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TUTORIAL 21/8/2020
Starting with: one word how you are feeling right now - perhaps what expresses affirmation for you or hope (5 mins)
Final video: discussing the final video, possibly appointing a spokesperson to introduce it (we have max 5 minutes in total) (20 mins)
Group discussion: thoughts on affirmation, hope, future. What do you wish for? Let's start with 5 minutes writing each for themselves and then share (30 mins total). 

Kristen: How can we understand nihilism and suffering embedded in citizens of despotic countries where a future can no longer be imagined, despite attempts at revolution? For those of you that come from Post-Soviet countries, do you have any insights into your particular understandings of nihilism and positive affirmation ?

Petra: I had heard from a design PhD colleague that Braidotti’s theories are too affirmative, but I think this course really explained the affirmative ethics very well so I have reached an understanding of my own. I think RB’s combination of critical thinking and creativity is well suited for applications in the design field. The affirmative ethics path is for me a relief from the critical negativity that myself, and my students too, often get stuck in when trying to approach the issues of the PH convergence in our design work. I believe it’s hard work, but I am convinced now that I will stick with it in my research. Acctualizing the virtual is something I will explore further as I think it can be used in rethinking the scenario-making activities in design.

Elijah: Lots and lots of hope for the future. I came here feeling really apprehensive and suffering badly from imposter syndrome. I leave feeling optimistic and exhilerated for the future. Academia, especially leftist academia (which is a not inconsiderable portion of academia) is steeped in melancholy and crunch culture. Here, though, I experienced community, safety, collaboration, respect, openness. It was great. Of course affirmation, hope and the future must leave room for the material realities of oppression, but I don't believe these concepts disavow that at all. If anything, thinking of alternatives can never be a bad thing. What is the point of a future if we don't think about what it COULD be? On one side we must keep away from anti-intellectualism and mindless, demented optimism, but on the other side I firmly believe we must stay away from a discourse of anti-healing and pessimism.

Charlotte: Even if it may sound a bit strange after all the examples from the artistic field / other fields of study we had the chance to listen to during this summer school:
I still wonder how to integrate all that we heard/learned practically into my own studies and field of research. Especially this ethical stance, which I strongly support, is not evident in (German) media studies – my research environment.

FRancesco: There’s need of affirmative practices of hacktivism, but what should the non-scientists do? 

I wish for an inclusive and non-profitable approach to technologies, less progress, more connection. I wish for a switch of desire: from progress at all cost for the few, to slow co-creation for the masses. Covid told us that we need and can slow down, how do we do it?

Labour and progress at all cost, cost lives.
Jacob: My hope for the future me is that I will stay affirmative, critical and engaging.

Goda: I am really interested in remaining open and inbetween, at the same time as I am navigating strucures and needing to anchor myself in forms of potestas. What are the ways how you keep yourself open? Not only research-wise but also as subjects, as thinkers?

Elena: yes, openness is not an easy task, overall if one considers thinking and evolution in thinking as an obligation (a sense of risponsibility).. and there are so many people afraid to think or uninterested. As a side note, I like the idea of the fact that we need to build multiple posthumanities (we are in this together) and how passionate and committed (and generous) is RB putting all this multiplicity together

Alberto: How do we feel being responsible for the affirmative ethics/politics put forward by Posthumanism? I mean, we (human animals) are the ones with the capability of making use of virtual intensities to direct the present into imagined futures, how to be worthy of such a task? how to keep up the motivation?

Caroline: I plan to be a bit more demanding on making sure I have the right feedback and references from the academy, and feel more confident doing this, having been part of this school. Making sure my methodologies contain something generative or abductive, as well as inductive. The affirmative doesn't have to be creativity in the form of art, but could also be a new policy (coming from architecture). Is there an issue with emacipation in posthumanism though? How might we continue our community?

Adele: I think my big question with affirmation is how to sustain it practically — I get the concept of drawing from the future, and for me that works really well to kickstart projects, but it’s hard to keep up. I want to learn to draw on that when I get out of bed every morning to avoid the vortex of Netflix and keep the energy there. 

Long term I hope to be able to find alternatives to the present system of life in and outside academia that are healthy for me and for the world… post humanist research centre on an island with a garden, anybody? Definitely working towards that. So maybe that's the future I'm drawing from.

Constanze: The need for new (i.e. inventive and creative, but responsible) narratives is sth. I very much resonate with. I liked the concept of psychogeography, since it is open enough to allow for different concepts of affirmation -- I am not yet sure whether affirmation (the desire of what isn't here yet) always helps replenishing one's 'resources', but I guess that thinking with one's dérive map can help feel and encourage the process of moving. I also got many ideas for my own research but they aren't really connected to the topic of affirmation and ethics, so I'll keep thinking about this and what it means for my own work.

Marije: 

Auguste: I was very interested by the idea of affirmative dying, and becoming-corpse. We just ended the MA with one of my student about the deat in the trans/post humanism. So, I was thinking about what we were doing and deconstructing, and what kind of the ideas we found in this fields...


 Elitza: I think ethics of affirmation is really powerful and has a lot of potentia. I was thinking about what Auguste said yesterday and I see the problematics encoded in there. In order one to see more optimistic joyful futures one needs to ‘decolonize' their mind, which is a very laborious process, while we have so many socially and culturally constructed beliefs as well as prejudices. What I am very much  interested in is Jungian deep psychology and I was very happy to hear today the Braidotti affirms psychoanalysis and the unconscious as very powerful.
 
 ida: leverages of situatedness

TUTORIAL 20/8/20

TUTORIAL STRUCTURE 18.08.2020: indigenous and decolonial perspectives
Starting with: in the chat, name one thing/object/non-human/concept that you feel relationally connected to right now. Keep this thing in mind as we discuss
Quick break-out discussions: Discuss what questions emerged from today's lectures - formulate one question for discussion on behalf of your group. (not more than 3 sentences) - write it down in the Pad (https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/PosthumanConvergencesGroupG). Some guiding points to think towards: what accounts of relationality have been presented? What new political ideas/strategies/concepts emerged? What concepts drew your attention and why? Make sure to formulate the question as a discussion question - i.e. open ended. (15 minutes)
Group discussion: present your question, followed by group discussion (30 mins)
Closing plenary: ideas exchange (15 mins)

Groups for break-out discussion:
Group 1: Elitza, Eirini, Mariska Debora, Petra Boeld, Robert Morsing, Victoria
  1. Group 2: Yao, Alberto, Maria Sofia, Anna Maria, Marije Ann, Elena
  2. Group 3: Roumiana Lubenova, Jueling, Verónica Mafalda, Constanze Rosin, Kristen, Adele Marie
  3. Group 4: Elijah Patricia Maurice, Carmen, Caroline Jane, Jacob, Brigitte, Ida
  4. Group 5: Charlotte, Sari Päivikki, Augustė, Karin, Francesco

Question from group 5: How to move from exhaustion (of perspectives, attempts, strategies, narratives) to affirmative modes of action?
Question from group 2: how to negotiate the collisions between museums seen as a body of violence and the living body seen as an archive? (in relation to vulnerability and the critical potential of simultaneous temporalities).
Question from group 3: We call for a decolonizing the curriculum, for non-imperial learning that to allows space and voice for other ontological frameworks and epistemologies. Rather than eliding other forms of knowledge how can we re-insert these vital epistemologies into our own education formations, not as ones that simply contrast and contest Western ones, but that teach alongside them? How can such inclusions participate in formative education at a young age? 
Question from group 4: how do we construct counter-narratives with the resources available to us in our localities? 
Questions from group 1:How can indigenous knowledge production get into a coversation with colonial discourse without reproducing the same discursive patterns?
Indigenous people (re)building methodology: can this model be adapted in the European context?
For-ex: Former Soviet Countries, dealing with trauma and memory in relation to co-existent temporalities: past, present, future.

Some (very brief) notes:
Exhaustion as a a place that exposes (what is taht you cannot live without?), that can be productive as well. But: what happens after the exhaustion? 
There is also exhaustion in terms of resources and capitalism. So this brings the question of what do we spend the energy on.
Relate to decolonization: this is not a welcome question of how to decolonize, so this is exhausting and it can create the porosity that hurts you.
The surrender: what is the potentia of surrender?
Surrender - go around, be like water, and then there is a way to find this borrowed future energy in the collective way-finding. 

