22nd annual conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology: Phenomenology in the Anthropocene

During the first decades of the twenty-first century, the term “Anthropocene” has been popularized as a title for the contemporary era in which the influence of human behavior on Earth’s geology, climate, and ecosystems has become, in an unprecedented way, a planetary force of change. This title encompasses some of the most pressing challenges that humanity faces today, including intensifying climate change and its effects on the natural environment and the habitat of humans and nonhumans, loss of biodiversity, and other profound changes in the biogeography of the planet. On a more philosophical level, the concept of the Anthropocene points to what can be seen as an ongoing deep transformation in our understanding of the relationship between humanity, technology, and nature, and in the very self-understanding of humanity. While it remains a debated term without a simple and unequivocal definition and chronology, the Anthropocene is increasingly seen in a variety of academic fields, from the natural and biosciences to the humanities and social sciences, as a topic that researchers and scholars are called upon to address using the methods and approaches of their respective disciplines. Phenomenology, in its various theoretical and applied forms, is no exception—it is also working to confront and articulate this overarching question of our time.

We invite abstracts for papers in phenomenology and related areas of philosophy and theoretical and empirical research. This year we especially encourage submissions that reflect upon and advance phenomenology’s approach to the topic of the Anthropocene, understood in a wide sense as including a host of contemporary phenomena that characterize humanity’s relationship to the natural environment and the nonhuman. Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following:

• What resources can phenomenology offer—either by itself or in an interdisciplinary collaboration with other fields and approaches—to theoretical and practical attempts to address the key phenomena of the Anthropocene and their implications?
• What resources can phenomenology offer for articulating the self-understanding of humanity and its encounter with the natural environment and nonhuman species in the face of the immense contemporary environmental challenges?
• How can and does phenomenology contribute to environmental thinking and the philosophy of technology, and how has it done so in the past?
• What is the nature, scope, and purpose of ecophenomenology as a distinct field of study?
• What are phenomenological ways of dealing with contemporary trends challenging traditional humanism and anthropocentrism, such as posthumanism and transhumanism, or new forms of materialism and realism?