The Gaia Affect: Doing Thealogy in an Age of Ecological Crisis

I will be giving a talk on Wednesday 7th March at the University of Winchester as part of the Exploring Aspects of the Feminine Divine 2018 Lecture Series from the Institute of Theological Partnerships. 

Wednesday 7th March, 6.30pm
Room 5, Main Building, King Alfred Campus, University of Winchester, Sparkford Road, Winchester, Hampshire SO22 4NR

The Gaia Affect: Doing Thealogy in an Age of Ecological Crisis

In an age of anthropogenic global warming, environmental catastrophes, mass species extinctions and resource scarcity, this talk considers what it may mean to draw feminist thealogy into a close relationship with ecological philosophy. Focusing on some recent appropriations of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’s Gaia theory, such as Bruno Latour’s (2017) Facing Gaia, Isabelle Stengers’s (2015) ‘intrusion of Gaia’ into human history, and Deborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s (2017) The Ends of the World, it is argued that thealogy must be able to think and feel its way towards and through an eco-apocalyptic future.


For more information about the Institute, click here
To book, please email: Joanna.Wilson@winchester.ac.uk

Jodie Whittaker is Doctor Who

Well, in news unrelated to ecological collapse and the crisis of civilization, Jodie Whittaker has been announced as the latest regeneration of Doctor Who. Now I daresay that there are many who may be viewing this little cultural event as the end of their worlds (and/or a sign of the destruction of British values, the triumph of liberalism, ‘political correctness gone mad’ etc., etc.), but as a long-time Whovian, it seems a pretty solid choice to me. My seven year-old son, who can identify any type of Cyberman at a glance (and can categorise people’s year of birth by whichever doctor was in role at the time), is fine with it; and so is my daughter. Admittedly this doctor will be the shortest and is also from West Yorkshire, and clearly such physical and social/cultural factors can make a difference. But there have been quite a few Northerners in the role, and, come on, Sylvester McCoy was only one cm taller. So there aren’t any major issues here. I just hope Jodie is made of stern stuff. The forthcoming social media, vitriol-fest will likely be a truly depressing sight to behold. I wonder if poor Peter Davidson could have withstood the Twitterstorm that would have followed his replacement of Tom Baker. Personally, I just hope the scripts and stories are good.

The Cthulhucene Now!

This is a talk I gave at the recent CenSAMM Climate and Apocalypse conference on 29th June, an amazing two-day event, with an excellent programme of international speakers. The full programme can be accessed here, with the individual sections being slowly rolled out over the next few days.

My talk starts a little abruptly in this section, the first sentence is: ‘My proposal today is that the ways in which we frame and mythologize our current age may require serious reassessment ...’

This made me smile

Full story here.

Doomsday Clock corrected (finally)

My suggestion from November 9th 2016 that the Doomsday Clock was running slow and needed correcting now seems to have been agreed upon by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the clock has moved 30 seconds closer to doomsday. Full story here.

Unfortunately, there can't be much satisfaction in predicting the apocalypse.

The US Endarkenment - Day 4

Well, day four of the US Endarkenment Project and if the above story is even remotely true, then the president's new thought police are to be commended on the speed of their assault on, and appropriation of, the state apparatus of knowledge, science and environmental protection (an incredibly impressive epistemic "blitzkrieg"). I suspect that by day ten all references to climate science, global warming, ecological degradation, the environment, pollution etc. will have been expunged from government institutions; while other sources of knowledge production and dissemination (universities and academia, for example) may take a few weeks longer. But don't worry, soon you will be told what to say and think. The new government is clearly committed to unburdening its citizenry of the troublesome complexities and distractions of experts, scientists and whinging liberals. For every inconvenient truth/fact, the new government seems to have a nice alternative fact to make the transition easier.

More here, here and probably in many other places over the next few weeks, before the US goes completely dark.

"This ... is what patriarchy looks like"

‘This photograph is what patriarchy looks like.’ Reince Priebus, Peter Navarro, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon watch as Donald Trump signs the executive orders in the Oval Office, 23 January 2017. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

The assault on women's reproductive rights begins, full report by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in the Guardian.