  Day 07
  Group 04
  how do we construct Couter narratives with the resources we avalible in our locales?
  image of archives as a jumbled mess
  image of the museum that is a performance
  museums are not neutral spaces - 
  Tactic - interesting when the minor framework finds a way to be embedded in the molar. And 
  before today everything seems very much in thr ether, theoritical - virtue of other esptemologies which are practical. 
  combining narratives with the archival - challenging what is normal behaviour. Looking from another perspective
  The affects - joy, exhaustion, have to love something to do activism, love for the future
  
1) how do we construct counter-narratives with the resources available to us in our localities? (Carmen) <<< Question (Caroline has moved it over to https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/PosthumanConvergencesGroupG))
 
2) Image of archives as a jumbled mess. Museum with the lights shut off. - museum as a place where you can take the lights off (Ida)
 
3) Talking about a tactic of co-construction frameworks, more transversal. Interested in collaboration and cohabitation rather than an exclusionary framework. Minor framework housed in the major framework as a tactic. howcanwelearn from other epstemologies to improve European conditions(Caroline)
 
4) Interesting to see how we immediately got an embedded context for the epistemology presented. Felt very embodied/embedded in the local context. (Elijah)
 
5) Construction of the narratives we tell. We can learn from the narratives from others, combining it with the archival. Challenging our notion of what is normal behaviour. We relate to a level of normality, but they don't have to be like that. Acknowledging our narrative as a form of behaviour from a new perspective through studying other narratives. (Jacob)


TUTORIAL NOTES: RB - 19/8/20
(not checked for spelling errors)

1) Posthuman theory and methodologies with regard to the key concept of active, self-organizing matter or an 'autopoiesis' of matter +++++
Question: How does the central posthuman figure of active matter allow for a radically different thinking in media, art theory and cultural analysis? How does matter as an auto-poetic (or rather sympoietic (Haraway)) concept reconfigure our practice, thinking, and perception?
And: How can we successfully integrate the idea of active matter especially into cultural and media studies which are used to focus on language, discourse, and symbolic practices without losing touch to existing discourses and genealogies? Can the cartographies of the 'old' and the 'new' humanities merge to one new territory? Or can we practice posthuman theory only as/by modes of disruption?
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
Posthuman Classics and Posthuman Archaeology - two recent books. Clear that some old discipline are willing to change their take on matter/mind distinction. Disciplines like arcaheology and classics display the same dynamisim in postmodern era. A lot less flexibility that are bastions of eurcentric identity and academic nationalism - history and philosophy. They coined the attack on relativsm, feminism, posthumanism. Ulrich Beck: methodological nationalism reference here.
The practice of academic humanities in europe today are profoundly affected by nationalism. There is a defence of the human and the humanities in nationalistic way, especially in post-corona nationalism. It's not about attacking the disciplines but the critique towards the way they are operationalized by nationalist, capitalist forces. So the question is about infusing forces.
The active and autopoietic matter: do we agree what we mean by matter? If the matter is that of Descartes, it is very different of Spinoza. Our culture chose Descartes. Antonio Damasio on looking for Spinoza: we need to move away from matter as passive and mind as active, intellectual, equating natural law and universal moral values. The ignition is the energy of the transcendental consciousness. 
So there is a need to be precise.
If we start with notion that all that lives lives because it moves - a Spinozist vital approach, that centeres on following fundamental desire for living. There is a rather ascetic idea here of stoicism - we don't needd much to live life, to endure in our existence, to go on even when going on entails negotiations with pain and death. Living as expression of potentia. The active life is that which expresses that which we are capable of becoming. This capacity is immanent - it is inherent in living matter. Activity is extended also to technological artifacts. There is no qualitative distinction in Spinozist materialist perspective between machines, humans, entities - the differences are non-hierarchical. What can bodies do is the Spinozist question. 
We need to intervene in what kind of lifeforms are engineered. 
 
 Regarding the relation of posthumanism and art; theory and practice +++++
Main question: What is the relationship between posthuman theory and creative practices such as art, imagination, or speculative thinking?
Sub-questions:
2.1) Are art and creativity a priotized modality for knowledge production? Or – following Deleuze – are art, philosophy and science formally situated on the same level and how does this trias define the posthuman project?
2.2) Is art to be understood an alternative way of generating theory (see for instance: artistic research), or is art rather about genuinly non-discoursive experiences?+
2.3) In how far is a new sensorium required in order to theorize posthumanism and how does the sensible connect to the sayable?
2.4) How can we rethink creativity, as a concept, with a  posthuman lens? Can you give us some references for this?
2.5) Could you maybe also elaborate on the descicion to include "artists' laboratories" as a mode of pedagogy in this summer school, please?
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
Arts is crucial for the pedagogy and the posthuman. Bring in this other life - artistic life and other other lives that you are living - into education. -→ but why is this important? Why is there a privilege position for aartistic as creative, exprimental transgressive? Because there is a problem with imagination. Analyse it cartographically. How do you change the social imaginary? The Marxists would call it ideology. Lacan: there is a certain understanding of the social imaginary, where a big part of it unconscious. Althusser: ideology is your own representation of your real life conditions. REPRESENTATION - marxist social constructivism. Cultural studies in 70s and 80s inserts in between representation and real life - there is a link between two. Beyond that the classical imagination notion. Take a date with imagination. Deleuze and Guatari: we need to look into how the conditions condition us, and we need to analyse this collectively. Start questioning the obvious, traditions digging up the assumptions behind our habits. Psychoanalysis makes you aware of the deeper proceses, i.e. Identifications (conscious and unconscious). Identification becomes the forum, and imagination is a set of representations that catch, attract you to these identificationns. How to change these patterns are crucial. We need to dis-identify oneself from key premises. Imagination as a force to mobilize together and project into the future. The task of the arts is to undo the sensorium, put you in touch with affective ties.
 
 Posthumanism and non-human animals as subjects of knowledge ++++++
Main Question: How can we build/bring in nonhuman animals as posthuman subjects of knowledge, both methodologically (animals as collaborators in knowledge production) and within an affirmative ethics approach? 
Sub-questions:
- When dealing with humanist, anthropocentric, governance stakeholders in the field, who push us towards object-orientated work, anthropomorphising or “paternalising” animals?     
- When those animals are made invisible/not accessible due to deep rooted humanist anthropocentric structures (intensive animal farms, laboratories, industry of entertainment eg bullfighting), implying hierarchical forms of power of humans over nonhumans (animals as resources, lacking capacity for collective organisation and emancipation)?
- When dealing with affective atmospheres that become intensively “noisy”, and paradoxically erase the human/animal continuum?
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
Animal is one of the metaphysical others of the human - already after egyptians, with etruskan and greek world. One of the key others. → see RB's Metamorphoses. The animals that we live, eat, are frightened of - this is the core of animal rights position, universal human rights to animals (e.g. Nussbaum). Universalising the human rights within humanistic liberal tradition. But: why humanize the creatures when the human is in crisis and being undermined? 
What posthuman tries to do is: disconnect animal from metaphysics of otherness. Same with sexualized, racialized others. Woman, native, animal need to go as categories of otherness. These categories are traversed by speeds of advanced capitalism. Becoming-woman is something else than becoming woman, it is becoming-other. The processes of becoming explode these categories. Cartography needs to start with this explosion. This is critical side.
Creative side is engaging with the animal, e.g. In sciences. We co-exist with other creatures, we are made of other, of non-human creatures. The interest is the trans - transcorporeal, transspecies, transgenic, etc. The new modes of relations to post-metaphysical animal relation. 
 
Limits and possibilities of perspectivism ++++++
Question: What would be your response to the problem of integrating or non-integrating conservative, liberal worldviews into the multi-perspective approach related to the posthumanist/post-anthropocentrique critique of the actual crises of the 21 century? And if we really emphasize the multi-perspecivitiy, how far do we go? Who do we include and how we decide, who is invited in the discussion? 
Do you see the critical posthumanism as an ideology? 
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
The question to start is: where do we position ourselves?
Let's start from here: a group of researchers trying to make sense of posthuman in world leading research university. I am answering as a director of this school. From this perspective you need to negotiate margins of how far you can go in your own context. In neoliberal university devoted to research, you can push quite far because they are working on cognitive advanced capitalism. 
So the strategies can be diversified: radical posthumanist that want the end of humanities and go with posthumanities; or you can go to the rescue of old humanities (animal studies in comparative lit, indigenous in anthropology). 
There is no a-priori answer. But all this is within potestas. 
If I shift my position and speak as a critical thinker, paid by tax payer money as a privileged person: the only thing that matters really is the potentia, it is your desire to actualize the virtual, for desire what is not yet the case. You need to undersand this trajectory for yourself, but the actualization will only happen with others. Do not lose the connection to that bundle of affectivity and desire that makes you want to engage with knowledge production.
RB does not have ideology but rather a set of values. 
 
Posthumanism and non-western philosophies/decolonial thought ++++
We appreciate that you emphasize the importance of including "missing people”. Could you say more about the relationships and potentials between decolonization and posthumanism? For instance:
      
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
Many different ways to answer this. Bulk of posthuman and race and decolonial theory is polarized and weaponized, while the world is marching towards fascism singing. Can we stop fighting in the theory wars and see what is happening?
In Latin America, there is a massive marxist opposition to the posthuman. They do not agree to the reading of capitalism of the posthumanists, but RB respects the cartographies from Latin America. But RB has different account of capitalism: with advanced capitalism, capitalising on life and death. This disagreement between marxists and deleuzeans is long, but it is starting to mix. E.g. Melinda Cooper on her readings of surogacy industry, mixing the marxist with the deleuzean accounts.  But developments like this are difficult to undersand within the marxist reading of economy. The disagreement thus is not about decolonial, postcolonial, posthumanist on ethical level, but more on the level of reading the economy. 
Asia is positioned very differently in this discussion from Africa and Latin America. Asia is at the forefront of post and transhumanism. Asian take on this, China including, is very powerful and it is hard core transhumanism of enhancement. 
Stick to cartographies that look at the knowledge production and ask what kind of alliances can make on the issues, for instance, of labor? How much this is compatible with humanist frameworks? We need to discuss contradictions not to judge but to understand.
 
