E-Co-Affectivity: Exploring Pathos at Life’s Material Interfaces

Description

Offers an interdisciplinary investigation of affectivity in various forms of life.E-Co-Affectivity is a philosophical investigation of affectivity in various forms of life: photosynthesis and growth in plants, touch and trauma in bird feathers, the ontogenesis of human life through the placenta, the bare interface of human skin, and the porous materiality of soil. Combining biology, phenomenology, Ancient Greek thought, new materialisms, environmental philosophy, and affect studies, Marjolein Oele thinks through the concrete, living places that show the receptive, responsive power of living beings to be affected and to affect. She focuses on these localized interfaces to explain how affectivity emerges in places that are always evolving, creative, porous, and fluid. Every interface is material, but is also “more” than its current materiality in cocreating place, time, and being. After extensively describing the effects of the milieu and community within which each example of affectivity takes place, in the final chapter Oele adds a prescriptive, ethical lens that formulates a new epoch beyond the Anthropocene, one that is sensitive to the larger ecological, communal concerns at stake.Marjolein Oele is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco. She is the coeditor (with Gerard Kuperus) of Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspectives and Environmental Reorientations. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1 Plants and Affectivity: The Middle-Voiced Lives of Plants Introduction The Middle Voice Plants, Nutrition, and the Middle Voice From Aristotle’s Account of Nutrition Back to the Middle Voice and Plants Plants, Growth and Withering, and the Middle Voice The Integration of Finitude and the Meaning of Community in Plants: The Middle Voice as the Voice of Openness and Resilience Conclusion Chapter 2 Animals and Affectivity: Aisthēsis, Touch, Trauma, and Bird Feathers Introduction Aisthēsis, Categorical Contamination and the Need for a Metaphysics of Fluidity The Touching Animal: Touching, Being Touched, and the Untouchable Medium of Touch Birds, Sensation, and Touch The Plasticity of Avian Aisthesis Bird Touch—On Filoplumes, Interstitial Margins, and the Untouchable Hiatus Avian Vulnerability—On Fault Bars and the (Re)allocation of Trauma Bird Bonding—On Allopreening, Synaisthēsis, and Community Conclusion Chapter 3 Generative Human Affectivity: The Placenta as Place-and-Time-Making In-Between Introduction The Placenta: An Initial Encounter Placental (Re)presentation: Mimesis, Self, and Other The Placenta as Boundary and the Establishment of Place Placental Mediation: Immunology and Hospitality Toward a Genuine Sense of Hospitality: Place-Making, Temporality, and Microchimerism Conclusion Chapter 4 Skin and Human Sapient Affectivity: Skin, Webbed Existence, Temporal Depth, and Trust Introduction Skin as Place-Maker and as Place of Dialogue: Inner-Outer, Sensibility, Evolution, and the Brain-Skin Parallel From Proto-Animal to Human Animal: The Evolution, Place and Meaning of Human Skin Skin, Depth, Brain, and Knowledge Skin, Dispositional Synthesis, and the Aristotelian Mean Skin and Temporality: On Temporal Synthesis, Finitude, and Self Skin and (Shared) Finitude Human Skin, Shame, and (Dis)Trust Skin, Shame, and Distrust Skin, Webbed Existence, Trust, and Temporal Depth Conclusion Chapter 5 E-Co-Affectivity beyond the Anthropocene: On Soil and Soil Pores Introduction Sym-paschō: Direct and Indirect Co-Suffering in Aristotle Sym-paschō Redux: Co-Suffering in Butler and Haraway E-Co-Affectivity beyond the Anthropocene: Rethinking the Role of Soil and Soil Pores to Imagine a New “Us” Soil and Soil Pores: An Engagement of Soil Science and Plato’s Symposium Soil, Place, and Temporality and Re-Intervening with Soil Moving Beyond the Anthropocene: Soil and the New “Us” Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index