Cosmo-Morphology: On the Order and Ordering of Nature
The unfolding ecological catastrophe everywhere produces a crisis of order. Cataclysmic planetary events are mirrored by the continued imposition of renewed logics of dispossession, domination and exclusion across biological, political and social dimensions of being. The ordering of nature by economic, scientific and technological practices seeks to condition the possibilities for future thought and praxis. Against this determination, we ask: how can the cosmos be constructed otherwise?
“Cosmo-morphology” is a provocation to consider how the order and ordering of nature set the conditions of our cosmological adventure. Borrowing the term “morphology” from the earth sciences—which names the study of the origins and evolution of geographic forms and structures—“Cosmo-morphology” asks how a critique of the order of nature might produce new terms for the construction of the cosmos. To begin to ask what tools are needed for such speculation requires analysis of the social practices and conceptual structures that order nature and recursively instate their own epistemic conditions, from the bureaucratic, colonial, and economic to the scientific, technological, and philosophical.
This one-day symposium aims to initiate discussion covering the cultural, theoretical, political and aesthetic dimensions of the order and ordering of nature and the cosmos. It seeks to explore speculative and transversal epistemologies and cultures that cleave open the potentials for cosmologies and fracture dominant modes of order.
We invite prospective participants to submit a 350-word abstract proposal for a 20-minute paper. Papers on the following topics would be particularly welcome:
- Heretical Cosmologies
- Geoengineering and Infrastructure
- Sci-Fi and Speculative Fiction
- General Ecology
- Decolonial Logics
- Cosmotechnics
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Naturphilosophie