6) Posthumanism and Immanence, the Body ++++
If this was not an online summer school, now we would be in the same room and perhaps shake hands. It can be noticed that eventhough embodiment is one of the main topics in posthumanist thinking, the actual practices of embodiment are quite often overlooked/ignored/forgotten. On the third day of the school you briefly shared your experience of training your voice in opera singing as a practice of becoming otherwise. This made us wonder what are the practices of embodiment you trust and rely on? In your view, how can these practices of embodiment contribute to the politics of immanence? You often say: get a life! We wonder: do you dance:) 
[Ida, Auguste,Carmen]
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
As a mediation between potestas and potentia: bell ringing. Bells in war time become cannons, but they are also symble of war, bio and necropolitical. Between war and peace. 
 
7) Posthumanism and temporality +
We're very interested in critical posthumanist temporalities: "In the context of Chronos and Aion (Chronos as  the linear, sequential and dominant mode and Aion the ethically transformative, dynamic and insurgent time of becoming) - how might you interpret Kairos?" As an 'opportune opening' could it be that micro-moment of 'surprise' in our porous capacity to affect and be affected; or might it be the nomadic lines of flight that cut across, re-territorialize, open generative cracks and liminal spaces- the moment of the cut?+ How and where do those Kairos moments occur and how to turn the openings into opportunities? What is your opinion of the usefulness of the concept of the 'accident' in this context?  
            Relatedly: If figurations are anticipatory conceptual personas, what is the role of anticipation in the critical posthumanities?
[Roumiana, Alberto, Carmen]
 
Aus <https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions> 
 
Joke Hermsen: A Book of Kairos. 
Both interupting and holding the temporality. You have to craft and style the moments of rupture and intervention because otherwise it can become a violent disruption. 
Anticipatory guesture is how RB would define the imaginaiton as well. It is not delusion and fantasy but rather anticipates possibility - there is something very material about imagining future. It is not easy to do. You will always find it in black literature. The modernists would have called it hope. Anticipating possibilities rather than progress. 

19/8/20

Group 1 (Mariska, Robert, Caroline, Carmen)
Can imagine how to transfer posthumanism into our areas, but can't imagine how to transform into instructions
Is it about making a new practice of knowing?
What have we learn from our fields? 

Caroline: 
My field - architecture / art / design / science engagement: I’ve understood more clearly how to practice and apply posthuman theory and practice. Its become richer, with arguments, tactics and strategies to help build a foundation for a research approach.  I feel more confident around thinking about the relational rather than form and semiotics and the symbolic in architecture. I’m enjoying the thinking through and with Spinoza. As well as the ecological-computational. Looking forward to revisiting my cartographies and strengthening them. But also, that we must build collations across differences in theories (becoming minortarian with bridges) as posthuman emancipation, and try to do more co-consitutioning. 


Robert:

close your eyes and idealize your vision of you perfect self: where everything is going right, the perfect partner, the greatest house, fantastic kids, whatever is your individual idea of perfection.
Spend 2-5 minutes dreaming this scenario up
Now, in a process of becoming other, kill the vision and open your eyes in the same gesture, drawing the energy from your idea into the present
Every time you dream yourself in a specific idealized situation where you are not at the moment, repeat this killing and draw the energy from it. Thus, on a continuous basis, you become-yourself by neglecting the falsity of the dreamed-up perfectibility, but nonetheless produce the energy of such a state, thus actualizing the virtual.

Carmen:
close your eyes listen to the sounds
put a hand on you belly
prepare something to eat or drink
taste
open your eyes thanks to all the material things that surround you

Mariska:
My field of expertise is not disciplinary but thematic and theoretical = race, gender, postcolonial and decolonial thought in relation to political contemporary phenomona and debates on multiculturalism, immigration and religion in Europe. 

What I learned the past days is:
- this 'field' is profoundly anthropocentric and (neo-)humanist in its origins and analysis
- this 'field' is profoundly social constructivist
- the American reception of poststurcturalism is foundational for most of the authors I read and work with
- I was not aware before about the differences in the diagnosis of capitalism in the decolonial school vs Braidotti's posthumanism 
- I was not aware of the differences between Derridean thought in posthumanism and CAS (from the likes as Wolfe) & the French / Australian reception and understanding of power
- Affirmative ethics seems extremely inspirational and Spinoza's thought to be further explored

My instructions for my field:
- Make your own cartogrpahy from which I tap into conversations
- trace anthropocentrism and neo-humanism in your cartography
- develop a set of perspectives from which you can provincialize Cartesian thought; be sure to include here Spinoza and Deleuze as well
- conflict is productive; so be aware of and think through methodologial differences of the various authors and traditions of thought you use, e.g. social constructivism vs nature-culture continuum, analysis of capitalism 
- Aks yourself: what would an affirmative ethics regarding your field and your research problematization look like? 


Group 3 (Marije, Sofia, Jacob, Karin)

ENCOUNTER WITH A DISCARTED OTHER (short instruction for exhausted students of the summer school)








ORDERED QUESTIONS for BRAIDOTTI TO BE FOUND HERE: https://pad.riseup.net/p/RBquestions
********************************************


Tutorial structure 18/8/20
Starting with: stretching (3 mins)
Questions for RB: discuss the order of questions and assign who asks them (15 mins)
Individual reflection: write down your reflections on the intersection between computational, posthuman and matter -bringing the themes together (5 minutes)


Petra:I think about the load of work to be done. In my PhD situation the focus on the designed object in the Ph convergences puts so much important aspects on the map (using cartography as method), like extractivism, colonial pasts and presents, environmental and social issues, nonhuman rights, advanced capitalistic behaviours etc, etc. All so important but it also makes me overwhelmed and anxious of not being able to study all strands in depth to make them justice.
The computational is connected to this only with minerals as materials in the acctual computer objects, all is entangled. 

Elitza: I was very interested in Dr. Amaro's philosophical lens of looking at the individual self and subjectivity. In a sense, this is very close to what Buddhist philosophy is also observing, the dissolution of the “I." I did my master’s studies in Japan where I was confronted with my socially constructed identity and prejudice. Only by starting slowly deconstructing what I called “I” I started to come in terms with and embracing the concept of the fluidity of the self and abstractive multilayered identities, always in a process of becoming. There I also started thinking of the knowledge of the body and how it relates to the intellectual cognition of the mind. What Catherine Hayles would call ‘non conscious cognition.'

Alberto: "What would happen if we rethought algorithms not as objects to be known through observations but as figures to be used for making sense of observations? How to account for the sedductive force or, as Adrian Mackenzie (2006:43) called it, 'cognitive-affective stickiness' of this figure?" (Ziewitz, "A not quite random walk").  Can we use Ziewitz view of algorithms to think of grammar or discourse and then theorize the seductive force of discourse, its affective, quality as signifiers that may cluster into meanings?

Francesco: affirmative ethics for algorithms and technology - art as a space to develop possible futures, and to work towards posthuman convergences. As a form of hyperstition or simulacra, but with affirmative qualities, rather than Landian toxic dark enlightment apocalypse. Can performance, music, live art work as platform to compose new convergences and assemblages and can reality copy them? Can digital performance be the motor of posthuman ethics and techno-feminist/indigenous/post-colonial revolution? As Musk deliberately copied imaginaries of lost futures in developing his capitalistic outputs, and as Black Mirror has given good 'ideas' to Google and friends in developing security systems, enhanced GPS and videogames, is it possible to do the same NOT only based on profit and exploitation but looking at affirmative and positive outputs?

Elijah: at my internship we certainly focus on aspects of the posthuman in that we centre most of the festival around nonhuman others and the interplay between the nonhuman and the human (body). computing comes into it in that we have several projects relating to algorithms, cyborgism (which is the core of the festival), data ethics etc. However, matter and/or materiality often seems an afterthought if it is addressed at all. tracing the genealogies/cartographies of matter would be fascinating in how they begin as raw materialities that exist within their own localities and then, after god knows how long, make it into or onto a (human) body. however, this doesn't really... happen.

