Generic humanity: interspecies technologies, climate change & non-standard animism
Abstract
How could we reconcile these two ethical and political projects: on the one hand, a desire to seek a politics beyond the existing history of humanism, on the other, a precaution to not fall in line with the violent history that dehumanisation had already amassed? In the Anthropocene, art is often charged with the task of “fictionalising” nature beyond the known and the human; yet in this paper, I propose that it could also produce a science-fiction or a philo-fiction of humanity itself. Looking at various examples of Natalie Jeremijenko’s work, I argue that she approximates a politics that does not yet exist: a practice of “generic humanity” in times of interspecies environmental vulnerability. Theorising her work at the intersection of animism and non-philosophy, I label it a non-standard animism, a modelling of governance through non-standard personalisation, which provides cross-species, biometric tools.
Keywords
Non-philosophy, animal studies, the Anthropocene, environment, media arts, Natalie Jeremijenko
Author Biography
Bogna Konior
Bogna M. Konior is the director of the Institute of Critical Animal Studies, Asia. She holds a Research Masters in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam and is currently based in Hong Kong. Her creative work exploring theory in the Anthropocene has been exhibited internationally and can be viewed at http://www.bognamk.com.