Online seminar delivered by Prof. Andrea Casals, as part of the Environmental Humanities series, a topic promoted by SARAS Institute for Latin America after the conference “Environmental Humanities for the 21st Century”.

During her presentation, Casals will approach the idea of the “composition” as a key element for planetary sustainability. Based upon Bruno Latour’s metaphor, she will comment on the challenges and opportunities that are faced when constructing inter and transdisciplinary discourses that may enable us to rethink the relationship between human beings and nature.

It seems impossible to think of the sustainability of life as we know it in this planet, unless we begin to pay attention to the human agents that generate planetary pressure. Although scientists specialized in the environment can measure such pressure with relative certainty, their data is not capable of preventing it per sé. This data is not effective if it remains disconnected from the rhetoric, political, social, cultural and affective forms with which global change is manifested or represented in the diverse communities.

In 2014, Bruno Latour in his participation at the festival of Puerto Ideas in Chile was proposing, as a solution to this impossibility, a “composition” between scientists, artists and social agents, understanding it as the only way to be able to convey a message that may impact deeply in our imaginary and hence push forward towards cultural changes that may enable us to relate creatively and assertively towards the environment, accepting the global crisis and our responsibility within it. In Latour’s composition metaphor, the work between different disciplines is indispensable and, in this concept, the environmental humanities begin to emerge. The proposition is clear. However, it is also clear that we have not been able to establish the so-called interdisciplinary dialogue and least of all the much-needed transdisciplinary work.

On this opportunity, I would like to rely on some specific literary and pedagogic examples where by an evident lack of interdisciplinarity, the ecological intention is not enough when trying to convey the transformative message sought after.

Date: Tuesday, October 23 2018.
Time: 2pm (GTM-3).
Please check your local time depending on location by clicking here.
This activity is free of charge but requires enrolment completing the online form available here.
Access will be available from any device with an internet connection.
Please note that this seminar will be delivered in Spanish.
Organized by SARAS Institute.

Andrea Casals is a Literature Professor at the Faculty of Humanities from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile where she was awarded her Doctorate in Literature and her Master’s in Human Settlements and the Environment. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher on environmental consciousness in Chilean children’s and youth literature of the new millennium (Project Fondecyt #3170134), she is an editor at the academic journal English Studies in Latin America (ESLA) and International Liaison for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). Some of her main publications include “Environmental (In)justice and Mestizo Writing” and “Ecocriticism and Ecological Writing in Chile” (both in ISLE, Volume 23 Issue 1,Winter 2016). In 2017 she was awarded the prize Haz tu tesis en cultura on her essay “Violeta Parra en el flujo del compostaje cultural”.