Charlotte: I am not really sure how to connect the three elements – computing|matter|posthumanism – successfully yet, but it seems to come down to the question of individuation as a processual, relational and active dynamism of becoming which as such could bare critical potential as it evades 'the calculable', fix and predictable. With regard to my work or field of study (media & film & artistic practices) I find it interesting to ask: In how far can we rethink the medium following concepts of active matter, relationality and processuality? We then look at ecologies and processes of mediation or mediated individuation (instead of ontologies, indiviuums or entities). In this sense it seems a conceptual shift that's emerging from posthuman thought. Following from this, a whole section of terms seem to collaps ("the medium", "the spectator", "the art work" and so on). At the same time, a thinking in essemblages, relationalities, and process ontologies opens up. [conceptual / methodological level]

Brigitte: in teaching and learning it is of course very relevant in terms of thematic issues, to talk with young people about their relationship with algorithms, computer, digital tools and so on. It is very important to point to normalization, homogenization of their realities and to the control young people are submitted to. Then also I find it pertinent to come up with the question of resistance and contingency and not to lead them to the pitfal of condemning completely those technologies like Ramon said, there are also ways of using the technology and to develop it further as an affirmative ethics of dealing with the problem. Young people - for my opinion - are also part of the excluded, controlled and minimalized people so it can be very promising to lead them to perceive themselves and act themselves as vital forces in this issues. It is also important for them to get aware of the fact that the technology as an active matter is acting upon them and not to have the illusion of something rational. 

Elena: I like very much how art practices/creativity  subvert racist schemes and systems of power control.
Even if working in ARchitecture requires computational tools I always had a difficult relationship with machines as I always look for the intensity of spacial experience through matter (poetics of space and phenomenology), I guess I should be more kin with the machines, which I always experienced them as a tool one necessarily needs to use (as a mean to a different end)-or not that one necessarilyhad the option to chose to not use them. Ways of negotiating the sensorial with the machine... From my experience I find a lack of enough critical discourse on the use of algorythms in Architecture Academically (as a result of the profit-driven institutional aspects. Falling into aesthetics & imagery complexity, compositions, rather than something with more content)

Kristen: The relationship between breeds as natural or cultural categories by Building genetic profiles that commercialize breeds and even individually high performing pigeons, developing a Heritage status of Belgium pigeons being the top breed. A DNA laboratory in seeks to find the “Homing Ability” and the “will” for racing and competing. These are now authentication systems that verify the genealogy of the pigeons and replace prior sympoieses of encounters between the human-companion racer and the pigeon are being lost

Marije: 

Ida 
I was most struck with the image/question what would be computing in and according to the world perception and practices of indigenous groups. This was the way I could most clearly open myself to understanding how the paradigm exchange can happen in computing, but also made me think of social algorithms that need reordering according to their own inside rhythms. I will be tuning in to this image often I feel. 

Karin: What is the computational? Drawing maps on Adobe programs? Matter = mountains and ore. Posthuman = looking on material changes from diverse perspectives, affirmative approach (and probably much more) >> A connective method: Cartography of doing as method of writing and drawing. 
AND The copmutational interferes directly into the material (extracting ore) > I observe these processes and the e/affects. > With affirmative approaches and material approaches and the inclusion of unexpected actors. >> I USE, OBSERVE, and PARTICIPATE (not even speaking of myself as the enduser of the material which might be another shortcut). I cannot DISRUPT extractive processes. 

Caroline: My PhD proposal aims to explore a radical kinship of AI, using relationality, and our experience of the forest. Can computation be protective? If computation is non-human, what is it? Is there anything ‘human’ in computation? How might computing take into account radical kinship? Can the body be an interface? How might I study computing if I can’t code? How might we approach the intersectional alongside race in computational studies? Alongside Crenshaw, Wynter mentions to avoid separating categories, otherwise we reproduce silos. Can we the 'dividual' to breech? What might the connections to microbes be as well as the geological (geologic!)?

Verónica: Intersections between computational science, posthuman, and (human and nonhuman bodies that) matter :
-        Addressed me the way in which computation and algorythms reproduce established old forms of oppression
-        How is computation being used in the case of animals? One way: animals being (again) used for human purposes: An example ERC grant: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=314704193101051&extid=2V19BTQykmjUDK77
- What can we imagine affirmative ethical ways of bringing computational science in behalf of the animals themselves, as posthuman subjects?

Auguste:
I was thinking today more about my PHD so my question quite not in the theme strictly... I was thinking about D. Haraway and how her ideas are used, composted if to be more precise? Whether the ideas are used only(? or that is not only) as neccessary citation, or actively using her figurations to think-with? And when uses, so which parts, which books? How "Cyborg Manifesto" changed the way it is interpreted? And still is in different fields...

Adele: 

Constanze:
I was focused today on kind of specialized questions that I might need to address in my work, but in which I am in no way an expert... like: What is to be found in the question around stability of systems, based on self-referentiality? For example, also Simondon says that systems need a certain instability to operate (there might be an analogy to Michel Serres as well), so how could the acceptance of openness and instability be incorporated more visible into systems? Also I think that one needs to address the different temporalities and "layers" of becoming of technology: Is there some kind of "subversive" potentiality in e.g. neuromorphic chips, which are based on a non-binary, "analogous" microelectronics? Neuromorphic chips thus "avoid" the complexity-reducing binary (0:1), but of course they are used in sets where they are supposed to replicate the neuronal structure of the brain (not much thinking about embodiedness there, at least not in the Human Brain Project, to my knowledge)...

Group discussion: share and discuss your questions (30 minutes)

Methodological questions: individuation, interface - addressing technologies as not stable but processual. However, tech can also be seen as tools, technological work as tool-driven. Tools to document the process. 
How do we inject critical thought into the use of computational tools?
Thinking of medium from posthuman perspective: philosophies of what happens in the processs (like theories of event, accident)?
What are process ontologies? --> Simondon description of entities as emergent. ONtology is not the state of being but the process of becoming. 
John Dupre: there is no such a thing as thing but processes, especially in biology. It is hard to think without things and stable entities. Also Manuel Delanda and his theory of assemblage and emergence and he applies those to social processes. 
Deleuze on essence as not stable.
Does computing only deal with essences and fixes them? there are initial conditions that cannot be overcome. What are these limits for the possibility for novelty?
Simondon: what does it mean that posthumanism needs to be accompanied by postanimalism?
How does the art connect to the computational? Perhaps David Roden's speculative posthumanism could be interesting here?
See deleuze but also Saidya Hartman on speculative fabulation


Questions for Professor Braidotti (for Wedneday, 19 August) 
Please write your questions here until Tuesday morning, and then will rate the questions, to select an order in which they will be asked by adding a “+” to your prefered question.  ** Please try to formulate your question in a concise, thought-through and understandable manner **


– Ethical questions in the Humanities these days are quickly labeled as naiv or do-gooder (see for instance: Anthropocene-debate; claims for sustainability; activist / artistic research). When applied to the investigation of artistic practices, posing ethical questions may even be understood as dangerous projection, moralization or covered instrumentalization. This reflex probably stems from the tradition of a (Western) modernist autonomy of the Aesthetic. In art and media studies but also in general cultural analysis:
How can we make clear and argue for the difference between neo-materialistethics and neo-humanist morality? How can we then maybe even argue for the need of an 'ethical turn' in the Humanities?

– What would it take for an auto-poetic matter to allow for a radically different thinking (in media / cultural analysis, in theory, in how we consider the (non)human subject...) 

– How does matter as an auto-poetic (or rather symbiotic) concept reconfigure our practice, thinking, and perceiving?

– How to integrate the idea of active matter into cultural & media studies which are used to reflect on discource, perception, and symbolic practices without loosing touch to existing discourses and genealogies of knowledge? Can we only narrate the story of posthuman theory by disruption, or is there a way to reconsile all this on a theoretical level?++

You have cited numerous authors, in your lectures, in your book, and in the assigned readings: can you recommend cartographies, books or authors that you think as vital for understanding new-materialism?+ --> I don't really understand this question as Braidotti already said that the references are the cartography her approach is situated in...

Walter Mignolo, as referenced in today’s Guest lecture, has been a huge influence in deconstructing the dichotomous structure of Modernity imposed during Eighteenth Century Enlightement that allowed for coloniality and the dispossession of beings. He also tells of how Latin America has developed its own hybridity and evolution of Modernity due to its long history of being the first continent colonized. He poses interesting perspectives in how Latin America has already reached beyond coloniality. I would enjoy witnessing examples from their perspectives on how to decolonize the mind and body.

In your first lecture, You mention intresting thought about that embodiment, that it is quite often overlooked/ignored/forgeted in posthumanist thinking. Maybe you could comment this, in your opinion why?

