Humanities and Social Sciences - Affective Ecologies (M1)

Teacher: Fleur Courtois

Under the title "Affective Ecologies", this course explores a few key texts from the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century from the environmental sciences, ecofeminism, ethology and biology. To describe an ecology as "affective" signals a way of situating oneself obliquely to the usual scientific categories, and this might make some people snicker. In 2012, Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers titled a study of the sensual relationships between plants and insects "Involutionary Momentum: Affective Ecologies and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounters[1]." While Darwinism has become a reference to legitimize the great march of progress called "evolution", the two researchers have investigated how Darwin allowed himself to be subjugated and tamed by orchids... What if evolution gave way to narratives of involution?

This course will be populated by the stories of, among others: Carla Hustak, Natasha Myers, Donna Haraway, Deborah Bird Rose, Val Plumwood, Isabelle Stengers, Ilya Prigogine, Starhawk, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Eva Hayward, Bruno Latour, Thelma Rowell, Anna Tsing, Vinciane Despret, Karen Barad, David Abram, Nastassja Martin, Eduardo Kohn, Deborah Gordon, etc.

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[1] Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers, "Involutionary Momentum: Affective Ecologies and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounters," differences, 23, no. 3, 2012, pp. 74-118. This study has been translated as: Darwin's Rapture. Le langage des plantes, La Découverte, coll. " Les empêcheurs de penser en rond ", Paris, 2020.