Strange Ecologies: From Necropolitics to Reproductive Revolutions

In this keynote conversation Steve Kurtz and Johannes Paul Raether explore the less visible or even unacknowledged territories associated with the politics of death and reproduction in the Capitalocene.

The impact of excessive human influence on life and our planet’s environments frame most progressive discussions about ecology today, simultaneously making the world both naturalized and denaturalized. Humans are typically treated as a dangerous alien force upsetting the balance of nature, and a force of reduction in terms of diversity and complexity in nature. At the same time, humans have long known that life and the environment are not balanced, nor do they have any necessary direction or purpose. Situated in the middle of strange ecologies, the challenge is to confront the full spectrum of power mechanisms and politics behind our environmental and evolutionary thinking. Through two talks and a conversation, Steve Kurtz and Johannes Paul Raether address the environment, death, and the practices, ethics, and politics of reproduction, questioning their contradictions and paradoxes.

With Steve Kurtz and Johannes Paul Raether, Moderation: Diana McCarty