How would you integrate in your posthumamism the problem of endemic exploitation, repression and violence in sub-saharan African countries by black elites and the same question about the imperial role of China in this region and worldwide? + + ++

How do you think about the problem of integrating or non-integrating conservative (not extreme or extremist!) worldviews into the multi-perspective approach in order to avoid that posthumanist thought turns out to be ideological? +++
(I don't understand this question, since everything one thinks is a set of ideas. Do you mean an imposed, prescriptive, way of thinking? Posthumanist thought in Braidotti's terms is a matter of beeing proactively ethical (ethics of affirmation and vitality). For what I understood there are also people with different approaches to "posthumanism" -posthumanism is a critique to our present condition of advanced capitalism-) I don't talk about academics but about discussing the actual state of the several crisis we are facing in the 21st century. When we talk about racialised, sexualized and naturalized others, about advanced capitalism about ecological crises, of course the posthumanist discourse is not a neo-liberal, conservative one, it is not neutral. Ok so far. But if we really emphasize the multi-perspecivitiy, how far do we go? Who do we include? +++ Posthumanist thinking is about abandoning exclusion, but in fact, thematically it is excluding conservative thinking. One form of dealing with this dilemma is for instance to look at those global issues as narratives and try to understand and accept, that there are different visions about living on this planet (like Prof. Mike Hulme suggest in 'why we disagree about climate change'). If we do not do that, we are getting close to ideology. And I would like to know how Prof. Braidotti sees this dilemma.

How to make non-western philosophies and experiences dialogue with posthuman theories while find alternatives, without producing the “otherness”? (You refer to Braidotti's theory I guess. They are in dialogue and I find multiple parallelisms in many points. With Amerindian philosophies, even Buddhism.. The other day she even mentioned with Taoism)+

Being both relational and situated, how do we overcome, or is it a question of overcoming individuality in favor of incorporating multiple perspectives into ones way of looking at the world? It is a question that seeks to problematize the relational capacity of us as specific individuals: that we have trouble to acknowledge others because we are located in a specific environment. Should we acknowledge our situatedness, which might reduce our relational capacity, or our relational capacity for transversal allinces, that may seek to transform the specific individual?+

How do you understand politics of immanence? ++++

Does posthuman alternative in producing knowledge mean in practice, especially related to be "grounded" and "situated", ethnography? If so, how to get from situated knowledge into a bigger picture alternative vision that could be used in policy making etc? 

What is the relationship between posthuman knowledge production and art? Is art a priotized modality for knowledge production and if so, why? (cf e.g. inclusion of art as a mode of pedagogy in this summer school).++++++

How can we build/bring in nonhuman animals as posthuman subjects of knowledge, both methodologically and within an affirmative ethics approach? 
-        When dealing with deeply humanist, binary based, stakeholders in the field;
-        When those animals are invisible/not accessible (eg animals in factory farms), due to deep rooted humanist anthropocentric structures (animals as resources);
-        Where body encounters are often made impossible/difficult (abduction of bodily contact, vg in relation to food, laboratory, entertainment animals), or “indirect” (eg meat instead of living body);
-        When encounters are deeply affected by existent (very humanistic) structures that perpetuate human power over the nonhuman (eg: animals exclusively used as resources, in laboratory, or factory farms, or entertainment eg bullfights), with a clear imbalance of power that clearly hinders/limits animal agency (and hence our capacity to think of them as agents with equal powers in the existent humanistic web od relations).
-        When encounters are deeply embedded in affective atmospheres that become “noisy” and paradoxically erase the human/animal continuum. Eg: the politics of affective excess towards certain animals (eg wild animals/flagship species; or pets), in detriment of others (who are either invisible, or kept in a lower status; eg mice, reptiles, insects, etc.). (cases in which the affective does not always turn out in favour of a posthumanist knowledge/approach). ++++

When trying to decentre the human, how might we account for nonhuman subjectivity outside of law, and within research, avoid creating object-orientated work or anthropomorphising?

I will restrict my questions to Patricia Piccinini as much as possible as on the one hand she will not be having a Q/A session and, on the other, Professor Braidotti has turned her attention to Piccinini in one of her written pieces. Piccinini has many years ago been referred to by Haraway as her sister in technoculture and I was delighted to hear Professor Braidotti refer to her as her "buddy". Piccinini has repeatedly described her "tender" creatures as deserving empathy as well as reminded us of our "duty to care" towards those creatures. This resonates to me as the entangled empathy vein elaborated by L Gruën with relation to animals. Animals are, of course, a major part of Piccinini's grotesque (degradation/regeneration) fairytales. Her "imaginary beings that are almost possible" dwell on the human/non-human (animal and mechanical) convergences whilst they entice us to draw cartographies in terms of biogenetics, extinction, vulnerability and teratological theories. Could you elaborate on these and how they relate to current literature such as Haraway's The Promises of Monsters but as importantly on Crip Animal Studies developed critically and artistically by missing communities (e.g. Sunaura Taylor?). Finally (sorry...), do you see Piccinini's "loving monsters" (that's how I like to think of them in their capacity to affect/be affected) has taking a less affirmative turn in her later work, possibly less affirmative? I see The Couple as a re-affirmation of affirmativeness (!!) but pieces such as The Peace Between Lightining and Thunder as a move from vulnerable monstrosity to something more aggressive. Many thanks    


2x alliances: 
How can we build wondrous alliances of different 'missing people' without approproation and violent reduction of their situated systems of knowledge? 
AND still survive in the institution AND cognitive capitalism AND stay sane? 
I'm especially thinking of the institutions of architecture where posthumanism and feminist new materialisms start dwelling in the margins of the discipline (theory and arts) but seem to be blocked from the 'cores' of the discipline? Should we really give up on the projective centers where the decisions are made ('major science')? Or, can we include them in the posthuman cartographies, or rough mappings then, of the present times? Would this be another risk factor for violent reductionism of feminist posthumanism? 
(Actually I would also like to ask more generally, what is the potential of space in the posthuman (bringing all beings and becomings together?) and if you see some further unexplored potentials for the discipline of architecture, and how literal / material can we take posthumanism to make it a practice, and what are the dangers of reductionism here?)


How to  show that politics of locality, indigineous 'country', situated knowledge ideas ontologically differs from Identitarian movement? How to completelly denacify the ideas of holism, organity, nature-culture? How to be at least in that path or ontologically  they always be very interconnected?

Could you recommend feminist indigenous reading? 
I would like to reflect on autonomy, care, production and reproduction labour from indigenous women voices. The concept of matriarchy has been controversial (non accepted) in anthropology since there has been a tendency to make that term wrongly as the equivalent version of patriarchy, being dismissed in Academia for long time saying that it did not exist such equivalence in the world (of course, from a male perspective. It should not be compared as such because they imply different forms of governance), as Goettener-Abendroth says  -arche as the greek word "power" could also be used as "at the beggining". 
I am interested in matriarchies not only for their indigenous vision and their relationship to the environment and to non-human others, but also for their different forms of governance and power redistribution. Could you talk something about this, or recommend literature about it? 

On the third day of the school you briefly shared your experience of training your voice in opera singing as a practice of becoming otherwise. This made me wonder what are the practices of embodiment you see as contributing to the ways of your own thought, what are the practices of embodiment you can say you trust and rely on or which have been influencial for you by now? You often say: get a life! I wonder do you dance:) ++


It is very interesting to me to observe the way you encourage us to see ourselves as the subversive yet vitalising force of the older-than-capitalism institution University. I wonder do you see such potential in other contemporary institutions and what type of power do you see in the figuration of an  imaginary institution? And in this line /or a bit off/, how do you look at practice based artistic PhD programmes of today? +

I'm very interested in critical posthumanist temporality: if Chronos is the linear, sequential and dominant mode and Aion the ethically transformative, dynamic and insurgent time of becoming - how might you interpret Kairos? As an 'opportune opening' could it be that micro-moment of 'surprise' in our capacity to affect or be affected; or might it be the nomadic lines of flight that cut across, re-territorialize, open generative cracks and liminal spaces- the moment of the cut?+ It is related to porosity certainly and I'm wondering how and where those Kairos moments occur and how to turn the openings into opportunities. +

Also, in connection to the future or futures, if future generations are virtual missing peoples, how might we bring them into our posthumanist scholarship and inquiries without colonizing their futures? (Since they are the 'not-yet', would it be arrogant to assume anything on their behalf? Perhaps the session on indigenous knowledges will clarify how one might think of future generations generously and generatively). In my recent PhD transfer viva, I was asked who am I doing this work for - who are my constituencies - and I wanted to say, "for future generations" but realized there is so much to think through here. 

