Apresentação

In the places where Mastotermes Darwiniensis dominate, intensive agriculture is not possible: their ability to found new colonies inspired Smeathman to ´repatriate´ Black poor to Sierra Leone. Climate change may allow these termites to expand their territory, potentially releasing more carbon dioxide while preventing us from releasing our own. In ´more-than-human´ times, biology offers an opportunity to shift the question of Being from metaphor to metamorphosis: in order to inhabit the bacterias, the skin or the bones of Life, we start from the premise that Being (ontology) is liquid. In biology, what counts as a living being is not closed: a cockroach is a living-thinking being, at home with itself. When humans call another creature a ´cockroach´, genocide may happen.

While social sciences are interested in multiplying ontologies and epistemologies, the question of ´what counts as Life´ is being operationalized by scientists interested in Artificial Life and Zombification. While biology does not grant privileges to any final answer on the Being, social science continues to operate premised on fixed categories/identities as images of Being. These are socially limiting symbiosis to strategic cooperation. We will reflect on various images of symbiosis and subsumption or how the fluidity of life allows for some forms to become non-being and what remains unrepresented or misinterpreted in this process. In pursuit of a political ecology approach to neurodiversity, we will look at what counts as ´non-life´ in biodiversity, the diminishing of life properties and objectification. We reflect on ´ontology´ as existence without a name, how social sciences may not require a general theory of the ´subject´ and on ´ontogenesis´ or becoming into more-than-human beings.   

The conversation is building on the three Essays of Life, published by Maria de Assunção (heteronym of Rita) in the journal O Osso, and drawing on the ´ecology of selves´ of Eduardo Kohn and the ´cyborg´ of Donna Haraway.


Notas biográficas

Rita Serra, bióloga. Doutoramento em fungos com relevância industrial (uvas para vinho e rolhas de cortiça). Investigadora do CES desde 2008. Actualmente, sou gestora de investigação participativa do "BioD'Agro - agricultura 4.0 no parque natural do Douro Internacional" e membro da direção da APVA - Associação Portuguesa Voz do Autista. Os meus interesses abrangem os estudos de ciência e tecnologia, as relações humanas com criaturas vivas e não vivas (ecologias de seres e biologias ferais) e dispositivos tecnológicos. Estou envolvida com perspectivas na primeira pessoa e auto-advocacia na investigação sobre autismo e neurodiversidade.

Irina Velicu. Investigadora que trabalha com conflitos socioambientais na Europa pós-comunista no Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal. Atualmente é a Investigadora Principal do projeto JustFood FCT, expandindo o seu trabalho ao olhar para a justiça alimentar. A Dra. Velicu é membro da Linha RISE e do ECOSOC, olhando para as interseções da justiça social e ambiental. Possui doutoramento em Ciência Política pela University of Hawaii (EUA) e um MA em Estudos Internacionais pela University of Warwick (Reino Unido).