That’s the title of a conference recently hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. I learned about the conference at Tim Morton’s joint.
My initial reaction was one of irritation: Yet another freakin’ TURN! What is it with humanists and these turns? – the linguistic turn, the cultural turn, the cognitive turn, the Crab Nebula turn, the spinach turn, the giant economy-size turn.
The “turn” usage bugs me. Somehow it strikes me as self-regarding, as though conflated with “star turn”. It’s as though something doesn’t exist until it’s blessed by humanists, which act of blessing is called turning. Or perhaps it's an implication that the world turns about us humanists. (For an alternative reading, from the conference more-or-less, scan down this page.)
And so now the humanists have recognized the nonhuman. Good. I just wish they’d get on with it instead of making such a fuss.
ADDENDUM: In view of some of the "theoretical developments" listed in the conference announcemnt (e.g. the new brains sciences, systems theory) is the nonhuman turn a way of legitimizing science for the true-blue humanist?
The repetition and self referencing of O.O.O bugs me, as it does with Humanists. I prefer thought to soup can labeling and the industrial mass production of objects.
ReplyDeleteO.O.O does not particularly bother me in what it says its more how it says it and how it presents itself. But that may simply be an anxiety on my part.
I don't want to engage in self promotion but I wrote about something vaguely that touches on the issue. I have to bring up two kids that think differently and have a common educational 'disability'. O.O.O concerns me on this front.
First half is unrelated, dipping my toe in the water of welfare and identity but conclusion is an issue I think that is important in education and not just for minds like mine or my kids in which difference, ambiguity and multiple answers are not problematic things.
http://historyfrog.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/banter-from-cradle-to-grave/
"I prefer thought to soup can labeling and the industrial mass production of objects."
DeleteYes, there's a lot of branding, as they call it in advertising, in academia these days.
Not an academic problem, academia is just one moonbeam from a much wider luminescence. I think, or at least I do for the moment.
ReplyDelete