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Meteorologies of Modernity

In cooperation with the Postcolonial Europe Network26.06.2014 28.06.2014

The international conference sets out to explore weather, climate and climate changes, both past and present, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The aim is to broadenexisting theoretical frameworks and to examine, historicize and contextualize discourseson climate and weather. Particular consideration will be given to literature and the arts,which we consider as an archive where specific meteorological knowledge is not onlyregistered but also scrutinized and produced.

As the title Meteorologies of Modernity suggests, one cannot understand globalwarming without addressing its social, economic and political dimensions: the history ofindustrialization and colonization, or the (western) notions of, e.g., time, space but alsofreedom and, finally, the human. By putting a particular focus on weather, the conference

proposes to examine another inherently modern phantasm and its relation to and/orrepercussions for present discourses on global warming: namely, the ability to not onlyobserve and predict, but to actually control and even produce weather and climate.

The conference takes at its starting point the claim put forward by various scholars thatthe present climate change calls for a reformulation of the concepts, methodologies, andinstitutional structures of contemporary humanities in general. According to historianDipesh Chakrabarty, the planetary crisis of global warming has brought about a collapseof the distinction between the humanities and sciences: Due to the sheer number ofhuman population and the excessive use of fossil fuel and other resources, humankind hasnow come to possess a geological force that is not only capable of shaping localenvironment, but of determining climate, weather and environment on a global scale.Consequently, these phenomena are no longer clearly pertaining to the realm of thenatural, and therefore an object of study of the sciences.

Chakraba rtys idea of the anthropocene as the geological epoch in which humansconstitute a geophysical as well as political agent poses a number of challenges totraditional approaches, both on a theoretical and methodological level. As the historian

points out , what is required is to bring together intellectual formations that are somewhatin tension with each other: the planetary and the global; deep and recorded histories;species thinking and critiques of capital. (Chakrabarty, 2009, 213) The conference

proposes to do this by putting into dialogue postcolonial studies and theories ofglobalization and by exploring questions of (postcolonial) justice, capitalism, and history.

Scholars in the field of postcolonial studies and ecocriticism in particular are in the process of developing frameworks in which to address questions of environmental(in)justice in national and global formations of domination, i.e. to understand thehistorical and political dimensions of how and why the effects of global warming affectcertain communities, regions or nations more strongly than others. While most scholarswould probably agree with Elizabeth Deloughrey and George Handleys claim that

postcolonial ecology must be more than an extension of postcolonial methodologies intothe realm of the material world, it remains an ongoing task to explore the profile,methodologies and frameworks of such a postcolonial ecology.

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In what ways are the modern notions of the political, such as the nation state, affected and possibly altered? How, indeed, can we visualize notions of time and space that extend ourfamiliar, i.e. modern temporal and spatial imagination? What temporalities does thediscourse on climate change itself produce or forestall, by the use of, i.e., the affectivelyhighly c harged word crisis? How is our sense of history affected when all the futureseems to bear is the advent of humanitys end?

The conference wants to explore these and other questions, especially by drawing on themethodologies of literary and cultural studies, and by bringing to the fore how literatureand the arts allow us to critically and imaginatively engage with the representationalchallenges the discourses about climate, climate change and weather have to offer. As,for instance, a renewed interest for the topic in the context of cultural and literary studieshas shown, weather bears a specific affective as well as metaphorical potential.

Particular attention has moreover been given to cultural practices of meteorology i.e.the daily practices of observation, cataloging, charting, and measuring oneself, theweather and the environment as they constitute and shape (modern) subjectivities and asense of relation to environment and being in the world. We would like to analyze towhat extent narrati ves of weather and climate crises of different epochs display aglobal consciousness, how this is reflected in their narrative strategies, and whichnew/other knowledge systems and power constellations are being formed.

By contextualizing and historicizing meteorological knowledge from the viewpoints ofhistoriography, literary studies, and cultural studies, the aim is to bring perspectives from

postcolonial studies, ecocriticism and globalization theory into dialogue and to reflectupon the wider implications of climate change for the concepts, methodologies andinstitutional structures of contemporary humanities. The conference will have ascontributors both established and young scholars of the various disciplines.

Confirmed Speakers

Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago) Elizabeth DeLoughrey (University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles) Eva Horn (Universitt Wien) Graham Huggan (University ofLeeds) Lars Jensen (Roskilde University) Bernhard Malkmus (Ohio StateUniversity) Patrick Ramponi (Fernuniversitt Hagen) Robert Stockhammer (LMUMnchen) Hanna Strass (LMU Mnchen) Johannes Ungelenk (LMU Mnchen)

Conference VenuesIBZ Mnchen Amalienstr. 38 80333 Munich

Franzsische Bibliothek Ludwigstr. 25 80539 Munich

Postcolonial Europe Network PEN is funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation forScientific Research). For more information, visit the website .

http://www.postcolonialeurope.eu/http://www.postcolonialeurope.eu/http://www.postcolonialeurope.eu/http://www.postcolonialeurope.eu/