Finally, if figurations are anticipatory conceptual personas, what is the role of anticipation in the critical posthumanities? How is anticipation related to temporality and the future? Can you recommend literature on critical posthuman temporality and anticipation?+

How to relate to capitalism in a posthumanist affirmative ethics? Do we tacitly accept capitalism and try to 'adapt' it or do we work to abolish it? I imagine the answer is somewhere in the 'and-and' range, but this does not seem convincing to me. What does an affirmative ethics make of for example the critique of greenwashing capitalism, e.g. supposedly ecological policies or organic food production when there are strong studies that suggest that organic farming will not be able to secur access to food for all the billions of people around the world? Same goes for labour rights, etc. Can an affirmative ethics avoid the trap of coöptation or does an affermative ethics and posthumanist perspective not see the pitfal of cooptation in the first place? ++

In their book 'Toward Psychologies of Liberation', Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman refer to Rosi Braidotti's work in their chapter 'Non-subjects and Nomadic Consciousness' - what is the critical posthumanist stance on psychologies of liberation and emancipation of the South American geneology with Paolo Freire, Martin-Baro and more recently, the work of 'nepantlera' Gloria Anzaldua? Is 'mestiza' consciousness, or Borderland consciousness, similar to nomadic subjectivity? Is Critical Participatory Action Research a relevant methodology in critical posthumanist work?+ ++




TUTORIAL 17/8/20

TUTORIAL STRUCTURE 17.08.2020: new materialism
Starting with check in:  One emoji that describes your current mood (3 mins)
Summary: some emerging questions/signpostsc (3 mins)
Individual reflection: what is the question that you are working with, or that has emerged for you today or after last week? (3 minutes) → could be a question for RB
Group work: in your groups, discuss the questions that came up during today's lectures and reflect on what ways questions around matter come through in your own work. Write down one central question (one sentence) that you would like to bring to the group discussion (20 mins)
Group discussion: Present your question to the whole group. Brief group discussion (20 mins)

Groups:
*


Summary of last week - some question/themes that seem to re-emerge throughout the tutorials:

Group 1 (Day 4)

HOW do we create openings co-constitutively, in response to negativity, without approproation, and still survive in the institution? 

Group 3 
- multiple perspectives on materiality 
- challanges in seing connections when in moving accross different sites/situations, yet simultanously very interesting 
- possible connections: in formulating alternatives, e.g. grounded in solitarity, in importance of accounting in heterogenious elements 
- new materialism is promising in approaching difference 
- questions we are thinking about: 
- What new materialisim/post-humanist perspective allows us to rethink and account in relation to agency? 
- Is agency a human (cf critique) dimension? 
- sometimes this feels like this is a beautiful metaphor but how well it translates into legitimate field/research/application in the wider academic environment?  


Group 2
Techno anarchist movement, what does an implant mean for disabilities, what does technological innovation mean in a society that serves advanced capitalism
Boundary of subject-object, co-evolution of technology and society
what kind of figurations can we use today in order to conceptualize matter
Is materiality different from matter --> Manuel DeLanda Assemblage Theory 'A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity'
Is Latour's materiality different from Braidottis vital matter
How not ot loose the question of post-humanism in order to avoid trans-humanism

Group 3 question (Day 4): 
- how to concretely apply new materialism in our concrete cases conerning Monstrosity & Disability (tecno-natural-culturally assembled monsters that encounter trajedies), literature, material from the animal's perspecive and how human's use apparatuses/materials to control matters such as reproduction and sexuality

Group 4

Subjectivity and affirmative conflict in relation to the potentia of vibrant matter and the future being already in the present and its virtualities. 

If the matter is sympoetic and self-organising how can we enter a mode of subjectivity that is relational and porous without evoking a large humanitarian existential crisis that is not destructive but rather affirmative?

Petra: matter - designer: philosophy is quite new for designers, who are close to materiality: what designers will think as vibrant matter or subjectivity or vital force. The political element is missing.

Ida: choreography & performance: bringing conflict out of the binary zone, crucial as affirmation. Matter as abstract, not only the expected bodies and objects material. Sharpening the encounter: sharpening. Conflict. Differences.

Rumiana: future studies, how to make the future much more tangible. Figuration as a participatory persona. Nomadic subject. Felting as a nomadic practice. How can I make it as a posthuman practice?

Constanza: sex robotos, sexual difference written into matter, grasp confluence between traditional and patriarchal: how far matter can resist the reterritorizataion but capitalist mode of thinking. Sex robots - openness to the body.  How matter is being perceived and produced and stimulated. Critical abuse of intelligence. 


Group 5
the nonhuman (very humanistic?): eg: animals exclusively used as resources (in laboratoris, or factory farms, or entertainment eg bullfights)

MARIJE:
What binaries am I to deconstruct: physical/virtual, old/young (grandparent/grandchild), connected/disconnected, intimate/remote
What is the bigger political project? How can I look at the Zoe-perspective? What about capitalism?
How can I connect with non-Western thinking? What is my way in?

JACOB: Matter and Mediality I
Enchanted materialism.
"Amplify possible resonances" (not dissonances)
Affect is always relational
Vibrant ontology (Jane Bennett).
[Ethics of Research] Toward a minor scientific listening.

CHARLOTTE: Matter and Mediality II
What is the relation of the New Materialist approach as presented by Braidotti in relation to Realism, so what is the role of active matter for (artistic; filmic) media practices?  
--> This could help me to understand art practices related to the Posthuman project w/out simply looking at 'representations' 
--> This could help me to understand how to apply a New Mat approach to "my field" (film / media theory) 

ALBERTO: Critique through an auto-poetic understanding of matter
How to conceive radical change — a change that is 'other' and not an option allowed by the structure of power — if we consider matter as auto-poetic and as organizing itself according to ethics and in an affirmative manner. Without a chance for negativity (the possibility of matters destruction of itself) how can we allow a 'change' that would not be a negotiation with an existing structure of power? 

ALBERTO:
How to conceive radical change —a change that is 'other' and not an option allowed by the structure of power— if we consider matter as auto-poetic and as organizing itself according to ethics and in an affirmative manner. Without a chance for negativity (the possibility of matters destruction of itself) how can we allow a 'change' that would not be a negotiation with an existing structure of power? 

VERONICA: 
Main question (for R.B.): How can we build/bring in nonhuman animals as posthuman subjects of knowledge, methodologically, ethically?
•  Within a framework of deeply humanist, binary based, stakeholders in the field
•  When those animals are invisible/not accessible (eg animals in factory farms), due to deep rooted humanist anthropocentric structures (animals as resources)
Matter comes up mainly through:
•  Bodies – and body encounters; human and nonhuman; bodies that affect each other;
•  Common environments where the continuum is enacted (hybrid spaces, tasks, communities, etc.)
•  Structures that perpetuate human power over the nonhuman (very humanistic?): eg: animals exclusively used as resources (in laboratoris, or factory farms, or entertainment eg bullfights)

Collective Question:

•  What would it take for an auto-poetic matter to allow for a radically different thinking (in media, in theory, in how we consider the (non)human subject...) 
•  What does matter as an auto poetic concept reconfigure our practice, thought and perception?

TUTORIAL 14/8/20

Tutorial plan:




Group 5. Art practices in knowledge production 
            

*Group 3: NON-HUMAN, MATTER, MATERIAL PRACTICES, KINSHIP
Discuss in groups what kind of posthuman trajectories are emerging but also are missing in this field. What kind of collaborations/new knowledges/new perspectives need to be constructed? What kind of methodological issues does this present?
E: Art / design is anthropocentric. Aim to bring multiple voices, bring attention to soundscapes of birds, the faculties and sensoriums that we have forgotten, extinctinon. Struggle with expectation to deliver a traditional dissertation, want to use artistic methods of research.
C: art/design/architecture, still humanist, feasable to bring non-human voices, Missing: Spinoza, Deleuze foundation missing in the UK. Hard to pin down what methodologies needed, old stuff doesn't fit. Missing - the relational - still often object-form. Post-doc and phd funding - all very, very human-centric (species narcissism!)
K: Architecture -> different in central Europe and Scandinavia, missing openess and combo of theory & practioce (in central Europe), potential that is not explored! Lack reflective layer instead of being stuck in anthropocentric methodologies.
Petra: Design, art, design craft, posthuanities is still emerging, Sweden seems very open towards PH, we have e.g. the Posthumanities Hub based at Lindköping Uni with a wide group of participants from diverse disciplines as well as institutions. Missing: finished works (PhDs), whereas there is much more in the art scene - taking into consideration CONSEQUENCES of design, no experience with tested methodologies (?)
V: a lot of resistance, don't want to throw away the resistance, artistic expression: human-animal expressions, leraning from the arts, need to combine. Co-creation of a common ground/work is key.
E: Architecture + art history. Artist as "Philosopher in action", art as activism. Artistic methods in the research, slowing down the process & way of thinking, posthumanism + ethnography no problem, e.g. working w art piece in indigenous cummunity, translate the learnings into own work.Porosity of spaces, vitality. Aim to blend in, gaining trust and being them in order to understand through mKING, DAILY EXPERIENCES, PARTICIpating.


Group 2 (Jueling, Constanze, Marije): 
- HCI looks at either humans, plants, technology... seperated, although there is an argument for a 4th wave (mainly from New Materialim perspective). Tradition rooted in solutionism. Concerned with fiction and role of the arts.
- Robotics: Robots  replace family care relationships. Robot not as the other, but a subject (friend, family member, colleague) different from the human subject.Dynamic systems need to be taken into account, e.g humanizing robots and dehumanizing humans --> where to position robots in a larger social and global 
perspective? eg. comparing to women or immigrants (c.f. service robots).
- Subjectivity and sexuality related to sex robots: What is femininity, female? Sexuality as a practice of care (to express you care about 'your man'). AI = talking robot; so the robot is not a "puppet" anymore. Sex robots can help sociopaths to reintegrate, because they can find sexual gratification.

