Conference: Feminism, Science & Materialism Conference, 14-15 February 2013, New York

The Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York has banded together with the Committee on Interdisciplinary Science Studies to organise the Feminism, Science & Materialism Conference, set to take place on 14-15 February 2013. Featuring Karen Barad as a keynote speaker and focussing on "feminist perspectives on the onto-epistemological questions raised by he materialist turn", this event has positioned itself perfectly for platforming the newest developments in material feminism and other current research that cuts across the fields of science and feminism.

With the mounting interest in Barad's work, this conference will no doubt feature not only Barad's own most curent work but will also spotlight some of the ways in which her contributions (particularly on agential realism) have been taken up within other fields and areas. The organisers are currently seeking extended 1000 word abstracts, due by 1 November 2012. Topics range from reflections on the turn towards materialism to reflections on the political implications of neo-materialism for feminism and the relation of matter to the social, with a range of other issues in-between.

CUNY appears ready and willing to provide a space for new academic research in materialism, with the Committee on Interdisciplinary Science Studies having for the last year busied itself with a fascinating series of seminars and events revolving around the theme of "embodiment" in interdisciplinary science-humanities engagements (more details of which can be found at their website). Bodies in Movement will be looking out for recordings that might be produced from this event for those of us not fortunate enough to be able to attend.

Article: Eugene Thacker, "Cryptobiologies"

Peculiarly tucked away in volume 6 (2006) of the little Spanish e-journal Artnodes lies the article "Cryptobiologies" by Eugene Thacker. Nestled inconspicuously between various Spanish-language commentaries relating to the theme of "Organicities", this teasingly brief rumination dwells on the now-quotidian nature of various biotechnologies, "biodefensive" strategies and the uncertain humanity-animality distinction.

Within six pages, Thacker's text provides a discursive inquiry into the enduring reaction of unease towards the affective dimensions of contagion. It ranges from a linguistic analysis of the US position on infectious disease to medieval practices of biological warfare. And while a small section suggests a re-encoding of Heidegger's notion of Angst towards a notion of "existential biology", it is the Deleuzian and Bataillean engagement underpinning Thacker's obscurely named "Cryptobiologies" (for the word never appears in the body of the text, which perhaps indicates how we are to receive the word) that both enables and enlivens his vivid mapping of these biological politics.

"...to ask what it would be like to be a pack, a swarm, a flock - this is the question of animality ... a question not of species, genus and organism, but of topologies or patterns that effortlessly cut across species. The threshold of our understanding is not between human and animal, but rather between humanity and animality."

Recorded Lecture: William E. Connolly, "Two Images of Becoming: Whitehead, Nietzsche, and Cosmopolitics"

At the end of May of this year, the University of London and the University of Exeter hosted the conference event Time, Politics and Becoming devoted to William E. Connolly's text A World of Becoming, published by Duke University Press last year. Connolly's closing address and the ensuing discussion are now available for both streaming and download on the Backdoor Broadcasting Company website.

Connolly's lecture launches with a consideration of the speculative theophilosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, inflected by a comparative analysis with Friedrich Nietzsche's philology. Outlining Whitehead's exploration of the potential for creative change within entities through pluripotential entanglements and interinvolvement with other entities, Connolly advocates our own social, biological and, indeed, existential capacities to "extend our sensitivities" (and, in particular, to problematise the fragility of late capitalism and received experiences of time) which might result as a response to these human and non-human creative processes of change.

"In a fragile world of multiple attractions and repulsions that exceed our everyday practices of action-oriented perception (the Bergsonian distinction), we need to work upon ourselves to become more responsive: to the artistry of whales who compose music as they travel, to the complexity of bird powers of sonar navigation and migration .. to yeast as the vibrations it emits express unconscious feelings of pain when alcohol is poured on it."

Listen to the questions after the talk (the second file within the archive) for further extrapolation on the relationship between Whitehead and Deleuze, and a longer discusssion of Connolly's concept of late capitalism and its ensconced fragility.

The three panel talks from the conference - divided into the themes "Agency and Master", "The Ethical Sensibility of William E. Connolly" and "Immanence, Transcendence, Becoming" - are also available for online streaming and download.

Book: Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex

Within the title to Luciana Parisi's 2004 release, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-Technology and the Mutations of Desire, lies the promise of an intricate complex of (non)human relations which involves, inter alia, the virtual, the molecular and the social. Published as part of the Continuum series, Transversals: New Directions in Philosophy, its appearance upon the scene of critical and cultural theory signals and reflects the turn towards the centrality of the body. With a philosophical inquiry founded as much in the bacterial work of Lynn Margulis as it is in Deleuze and Guattari, her text offers a flexible schematic towards a different, relational conception of bodies, sex, femininity and desire - that is, a mapping of abstract sex.

In an extensive online interview with Matthew Fuller which is both complementary and an extension of the concepts investigated in Abstract Sex, Parisi provides multiple entry points into her text. Amongst them, this snippet:

"Abstract Sex addresses human stratification on three levels. The biophysical, the biocultural and the biodigital amalgamation of layers composing a constellation of bodies within bodies, each grappled within the previous and the next formation - a sort of positive feedback upon each other cutting across specific time scales. ... Abstract Sex points to a singular process of collision of strata undergoing the biodigital reengineering of life that forces us to engage with what we take a body, gender, and thus politics to be. For Abstract Sex to face - rather than remain dismissive of - the collision of strata implies a cut from the running flow of life demanding taking a line of flight towards destratification - a felt experience of change on a nature-culture continuum."