Anna L. Tsing – The Particular in the Planetary: Reimagining Cosmopolitanism Beyond the Human

Keynote Lecture of the Istanbul Unbound: Environmental Approaches to the City, April 8, 2021

This talk uses the recently released collaborative project Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene to explore cosmopolitan assemblages that include beings other than humans. The atlas traces the planetary condition of the Anthropocene through the non-designed effects of human infrastructures, which we call the “feral.” If we think of cities as patches and corridors of urban infrastructure, we then might ask: How do cities amass nonhumans? How shall we sort out enemies and allies? Using Feral Atlas field reports written by ecologists, historians, geographers, and anthropologists, I show how planet-encompassing environmental phenomena are constituted through the feral dynamics of particular patches and corridors, including those that make up cities. Here human and nonhuman histories intertwine, offering new angles to address predicaments of narrative, representation, and scale.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Santa Cruz. Professor Tsing is a theorist of globalization, environment, and transnational interconnection. Her books include The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015), Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton University Press, 2005), and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (Princeton University Press, 1994). Her most recent work is a co-edited digital project, Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene (Stanford University Press, 2020), which offers an original and playful approach to studying the Anthropocene. Her other co-edited works include Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Words in Motion (Duke University Press, 2009), Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia (Duke University Press, 2003), Shock and Awe: War on Words (New Pacific Press, 2004), Communities and Conservation (AltaMira Press, 2005), and Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture (Beacon Press, 1992).

Istanbul Research Institute and Pera Museum organize Istanbul Unbound: Environmental Approaches to the City, an international, virtual conference that seeks to offer new insights on the complex layers of Istanbul’s urban landscape, to be held on April 8-11, 2021. It brings together innovative studies in the field of environmental history, political ecology, and critical art studies that utilize transdisciplinary methods and transcend predetermined scales and clearly delineated boundaries between the histories and stories of humans, nonhumans, and the built environment. Istanbul Unbound is organized in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stiftung-Turkey, through partnerships with birbuçuk, IstanbuLab, Occupy Climate Change!, and Istanbul Planning Agency, and endorsed by European Society for Environmental History and the Network for the Study of the Environmental History of Turkey. Istanbul Unbound is also part of American Society for Environmental History's Environmental History Week (#EHW2021).

For the other events as part of the conference as well as to register, please visit https://en.iae.org.tr/content/istanbu....