We are pleased to invite submissions for our panel "Making chemical kin" at
this year's EASST/4S conference in Prague, August 2020.
This panel aims to generate space to plot, evoke, and tell stories about
chemicals. Research with chemicals is often approached through late industrial
landscapes of exposure, however this often results in negating the new
relations, material attachments, and shared pleasures which emerge through
chemical encounters. As an entangled method and form of representation,stories
offer ways to think and act with chemicals differently. By focusing on
‘making’ we will collectively imagine what different relationships with
chemicals could entail. Inspired by efforts in STS to resist the
all-encompassing concept of the anthropocene that beckons total and permanent
exposure, we seek to capture the instability of ‘the chemical’ in ways
that activate efforts to find better ways of governing, managing, and living
with these materials.
Attending to relations that matter for the stories we tell,reorients chemical
concerns from toxic politics to chemical kinships (Agard-Jones 2016; Murphy
2018). Stories of chemical kin are not necessarily affirmative, kin after all
can be both enabling and harmful. We encourage papers to consider the full
spectrum of chemical encounters; moving beyond pollution and toxicants, while
at the same time maintaining a commitment to the violent legacies which shape
how chemicals are distributed – even if their material connections are
difficult to conjure. By thinking with and beyond the ‘villainous object’,
we invite contributions that expand understandings of chemical entanglements,
particularly those engaged in artistic, experimental,and ethnographic work.
Convenors: Angeliki Balayannis, University of Exeter and Emma Garnett, King's
College London
Contact: a.a.balayannis@exeter.ac.uk //
emma.garnett@kcl.ac.uk
The submission portal is open until 29th February 2020 and accessible via the
conference website: https://www.easst4s2020prague.org/
___
EASST's Eurograd mailing list
Eurograd (at) lists.easst.net
Unsubscribe or edit subscription options: http://lists.easst.net/listinfo.cgi/eurograd-easst.net
Meet us via https://twitter.com/STSeasst
Report abuses of this list to Eurograd-owner@lists.easst.net
