Feminist Solidarity and Resistance in a More-than-Human World
Why is the current ecological and climate crisis a feminist issue? In what ways can feminist methodologies and concepts be mobilised to understand and act upon pressing more-than-human problems? During this event, Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp discusses these questions with four voices working in the environmental humanities and law: Astrida Neimanis, Rosi Braidotti, Emily Jones, and Jetske Brouwer. Nele Buyst will provide a poetic intermezzo.
Despite the tendency to objectify and quantify ecological and climatic disruptions, these do not happen in an abstract and external realm with respect to human bodies. As embodied beings, posthumanist and ecological feminists argue, we are materially entangled with various life forms for survival. Those relations are currently under threat from extreme weather events, pollution, loss in biodiversity, ocean acidification, and rising sea levels. How to reorient these vulnerable relations ethically, politically, and legally? How can we foster practices of solidarity and resistance?
In their new book How to Weather Together, Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton propose “weathering” as both an ecological feminist framework and a set of practical tools for responding to environmental catastrophe. In SPUI25, Neimanis will lay out their ideas, and is joined in conversation by Rosi Braidotti, Emily Jones, and Jetske Brouwer. They, too, will share conceptual tools for posthuman and feminist ethics, politics, and law. Nele Buyst, additionally, will read poetry. Following the public defence of her dissertation “Rethinking Human and Nonhuman Rights in the Anthropocene,” Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp will moderate the discussion.
Speakers
Astrida Neimanis is Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities at the University of British Columbia, Canada on unceded syilx territory. She is the (co-)author of various publications including Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology and How to Weather Together: Feminist Practice for Climate Change (with Jennifer Mae Hamilton).
Rosi Braidotti is a continental and feminist philosopher and an emeritus professor of Utrecht University. Her many publications include The Posthuman, Posthuman Knowledge, Posthuman Feminism, Nomadic Subjects, and Nomadic Theory.
Nele Buyst publishes poetry and essays. Her second collection CORPS, poreus (het balanseer, 2024) was shortlisted for de Grote Poëzieprijs. She is working on a PhD thesis on the potential of aesthetic practices for repair and is affiliated with the Centre for Ethics at the University of Antwerp. She is an editor at the magazine for culture and criticism rekto:verso.
Emily Jones is a Senior Research Fellow at Newcastle Law School, United Kingdom. Dr Jones’ interdisciplinary research applies critical theory including feminist, queer, posthuman, postcolonial and critical disability studies, to analyse and re-imagine international law.
Jetske Brouwer is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Working at the intersection of feminist theory and ecological thought, she writes about earthly care, embodiment, and coalition-building.
Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp (moderator) is a philosopher and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. She recently finished a PhD project on anthropocentrism in human and nonhuman rights discourse. Her work focuses on the interrelations between political philosophy, legal theory, posthumanism, and ecology.
