Critical Misanthropy Conference

Our world, as many worlds before it, is disappearing. The current climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, rise of populism, and failures of neoliberalism are forcing humans to reinvent themselves and to reconfigure relations with the natural world. In a seemingly inescapable system of violence perpetuated by humanity, we might question whether there is any hope left for the human species. This conference seeks to address the following questions: How do we think ourselves as human whilst grappling with issues of our complicity and culpability in systems of oppression? How can, and how should, humans reinvent themselves and reconfigure relations with the natural world? How do we come to terms with our responsibility for widespread devastation, a responsibility owed to ecosystems and animals as well as to those humans living in precarious environments? What role can and should other animals play in this process, and what does this mean for understandings of ‘animality’? And finally, how have writers, artists, performers, literary scholars, historians, and philosophers approached these questions? Over the course of three days, we will explore misanthropy through an interdisciplinary program of events including academic panels, workshops, and creative performances.

Confirmed keynote speakers include Claire Jean Kim (UC Irvine), Robert McKay (Sheffield), and Andrew Gibson (Royal Holloway).

We invite artists, writers, activists, and scholars together to address the subject of critical misanthropy and conceptions of the human in the age of what others have aptly termed as “the misanthropocene.”