Program Title: How Many Ecologies? Art, Subjectivity, Politics
Description: This paper takes up the key ideas presented in Félix Guattari's bold tri-ecological vision in his book of 1989 "The Three Ecologies" involving biospherical, social, and mental dimensions. In a detailed consideration of Guattars thought, Genosko explains that his most innovative move was to develop the relationship between art and ecology through the problem of how subjectivity is produced. Guattari believed that ecology, generalized as ecosophy, could help summon forth new, productive traits of subjectivity. His positive models were drawn from a range of arts, and in his view aesthetics had to be supported by an ethical responsibility that traversed micro- and macro-levels of concern. The prospects of transdisciplinarity as a non-transcendent ecology of knowledge are explored through examples of ecosophic aesthetic and ethical practices. A number of key period artworks are used during the talk in order to put into context Guattari's art writing, and make reference to environmental disasters and policy breakthroughs of the period.

Host(s): Opening Remarks: Samir Gandesha (Humanities, SFU)
Featured Speakers/Guests: Dr. Gary Genosko is currently Canada Research Chair in Technoculture at Lakehead University. He is the author of two books on Félix Guattari, "An Aberrant Introduction" and "The Party without Bosses: Lesson on Anti-Capitalism from Félix Guattari and Lula da Silva." He has also edited "The Guattari Reader and Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments," 3 vols. His new book on Guattari'spolitics, "A Political Chaodyssey," is forthcoming in 2009 from Pluto. Genosko edits The Semiotic Revew of Books, now in its 18th year of publication. He has also published a number of volumes on simulation, implosion, cultural studies of sports, and on alcohol surveillance and society.

Credits: Recorded and edited by Charlotte Bourne

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