to inhabit a ‘milieu of belonging,’ where worldmaking is something achieved only through the art of intermixture.
What You Will Learn:
The key themes which inform our understanding of the meta-crisis and–most importantly–anchor this understanding in a more rooted and relational worldview.
How a diverse group of contemporary artists, social theorists, scientists and practicing communities have begun to articulate a new ecological worldview, and how their affinities help us to identify the key themes of this worldview.
Begin to identify where this worldview shift is taking root across a wide variety of cultural movements, institutional innovations, and aesthetic expression.
Ways of relating and applying these key ecological themes to your own projects.
Recommended practices for ecological futuring, radical self-fashioning, and worldmaking in common.
Course Outline:
Class convenes for five consecutive Wednesdays on Zoom at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET.
Sessions are 90 minutes, with approximately 40 minutes allotted for group discussion and Q&A.
Recommended 30-60 minute reading and media reflection.
Keeping a journal, notebook, or ‘carrier bag’ for gathering materials.
Key readings are provided each week
Class discussion forum, where students can discuss learning material, share reflections and insights, and ask the instructor questions.
Modules:
Module I: Meta-Crisis as Worldview Shift
Selected readings in this module help us anchor ourselves in the present. Together we will examine art and literature—from Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism to Anna Tsing’s poetic description of ‘life in the ruins’—which illuminates the unique characteristics of our crisis.
Module II: Ecological Realism
This module turns crisis and catastrophe over again to reveal another co-existent possibility in our present: worldview shift. Who is articulating this worldview effectively? We will examine the philosophical, scientific, and artistic foundations of an ecological worldview.
Module III: Earthbound Transformations
What does futuring mean without the linear clock? Without progress? This module examines where the possibility of a new worldview is struggling to be born through new cultural practices, bioregional and small farm movements, cooperativism, P2P and networked societies, as well as other institutional transformations.
Module IV: Worlding as Intermixture
Do stories of salvage and solar/soil-punk offer a different kind of hope? What stories help us experience a radically new relationship with the future?
Module V: Zones
This module examines ecological and posthuman forms of self-fashioning. How do we construct our own carrier bags, and live in a way that our selves and our relations become zones where planetary futures are already present?
Key Readings:
Our class will read excerpts from these and other selected texts:
Ursula K. LeGuin, “A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be”
Selected readings from Salvage journal
Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life
Gloria Anzaldua, Light in the Dark
Jerome Baschet, The Zapatista Experience
Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet
Isabelle Stengers, Making Sense in Common
Curious to learn more? View and download the full syllabus here.
Suggested price: $199 | Student scholarships available - please reach out via email or DM
Five Sessions
Mutations members receive a $15 enrollment discount! See below.
This course looks wonderful, J. Before signing up, I have two housekeeping questions. First, will the sessions be recorded? And second, will recordings be hosted on the Mutations Mighty Network or will they be posted publicly on YouTube? Thanks for all you do!
Love the Le Guin (and Stengers) reading!