28th-30th September 2023
Eco-Phenomenology and Passivity
The Interdisciplinary Phenomenology Research Group invites abstracts for a conference on eco-phenomenology and passivity in Tromsø, Norway
Building on prior work on the phenomenology of embodiment, subjectivity, ethics, and most recently passivity, this conference will consolidate contemporary thinking on the phenomenology of passivity and environmental ethics. By passivity, we refer to all the ways in which we receive and are conditioned by surrounding world prior to active attempts to master it. From an activist or political perspective, passivity tends to be understood as a mere “do-nothing” attitude that will lead to environmental disaster. But rather than think of passivity as defined by its opposition to activism, participants in this conference will explore passivity as linked to givenness, inter-dependence and environmental response-ability, conceived of in relation to the present generation´s need to respond to prior human damage to the earth, natural forces beyond our control, and the anticipated needs of multi-species future.
Bryan Bannon, Arne Johan Vetlesen, Michael Marder and Simone Kotva will give keynote presentations. We welcome proposals for additional presentations of around 20 minutes each. Please see the call for papers above.
Information about accommodation and registration is available under the subpages with the same names.
Associate professor of philosophy at Merrimack College
His research explores the contributions phenomenology can make to improving the human relationship to the natural environment. In addition to his book, From Mastery to Mystery: A Phenomenological Foundation for Environmental Ethics, he has published essays on the metaphysics of nature, ethical ideals, and the use of the arts in presenting alternate environmental possibilities.
Research Fellow at the multidisciplinary ECODISTURB project, based in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo
She is a philosopher of religion working at the intersection of theology, critical theory and earth ethics. She received her PhD from the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, and has taught at the Universities of Gothenburg and Cambridge. Currently she is Research Fellow at the multidisciplinary ECODISTURB project, based in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. She is also affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, where she co-teaches the MPhil (MA) module, Theology in the Anthropocene. She is the author of Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), and is currently completing a companion volume to her first book, Ecologies of Ecstasy: Practicing Philosophy Through Mystical and Vegetal Being. Her work counters the common understanding of spiritual exercises as technologies of the self, and narrates the ecological thinking implicit in the concept and practice of philosophy as a spiritual exercise.
IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
His writings span the fields of ecological theory, phenomenology, and political thought. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and monographs, including Plant-Thinking (2013); Phenomena—Critique—Logos (2014); The Philosopher’s Plant (2014); Dust (2016), Energy Dreams (2017), Heidegger (2018), Political Categories (2019), Pyropolitics (2015, 2020); Dump Philosophy (2020); Hegel's Energy (2021); Green Mass (2021) and Philosophy for Passengers (2022), among others.
Professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo
His main areas of research are ethics, political and environmental philosophy. He has published 27 books, among them The Denial of Nature (2015), Cosmologies of the Anthropocene (2019) and Animal Lives and Why They Matter (2022).