Speculative Geographies: Ethics, Technologies, Aesthetics

Description

This book explores how speculative thinking is shaping how we relate to our entangled social, mental, and environmental ecologies. It examines how speculative philosophies and concepts are changing geographical research methods and techniques, whilst also developing how speculative thinking transforms the way human, non-human, and more-than-human things are conceptualised in research practices across the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Offering the first dedicated compendium of geographical engagements with speculation and speculative thinking, the chapters in this edited collection advance debates about how affective, imperceptible, and infra-sensible qualities of environments might be written about through alternative registers and ontologies of experience. Organised around the themes of Ethics, Technologies, and Aesthetics, the book will appeal to those engaging with architecture, Black political theory, fiction, cinema, children’s geographies, biotechnologies, philosophy, rural studies, arts practice, and nuclear waste studies as speculative research practices appropriate for addressing contemporary ecological problems. Chapters 1, 3 and 4 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. Acknowledgements Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures 1: From Abstract Thinking to Thinking Abstractions: Introducing Speculative Geographies Why Speculation? Who Speculates? How To Think Abstractions? The Collection Ethics Technologies Aesthetics References Part I: Ethics 2: Redreaming the Human and the Ethics of Terraformation Pumzi The 6th World Wangechi Mutu References 3: Contemporary Urban Heterotopias: From Fiction to Reality On the Spectrum of Topias and the Need for the Alternative On Place and the Otherness of Heterotopian Cities Towards Building Contemporary Urban Heterotopias From Fiction to Reality References 4: Speculations on Time and Space: Or Zeno’s Last Stand Speculation, Geography & Co. Stirring Still The Unreality of Unreality References 5: Passionate Speculations | Speculative Passions Introduction Passionate Reason Speculative Passions Conclusion References 6: Three Speculative Dispositions After William James: Towards a Concept of Pre-cursive Faith Introduction: Taking a ‘Terrible’ Leap An Aesthetic Sensibility Towards Sensation A Testable Attitude Towards Genuine Problems A Pre-cursive Feeling of Faith in the In-Between Conclusion: Faith as a Veritable Aesthetic References Part II: Technologies 7: Towards Speculative Praxis: Finding the Politics in Speculation with Deleuze and Design Introduction Locating Speculation in Deleuze and Design Build the Future: A Prefigurative Speculative Intervention How Does Speculative Praxis Operate? References 8: Speculative Reproduction Fertility and the Time of Developmental Life Speculative Time and the Reproductive Economy Refusing Speculative Reproduction References 9: NeoRural Futures: Learning Through Embodied Speculation A Pluriverse of Rural Futures The NeoRural Futures Summer School Speculations About the Future(s) of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Reflections on Learning Through Embodied Speculations References 10: Foley and Fabulation: The Production of Screams, Sound, and Subjectivity in Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio “Gilderoy, This Is Going to Be a Fantastic Film” A Deleuzian Speculation? Cinema: Fabulous Metamorphosis Is Yet ‘to Come’… “A New World of Sound Awaits You” (Strickland, 2021, 0:04:45) A Meditation on Screams, Sound, and Subjectivity References 11: Nuclear Remains: For a Speculative Empirical Approach What Remains? Thinking Remains Speculative Empiricism Speculating with Nuclear Remains References 12: Speculating with Childhoods, Plastics and Other Stuff Introduction Researching Childhoods, Plastics and Other Stuff Speculating with Sculptures Speculating with Biosamples (and Interdisciplinarity) Conclusions References Part III: Aesthetics 13: Against the Cynicism of Common Sense: Guattari and the Micropolitics of Expression Introduction The Production of Common Sense Incorporeal Universes Conclusion: Speculating with Guattari References 14: The Ecosophic Act of Feeling: Poetry, Animism and Speculative Thought An Encounter Aesthetic Feeling A Pragmatic Intensity The Lure of the Aesthetic References 15: Flights of Fancy: Speculative Taxidermy as Pedagogical Practice Introduction The Thing Itself Speculative Taxidermy Mythologizing Nomenclature Mutual Histories Speculative Fabulation? Conclusion References 16: Becoming Listening Bodies: Sensing the Affective Atmospheres of the City with Young Children Introduction Demolition and Renewal in Hulme Affective Atmospheres and Urban Ecology Becoming Listening Bodies An Atmospheric Turn: When Play Becomes (Micro)political Concluding Thoughts: Towards an Atmospheric Pedagogy References 17: Dust and Soil: Speculative Approaches to Microecological Sensing Introduction Ways of Knowing Dust and Soil Opening the Black Boxes: Sensing Dust and Soil Exposomic Thinking Senstances References 18: Afterword: Speculative Earth Strangers in Flight It Rains, It Blows, It Thinks Writing Earth References Index