Programme

Marx and Degrowth
22 January 2024, 03:00pm, room 2, CES | Alta
Overview: Since the publication of his earlier book, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, Kohei Saito has become one of the most influential contemporary Marxist academics, with an important focus on political ecology. Marx in the Anthropocene, the focus work of this reading group section, is his newest book. The book uncovers the less known and only recently published ecological aspects that underpin Marx’s critique of the capitalist political economy and confronts them with other strands of contemporary Marxist scholarship. Saito argues that these new insights open space for a rejoinder between Degrowth and Communism.
Reading: Marx in the Anthropocene, by Kohei Saito
Coordinator: Jonas Van Vossole

March: From Climate Coloniality to Climate Justice Futures
18 March 2024, 03:00pm, room 2, CES | Alta
Overview: This section will bring two approaches that challenge the normative frame of climate justice. The authors here discussed propose new gazes to understand the power structure in place in face of the climate emergency, exploring roadmaps for navigating the complexities of old and emerging climate narratives.
Readings: “Multispecies justice: Climate‐just futures with, for and beyond humans”, by B. Verliem and “The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality”, by Farhana Sultana
Coordinator: Flora Pereira

April: The future is ancestral - dialogue on cosmopolitics in Krenak's work
12 April 2024, 03:00pm, room 2, CES | Alta
Overview: In A vida não é útil (Life is not useful), a set of reflections triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, Ailton Krenak, indigenous philosopher, questions the idea of "civilization" and the consequences of unbridled consumerism in the reproduction of life. His language is objective, lucid and profound, and an invitation for reflection about the power of ancestrality. This session aims to be an open dialogue on the possible paths of a cosmopolitics.
Readings:  A vida não é útil and Ideas to postpone the end of the world, by Ailton Krenak
Coordinators: Teresa Meira and Hestia Delibas

May: Historical and political analysis of fire
13 May 2024, 03:00pm, room 2, CES | Alta
Overview: Stephen Pyne is an American author who has since the 1980s considered and worked on the political history of fires and wildfires, which has remained largely overlooked in wildfire literature. The Pyrocene is his latest book, published in 2022, and discusses the uses and roles of fire both culturally and historically from the agricultural fires to the burning of fossil biomass.
Reading: The Pyrocene, by Stephen Pyne
Coordinator: Joana Sousa

June: Science fiction as a lens into socio-ecological crises
17 June 2024, 03:00pm, room 1, CES | Alta
Overview: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 – 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative/ science fiction essays and novels. The Word for World Is Forest is one of her stories, first published as an essay in 1972 and then as a book in 1976. It is part of her “Hainish Cycle”, set in a future history in which civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, including Terra ("Earth"), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up a confederacy.
Reading: The Word for World Is Forest, by Ursula Le Guin
Coordinator: Gustavo Garcia