Thinking in cosmology proposes an interesting alternative to the all too human thought of our modern era, its insistence on a separation of Nature and Culture, and thus its removal from the world – thought, Deleuze and Guattari once asserted, crosses the universe in an instant. In this workgroup we explore the numerous possibilities the cosmological might open up to and how it moves in the works of some of the most important thinkers today: from the work on non-modern cosmologies and ontologies in the so called “ontological turn,” spearheaded by figures such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Phillipe Descola, and Eduardo Kohn; to the process philosophical works of Alfred North Whitehead which again flourishes in the cosmopolitics of Isabelle Stengers and in ways Bruno Latour; to works problematizing the modern perspective from specific ecologies, mental, social, or environmental, such as in the works of Marìa Lugones, Marisol de la Cadena, and Donna Haraway; to its possible deployment in relation to technics in Yuk Hui’s cosmotechnics. What is the relevance of such cosmological thinking for the Humanities?

Organised by: E. Biolchini, J. Leeuwenkamp, and H.H. Kuipers

We will convene on the 24^th of January from 15:00-18:00, at the Bushuis F1.14.

The readings for this session are the following:

- Evans-Pritchard, Edwards (1937). ‘Chapter II: The Notion of Witchcraft explains Unfortunate Events’, in Witches, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Clarendon Paperbacks. 

- Federici, Silvia (2018). ‘Part one: revisiting capital accumulation and the European Witch Hunt’, in Witches, Witch-hunting and Women. PM Press. 

- Snaza, Nathan (2024). ‘Introduction’, in Tendings: Feminist Esoterism and the Abolition of Man. Duke University Press. 

To participate send an email to: h.h.kuipers@uva.nl