Broader social picture. The social relations within which those technologies are being created, what they are supposed to enact and where they are situated need to be taken into account (at what time does the figuration of the caring robot emerge)

Group 6 Pedagogies
Posthumanist pedagogies stays in a very abstract terminology and methodology. What we need in the field is a connection to the established scientific traditions of educational sciences and didactics in order to get it down on earth to a solid, concrete and severe posthumanist didactics. This means what to teach and why teach it and for what purposes. Didactis take posthumanist pedagigies also to the political-ethical and CONTENT discussions which is not so strong at the moment. Also, we need to redifne learning processes and understand what learning means when looked at it from a socio-material perspective. We need to redefine knowledge types (of which Estrid Sorensen provided already very helpful concepts of community and liquid learning from empirical research) and a redefinition of learning terminology and methodological approaches. A master project will be to renegociate the humanist claim of European education, a claim that has been defended recently in a UNESCO education report. Education seems to me as the field with the strongest emphasis on Humanism and that will be a very hard job to question that from within the field. We can do that by starting the discussion from content perspectives like education for sustainable development or global issues teaching or even geography teaching. 

Tutorial 13/8/20


--PLEASE POST YOUR GROUP NOTES HERE--

GROUP 2

We have discussed posthuman subjectivity and posthuman subjects acknowledging the differences between these two concepts. It's been raised the question of how to account for matter processes from a posthuman perspective (to one of us, it seemed that posthumanism makes it easier to see the becomings once they have manifested in an individual body), and the concepts of "internal multiplicity" and "assemblage" have been considered handy to think of it. 

Another participant has brought to the conversation the "refugee" as a posthuman figuration politically useful for our current times, but due to time constrains we haven't managed to discuss in depth whether the "refugee" is a subjectivity or a subject and whether we, as scholars standing in an euro-centered field (some of us even holders of european citizenships), can "become a refugee" —because the refugee is so heavily racialized and deprived of access to basic forms of education and self-expression.


GROUP 3
Day 2 Breakout Group 3: Mariska, Vica, Goda, Caroline, Elena:
Affirmative critical posthumanism, decolonial/postcolonial project and indigenous epistemologies: convergences and divergences

What are the overlaps and the differences between these theories? What kind of entry points into posthumanism do decolonial/postcolonial projects open up and vice versa - how might posthumanism bring to light different aspects, strategies, alliances in postcolonial/decolonial and indigenous thought and practice?
Why...
- Previous work in did research with Central Asian feminist networks - theory to practice
- lot of reading but not much in the way of answers on how to bring posthumanism "to the ground", not leaving it in methaphors in essays
 What's missing at the moment is how this works in other, postcolonial contexts of knowledge production. How can we not transport western frameworks? Also some of them are already established. Difference between black Brithish thinking vs critical race theory perspective. 
how can post-humanism deal with questions of race ans colonialty. Machine learning epstimologies & princples on which they are built - these epstimologies produce a lot of colonial racialsed knowldge production. Posthuman means we dont need to reconfigure a new humanity. But to what extent does it overlap with with postcolonial thinking and critical race theory?
Generally interested in indigious epstimologies
how do we work without extraction or appropiation
Social scientist based in Westen philosophy, struggle with secularity of posthumanism. 
Secularism ans religion are products of colonialism
Dis-enchantment - wouldn't want to perform this
How do you not impose, how do you not appropiate?
can we drop the idea of becoming human, as its an exclusionary category, should we do away with that project?
Sylvia Wynter - proposes a counterhumanism, she tries to reconfigure the human - and is this all a language game?
Teachings from Don Juan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teachings_of_Don_Juan 
PhD - why it was not important to study vernacular architecture - Rosi - bette to talk about process than concepts - didn't want to look for a modern paradigm but go back 2000y
Wynter doesn't want to recuperate man of reason - still the wish of the human measure of the world and wish of universality
Recomends zakiyyah iman jackson (add book) becoming human https://nyupress.org/9781479830374/becoming-human/
We're keen to stay in touch to carry on with this enquiry 

GROUP 4

4. Posthuman ethics and non-human animals and other non-human entities: Petra, Veronica, Kristen, Karin, Sofia, Marije

How might the posthuman account for non-human animals and entities? What kind of entanglements does it bring to light? What kind of ethics would it put forth?

- From the perspective of industrial product design: non-human entities are viewed as "natural resources". In the extractivism of our times, how can designers engage ethically (batteries)? Re-thinking the role of the designer as facilitator of knowledge platforms to clutivate caring co-existance, relations with non-human entities. 
- In the mining fields and communities, (how) can we care for the social communities, by find ing affirmative narrations for catastrophic environments, with ethics as ontologies? "affective communities" (Valerie Walkerdine) theroy - how communities, posthumanist appraoch
- Non-human animals are in relationships between children and companion animals, especially human-animal relations form during disasters, wildfires, which bring up the question of animal rescue. A post-human framework to engage relevant stakeholders in the field within a posthuman ethics.
- Expressions of lots of interests, what are the connections - gender, feminist, postcolonial studies - critical animal studies, literature + visual arts. Double interests: fellow teachers do not find the reserach (posthumanities) relevant, also with students, promote horizon of hope, to engage the academic communities in these debates, ethics of care, entangled empathies - has to do with the embodies subjects,establish consistent connection, solid ethics engaging our communities via dialogues, stay between (??) the disciplines
- human-animla relations, pigeons creolization, ethics of care, miners actually, disabelling the pigeon, playing with desires, not so universal, not site-specific, culture of possessing birds, unravelling the complexity, dilemma of my own, unravel coloniality, dominating over someone elses
- children and companion animals - their own space, posthumanism, role of play between grandparents and grand children, technology project, related to design, tangible, non of the human subjects, talking about technologies
EXTRACTIVISM (MINING)
COMMUNITY
CARE AS SITUATED AND CONTEXTUAL
ANTHROPOCENE


GROUP 5

-- why we're in this group:
Elijah: interning at Impossible Bodies; projects on communication with other non-human bodies. Bachelor's in art history/master in creative industries, focusing specifically on contemporary/modern art. 
Jacob: PhD on posthuman practice in sound art
Elitza: PhD Art and Design/Critical Media Practice; art in general (visual, performative, sound) have always been posthuman, acknowledging the body and working with objects, vibrations as connective. Art as a key to renewing and reinventing the other sciences. 
Adele: contemporary literature -- how can new perspectives be incorporated in human language, collective perspectives, representing community.
Charlotte: PhD in Media theory -- Anaesthetics of the current situation: climate crisis or the 'Anthropocene'-debate makes a situation in which aesthetically relating to the worldbecomes a challenge -- how to relate to the world in such an anthropocentric form as media is. Can we see art as a medium for posthuman challenges or shouldn't we instrumentalize art in that way? Also thinking about care practice and if arts count as such. Special interest in film and documentary / artists' cinema exploring natural environments through image and sound.
Francesco: interested in practical arts and policies of posthumanism; relation that posthumanism has with the arts in general. PhD in posthuman practices in performance theatre and live art. Artificial voices: Siri, Alexa, how are these voices represented and recall patriarchal and other systems of oppression. 
Sari: art as research -- anthropology -- objects; art can create a space for dialogue and engagement. 
Carmen: I am a director and a playwright -- just began phD research at Lapland University on theatre practice -- sociomateriality, reactivity process in rehearsal. How things come from the messy context of the rehearsals. Interested in the posthuman. 

Jacob's thought: have we always been posthuman just because we are using tools/techniques that are outside ourselves -- my problem with that notion would be that it would encompass too much.
Adele: humanism as the artificial thing?
- maybe we just need to remember?
- to presume that using a fork is a human prerogative is a problem -- that goes to show that "we've always been posthuman" because the things we thought were human prerogatives are not. 
- Viveiros de Castro: it's not human to use a fork because lots of entities use instruments -- but a "fork" is human. Similar case with the Anthropocene: it's a very particular human responsibility. Can we try to think a human without stepping into the humanist traps?
- posthumanism as an umbrella term -- posthuman condition, human condition -- observing how we are in the world and how we produce art. The thought seems to easy -- in practice it's not. We need to include more different things in our practices. It's impossible to understand things like the Cloud from the perspectives of humanism. 
- struggling with the post in posthumanism: but it tries to open a potentiality
- what we have to keep in mind is that we are humans -- that's a paradox we just have to deal with. 
- writing other than human perspectives in fiction -- Kafka trying to perform the sensory experience of a beetle
- arts are made by humans for humans -- maybe other ways are thinkable, but so far...
- can we consider animals as artists? Birds? Some birds (and other animals) create Really Dope nests that could, arguably, be considered to be art.
- Art including animals in a posthuman perspective is a thing. F.ex. http://www.arachnidorchestra.org/


PEDAGOGIES GROUP

Rihzomatic examples: Children are lying on the ground connected/touching each others limbs and sending non-linear message through each other by tapping each other/touching in different manner. Through body they learn non-linearity, rooting the mind in the body, through the imagination they not only ilustrate the idea of rihzoma but also experience it. Experimental or spontenious part is that it is not arranged. Starts the one who has the message, who wants to say something. 

