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

Event

May 26, 2020
Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism

Online Reading Group (Zoom)

 

For this session we will read the following texts that will be briefly introduced by Baldeep Kaur Grewal from Potsdam University’s “Minor Cosmopolitanisms” RTG:

Provocation text:
Jennifer Wenzel, "How to Read for Oil." Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Fall 2014): 156-16.

Complementary Readings:
Imre Szeman, "System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster.” South Atlantic Quarterly (2007) 106 (4): 805–823.

Laurie Shannon, Vin Nardizzi, Ken Hiltner, Saree Makdisi, Michael Ziser, Imre Szeman and Patricia Yaeger, "Editor's Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources." PMLA, Vol. 126, No. 2 (March 2011): 305-326. 

Heather Davis, “Life and Death in the Anthropocene: A Short History of Plastic” in: Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, eds. Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. 2015. London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 347-358. 

Organizer(s)
Contact and Registration

 

This event will take place via the Zoom platform.

Everyone is welcome to join and we ask the non-MPIWG participants to register in advance. For registration or any questions about the seminar please contact Marianna Szczygielska.

About This Series

 “Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism” is a monthly reading seminar interrogating "postcolonial" as an analytic concept in the history of science. The goal is to understand the ethics and mechanisms of our own epistemic practices as they relate to politics and power. We aim to examine the ways that epistemology is both historically contingent and actively produced within the history of science with the goal of troubling our disciplinary positions. For each meeting we list and circulate

  1. a short ‘provocative text’ to carry the empirical element and to provoke us to go wider in attempting to attend to something that troubles. Everyone is expected to read that text
  2. two or three "theoretical" or descriptive papers that we feel might be useful in "attending to the trouble." These are optional readings. The idea is that everyone who attends the discussion will have read at least the short provocation paper and bring some "troubles" to the meeting
2020-05-26T11:00:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2020-05-26 11:00:00 2020-05-26 12:30:00 Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism Online Reading Group (Zoom)   For this session we will read the following texts that will be briefly introduced by Baldeep Kaur Grewal from Potsdam University’s “Minor Cosmopolitanisms” RTG: Provocation text: Jennifer Wenzel, "How to Read for Oil." Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Fall 2014): 156-16. Complementary Readings: Imre Szeman, "System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster.” South Atlantic Quarterly (2007) 106 (4): 805–823. Laurie Shannon, Vin Nardizzi, Ken Hiltner, Saree Makdisi, Michael Ziser, Imre Szeman and Patricia Yaeger, "Editor's Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources." PMLA, Vol. 126, No. 2 (March 2011): 305-326.  Heather Davis, “Life and Death in the Anthropocene: A Short History of Plastic” in: Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, eds. Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. 2015. London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 347-358.  Marianna SzczygielskaEdna BonhommeHelen R. Verran Marianna SzczygielskaEdna BonhommeHelen R. Verran Europe/Berlin public