MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Event

Jun 24, 2020
POSTPONED: Democracy or Mediarchy? Agential Cuts and Mattering in the Collapsing Anthropocene

This event has been postponed until further notice due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Please check here for further updates.

 

Abstract

This talk will suggest that understanding “the power of the media” requires not only to make a Spinozist distinction between potestas and potentia in our conception of power, but also to place at the core of media studies the concept of “agential cut” drawn from Karen Barad’s ecofeminist philosophy. Our “democracies” would be better understood as “mediarchies” once we take into account the processes of “mattering” that fold matter upon meaning within our ever more intensely medialized societies. This insight may be particularly relevant in our late phase of the Anthropocene, when matter and meaning collapse together under our feet and over our heads.

 

Biography

Yves Citton is professor in Literature and Media at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis and director of the EUR ArTeC. He is co-editor of the journal Multitudes, and recently published Mediarchy (Polity Press, 2019), Contre-courants politiques (Fayard, 2018), The Ecology of Attention (Polity Press, 2016). His latest book, Générations collapsonautes (Seuil, 2020), has been written in collaboration with Jacopo Rasmi.

 

Organizer(s)
Address
Humboldt University, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany
Room
2249a
2020-06-24T00:00:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2020-06-24 00:00:00 2020-06-24 00:00:00 POSTPONED: Democracy or Mediarchy? Agential Cuts and Mattering in the Collapsing Anthropocene This event has been postponed until further notice due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Please check here for further updates.   Abstract This talk will suggest that understanding “the power of the media” requires not only to make a Spinozist distinction between potestas and potentia in our conception of power, but also to place at the core of media studies the concept of “agential cut” drawn from Karen Barad’s ecofeminist philosophy. Our “democracies” would be better understood as “mediarchies” once we take into account the processes of “mattering” that fold matter upon meaning within our ever more intensely medialized societies. This insight may be particularly relevant in our late phase of the Anthropocene, when matter and meaning collapse together under our feet and over our heads.   Biography Yves Citton is professor in Literature and Media at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis and director of the EUR ArTeC. He is co-editor of the journal Multitudes, and recently published Mediarchy (Polity Press, 2019), Contre-courants politiques (Fayard, 2018), The Ecology of Attention (Polity Press, 2016). His latest book, Générations collapsonautes (Seuil, 2020), has been written in collaboration with Jacopo Rasmi.   Humboldt University, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany 2249a Viktoria Tkaczyk Viktoria Tkaczyk Europe/Berlin public