Question of embodiment: I teach Body politics course: started to create it while I was pregnant and started to teach it just after the giving birth. So now my course is 5 years old as my baby. I understood that I cannot separate these worlds, so my teacing changes, refletivity changes while the baby is growing. The perspective. And sometimes it merges these two world. So I am trying to find the way how to teach/learn-with students philosophy in non hierarchical way and also how to live-with/teach about the world my doughter. How to include the non human perspective for the child and for the students and sometimes you find the method for the child and can use it for the students as well.

Summary of question/topic clusters
  1. Scales of action and practices of intervention
 where do we practice posthuman relationality and posthuman theory, and where do we find spaces of intervention? What are alternative ways of organising (the knowldge production, the activist work, the community building) that critical affirmative posthumanism points to? How do we practice resistance and care within those interventions and practices?
2. Theories of subjectivity and the figurations of posthuman subjects, including their embodiment and situatedness
what forms and figurations of subjectivity are needed? What differently grounded figurations emerge in the contexts that you are situated? What is the role of embodiment within these figurations and what kind of political implications do they bring forth? How do we bring subjectivity in our own research practices? 
3. Affirmative critical posthumanism, decolonial/postcolonial project and indigenous epistemologies: convergences and divergences
What are the overlaps and the differences between these theories? What kind of entry points into posthumanism do decolonial/postcolonial projects open up and vice versa - how might posthumanism bring to light different aspects, strategies, alliances in postcolonial/decolonial and indigenous thought and practice?
4. Posthuman ethics and non-human animals and other non-human entities
How might the posthuman account for non-human animals and entities? What kind of entanglements does it bring to light? What kind of ethics would it put forth?
5. Posthuman practices in art, media and cultural production more broadly
In what ways does posthuman thought create new starting points in these fields?
What can posthuman thought learn methodologically and theoreticall from art, media and cultural production practices? 

Rihzomatic examples: Children are lying on the ground connected/touching each others limbs and sending non-linear message through each other by tapping each other/touching in different manner. Through body they learn non-linearity, rooting the mind in the body, through the imagination they not only ilustrate the idea of rihzoma but also experience it. Experimental or spontenious part is that it is not arranged. Starts the one who has the message, who wants to say something. 

Question of embodiment: I teach Body politics course: started to create it while I was pregnant and started to teach it just after the giving birth. So now my course is 5 years old as my baby. I understood that I cannot separate these worlds, so my teacing changes, refletivity changes while the baby is growing. The perspective. And sometimes it merges these two world. So I am trying to find the way how to teach/learn-with students philosophy in non hierarchical way and also how to live-with/teach about the world my doughter. How to include the non human perspective for the child and for the students and sometimes you find the method for the child and can use it for the students as well.




First person in the channels list below will start the call in the channel
Q1 - Channel 1Francesco
Q2 - channel 2 Alberto Jueling Robert IreneAnna Constanze
Q3 - Channel 3 Vica GodaCaroline,Mariska 
Q4 - Channel 4 Sofia Marije Verónica KarinPetraKristen
Q5 - Channel 5 ElijahJacobCarmen Elitza, Charlotte, AdeleSari,
Question of Pedagogy - general channelidaAuguste

Tutorial structure for today:


*Tutorial 12/8/20


Breakout Group 5, 12.08.20
Our questions:
- what is meant by immanence in greater detail? in the sense the "we are in this"? Or something else?
- diversity: in cultural relativism, we try to work on being able to change perspectives. I wonder whether the concept of Braidotti, that we are different from each other, corresponds to a cultural relativism or something else -- I don't see the difference between 'differing' and the concept of diversity that has existed for a long time in the field of education. 
- I am thinking of how to approach a multi-scalar analysis whereby the political realm is dragged into multi-temporal assemblages. If progressive neo-liberal systems do not adapt their frame but merely scale-up, how can we approach these political powers and economic systems that muffle diversity, simultaneously with other transformative assemblages that re-organize and re-distribute relationality?
My thoughts are perhaps directed particularly towards the pigeon racing research I am slowly engaged in here in Belgium (but perhaps you have other examples) and how the online auctions and international sales especially between Belgian breeders and Chinese buyers is a growing commerce that creates larger frames of scalability and less of its undoing. The complex assemblages of Belgian pigeon racing is less of a non-scalable impediment to such economies, as the livelihood of these animals is now exchangeable at market values, muffling the social exchange where it was once a non-commodifiable value of exchange.
- trying to look for other ways to think about architectural space (overall spaces of care or the negotiation between productive and reproductive labour) in order to rethink issues of exclusion, isolation and solitude in our society.  looking at indigenous communities (other type of ideologies) that conceive different ways to relate with the world and resolve these relations -- indigenous communities, especially matriarchal communities. Is European philosophy catching up to indigenous (??)
1. Indigenous belief systems imply a nature-culture continuum and also cultivates practices of citizenship (it is structurally relational) (I am thinking about the Minangkabau from Sumatra, where Adat -a rule system that derives from direct nature observation- protects the weak: children, elderly..). How the posthuman predicament advances on this?, or it is simply that European philosophy starts to "catching up", recognizing other type of knowledge in let's say, the Southern hemisphere/rest of the world (philosophies that were making a step forward there where European philosophies were ending..When I started deepening in other philosophies and cultures around the world I started to think that we were "those others" and had the impression that we had to do all that long path to finally make the loop and get to some similar points)
2. Also you mentioned the "UN pan humanism", saying that needs to be looked at very carefully. Thinking on the UN 2030 agenda for sustainable development which supposedly also promotes gender equality, do you think that truly starts to include missing people and other voices? or follows a specific political agenda?
(this have been clarified in the Q&A)

Breakout group 2: 
We will discuss briefly the questions we posed for the live Q&A session. We are only listing them now, hopefully others can reply to this
1. Subjectivity: how can we take account of our positioning, our subjectivity, methodologically? Is it important to do or not? 
2. Relational subjectivity, its heterogeneity; runs perhaps the risk to obscure the common ground and prevents us from sharing larger solidarity with it? 
3: Social constructivism is not sufficient for the posthuman condition; what are the limits of social constructivism? 
4: Spirituality of indigenous cosmologies & secular posthumanist theory of Braidotti; seems contradictory; how can this be used both in Braidotti's work? 
4: posthuman subjectivity: Braidotti often mentions Haraway. What are the similarities and differences between posthuman subjectivity and situated knowledges that Haraway poses? 
5: Resistance & care; how do we stay in resistance and turn it into care? working with affirmation through negativity; how? 
6: Embodiment is often overlooked, forgetted and ignored in posthuman knowledge: is this truly so? If yes, why? 


Breakout group 3

Interests that brought the participants to this summer school:



Breakout group 1 

- complexity of issues interests us "the and-and-and perspective"
- can be challenging yet that is the reason why we want to this, together, with Rosi & other staff 
- post-humanism as an umbrella term for different 'posts' as post-manism and post-anthropocentrism? 
- we wanted to take part in this course for example to find out:  how do we do post-human practices in art? how to analyze and comceptualize complexity in practice? Can synthetic voices be a fruitful way to relate to machines? also because we appriciate how subjectivy has been reconfigured. To expand beyond post-colonial studies. To examine further subjectivity and technology.  



Breakout Group 4:
-Networking and keeping intellectually active were important motives to join the summer school. 
-How to collaborate with the 'invisible'or minoritized agents or agencies that we are interested in bringing in to our researc, when we can't reache them for different reasons.
- Unanwered question from Q&A, which also encapsulates part of the motivation for being here, at the Summer school (there are orhers, such as networking, and brainstorming in such an exciting intellectual environment): how to bring nonhuman animals, namely those that are (almost totally) invisible, as posthuman subjects of knowledge. Although it is fairly evident, even for the most reluctant, at least in “exceptional” moments like the one of the current pandemics, that human and nonhuman lives are intricately interwoven, that seldom means that animals are considered equally, as full subjects (of rights, of knowledge). My question is: how can we in fact bring animals that have been so fully deprived of their subjectivity that we don’t even get the chance to approach them, as full subjects of posthuman knowledge? About their own life conditions, to begin with? And the conditions to overcome their subordinate status. Although this affects all animals, it is more critical to some animals than others, such as food animals (poultry, livestock) or laboratory animals (vg those used to test the vaccine for Covid). The same applies to all animals caught in contexts of disaster (for example, wildfires, floods), in which human exceptionalism is rapidly legitimized. I feel that, in these cases, the duality subject(ification)/object(ification) is heavily reinstalled. How to address this in fieldwork, for instance, involving governance stakeholders that are heavily resistant to challenging humanist frameworks? And how can we make these animals we don’t even have access to, full partners in knowledge building? In the end, we want to go creatively beyond a wishful ideal towards an effective co-built knowledge with animals, about their life conditions and our common existence, which includes them as subjects of knowledge.