First online meeting Fri 11 Sept 15:00 CEST
Zoom link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/my/rkranjan
Facilitated by Ram Krishna Ranjan
The Anthropocene has emerged as a widely circulated and influential conceptual framework for understanding planetary ecological crisis, yet its universalising invocation of a generic “human” often obscures the uneven histories and responsibilities underpinning that crisis. This lab is a transdisciplinary space for investigating how marginalised communities—differentiated by race, caste, class, gender, colonial histories, and Global South positionality—navigate ecological crisis while resisting, or simply bypassing, universalising frameworks like the Anthropocene. Building on this central question, the lab is further invested in exploring whether posthumanist and decolonial positions conflict irreconcilably, or whether marginalised communities generate alternative ontologies and epistemologies that transcend this theoretical impasse. How do Indigenous cosmologies, Black ecological thought, and Third World environmental movements already articulate human/more-than-human relationships that bypass these tensions?
Work will unfold through reading groups, film screenings, round-table discussions, and workshops convening artists and scholars across disciplines and geographies, alongside focused discussion on grassroots ecological practices that are too often rendered invisible within mainstream discourse on ecology.
In the first phase of the lab (Autumn 2026), the focus will be on mapping and broadening the understanding of these questions, envisaged through a reading group and a series of film screenings.
The first meeting for those interested in joining the reading group will introduce a list of possible books and films that can serve as the basis for this work.
Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Morton, Timothy. Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Sharma, Mukul. Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environment Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.
Films:
Acid Forest. Directed by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė. 2018.
All That Breathes. Directed by Shaunak Sen. 2022.
Behemoth. Directed by Zhao Liang. 2015.
Cow. Directed by Andrea Arnold. 2021.
Foragers. Directed by Jumana Manna. 2022.
I’m So Sorry. Directed by Zhao Liang. 2021.
Mangrove School. Directed by Filipa César. 2022.
Resonance Spiral. Directed by Filipa César. 2024.
Árru. Directed by Elle Sofe Sara. Norway/Sápmi. 2026.
The dates for the subsequent reading group sessions:
28 September (Monday) – 16:00–17:30 CET
12 October (Monday) – 16:00–17:30 CET
26 October (Monday) – 16:00–17:30 CET
9 November (Monday) – 16:00–17:30 CET
23 November (Monday) – 16:00–17:30 CET
7 December (Monday) – 16:00–17:30 CET
All meetings — the introductory meeting as well as the subsequent discussion sessions — will take place online. The sessions will focus on chapters or whole books that we choose together, alongside any screenings we decide to include.
Those interested in the reading group are welcome to join a Zoom meeting on the 11th of September at 15:00 (Central European Time).