E-Co-Affectivity Beyond the Anthropocene: Rethinking the Role of Soil to Imagine a New \u27Us\u27

Following Isabelle Stengers’ call that the anthropocene should make us feel and think differently, this paper focuses on the human task to shift its affective response. Since Stengers calls for a new “us” that seeks to participate in an entanglement, I propose to explore the material and ontogenetic functions of soil, and specifically soil pores, in reimagining a new form of e-co-affectivity. A new e-co-affective response would emphasize the usually hidden fluidity and diachronic time of pores, and, in doing so, cultivate an epistemic and aesthetic sensitivity, deceleration, and percolation

Prometheus\u27 Gift of Fire and Technics: Contemplating the Meaning of Fire, Affect, and Californian Pyrophytes in the Pyrocene

This chapter offers a philosophical response to the devastating and deadly wildfires that have been ravaging in California in the past few years; it turns to the myth of Prometheus (as interpreted through Bernard Stiegler’s Technics and Time) for theoretical guidance. The chapter’s central argument is that the Promethean duplicitous gift—of fire and technical skills (technē)—to humanity has both led to the current tragedy of the anthropocene and may offer impetus to imagine a future beyond the anthropocene, but only if fire and technical skills come to be seen in a different light, and solicit different affects. To reimagine our post-human existence as part of the presumed new epoch of the pyrocene, the chapter follows the meaning of fire and technics both on a local, Californian scale and on a global scale. For the local, Californian scale, the fire-adaptable existence of California’s Giant Sequoias and the pyrodiverse practices of the California indigenous Miwok stand central. Addressing the global scale, the chapter emphasizes the need for a mosaical form of affect and habit to take hold, inclusive of respect and justice, in order to change our political-economic regimes and foster a broader community in solidarity with each other

Openness and Protection: A Philosophical Analysis of the Placenta\u27s Mediatory Role in Co-­‐Constituting Emergent Intertwined Identities

This paper analyzes the placenta\u27s biological and ontological underpinnings in human affectivity as it is generated. The placenta as medial boundary constitutes a place for the encounter and becoming of mother and child, not only as sapient beings, but also in their very nature. Before and beyond the difference between self and other, the placenta offers a model of affective symbiogenesis where selves come into existence in and through the very materiality of one another, contradicting the presumed immunitary logic of selfpreservation. The section on placental (re)presentation crafts a placentology that accounts for the possibility of ontogenetic becoming in the mother-child-placenta triad, a becoming that breaks with a linear genetic history of origin and authenticity to shape what I call the pregnant city. The paper continues by discussing the placenta\u27s place and boundary function to explain the place-making capacities that allow the realities of mother and child to co-emerge. The paper concludes by discussing the hospitality offered by the placenta, and how, even after its factual demise, the placenta prominently remains present through its traces. The placenta\u27s residue in the form of microchimeric, ritualized, and social traces reminds us that organisms are all but static, but rather thoroughly mixed, prone to change, and full of specters of future possibilities. Thus, the placenta and its enduring traces encourage us to rethink the nature of our intertwined, constantly altering identities, and to reinstall the original hospitality made possible by the placenta

Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle’s Concept of Pathos

This paper takes as its point of departure the recent publication of Heidegger’s lecture course Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy and focuses upon Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s concept of pathos. Through a comparative analysis of Aristotle’s concept of pathos and Heidegger’s inventive reading of this concept, I aim to show the strengths and weaknesses of Heidegger’s reading. It is my thesis that Heidegger’s account is extremely rich and innovative as he frees up pathos from the narrow confines of psychology and incidental change and places it squarely into the center of the fundamental changes affecting a living being’s existence; simultaneously, however, Heidegger sometimes overstates the ties that pathos has with other concepts such as ousia and logos and highlights exceptional rather than common meanings of pathos, thereby risking the charge of being unfaithful to Aristotle’s text