Meteorologies of Modernity

In cooperation with the Postcolonial Europe Network

26.06.2014 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 broaden existing theoretical frameworks and to examine, historicize and contextualize discourses on 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 only registered but also scrutinized and produced. As the title Meteorologies of Modernity suggests, one cannot understand global warming without addressing its social, economic and political dimensions: the history of industrialization and colonization, or the (western) notions of, e.g., time, space but also freedom 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/or repercussions for present discourses on global warming: namely, the ability to not only observe 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 that the present climate change calls for a reformulation of the concepts, methodologies, and institutional structures of contemporary humanities in general. According to historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, the planetary crisis of global warming has brought about a collapse of the distinction between the humanities and sciences: Due to the sheer number of human population and the excessive use of fossil fuel and other resources, humankind has now come to possess a geological force that is not only capable of shaping local environment, but of determining climate, weather and environment on a global scale. Consequently, these phenomena are no longer clearly pertaining to the realm of the natural, and therefore an object of study of the sciences. Chakrabartys idea of the anthropocene as the geological epoch in which humans constitute a geophysical as well as political agent poses a number of challenges to traditional approaches, both on a theoretical and methodological level. As the historian points out, what is required is to bring together intellectual formations that are somewhat in 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 of globalization 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 the historical and political dimensions of how and why the effects of global warming affect certain communities, regions or nations more strongly than others. While most scholars would probably agree with Elizabeth Deloughrey and George Handleys claim that postcolonial ecology must be more than an extension of postcolonial methodologies into the realm of the material world, it remains an ongoing task to explore the profile, methodologies and frameworks of such a postcolonial ecology.

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 our familiar, i.e. modern temporal and spatial imagination? What temporalities does the discourse on climate change itself produce or forestall, by the use of, i.e., the affectively highly charged word crisis? How is our sense of history affected when all the future seems to bear is the advent of humanitys end? The conference wants to explore these and other questions, especially by drawing on the methodologies of literary and cultural studies, and by bringing to the fore how literature and the arts allow us to critically and imaginatively engage with the representational challenges 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 studies has 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, the weather and the environment as they constitute and shape (modern) subjectivities and a sense of relation to environment and being in the world. We would like to analyze to what extent narratives of weather and climate crises of different epochs display a global consciousness, how this is reflected in their narrative strategies, and which new/other knowledge systems and power constellations are being formed. By contextualizing and historicizing meteorological knowledge from the viewpoints of historiography, literary studies, and cultural studies, the aim is to bring perspectives from postcolonial studies, ecocriticism and globalization theory into dialogue and to reflect upon the wider implications of climate change for the concepts, methodologies and institutional structures of contemporary humanities. The conference will have as contributors both established and young scholars of the various disciplines. Confirmed Speakers Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago) Elizabeth DeLoughrey (University of California, Los Angeles) Eva Horn (Universitt Wien) Graham Huggan (University of Leeds) Lars Jensen (Roskilde University) Bernhard Malkmus (Ohio State University) Patrick Ramponi (Fernuniversitt Hagen) Robert Stockhammer (LMU Mnchen) Hanna Strass (LMU Mnchen) Johannes Ungelenk (LMU Mnchen)

Conference Venues IBZ Mnchen Amalienstr. 38 80333 Munich Franzsische Bibliothek Ludwigstr. 25 80539 Munich Postcolonial Europe Network PEN is funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). For more information, visit the website.