On June 18th Sophie van Balen (Erasmus University) will present her research on “‘Hometactics,’ atmospheric care and agonistic realism” in relation to environmental politics.

‘Hometactics,’ atmospheric care and agonistic realism: Ingredients for an environmental politics?

In politics and political philosophy, practices of care towards our surroundings are often considered out of scope or within a framework that perpetuates dichotomies between man and nature. Yet, contemporary challenges as well as contemporary work developed by mainly women thinkers suggest a shift in attention is possible and necessary. In a tentative exploration of different philosophical fields, this lecture will consider the politics of hometactics (Ortéga, 2019), atmospheric care (Vine, 2019; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017), and agonistic realism (Honig, 2011/2014) as frameworks of politicisation and as potential building blocks for a future-oriented politics in face of environmental crises. What is the relevance of practices of care towards our home environments and of feeling (not) at home for such a complex and daunting problem as the climate crisis? How do these practices help to visualise as well as materialise politics as a more-than-human affair? And what tensions, or relations, come to the fore when considering (more-than-human) politics of care as instances of agonism?

Sophie van Balen (MA) is Lecturer Humanities at Erasmus University College and PhD researcher at Erasmus School of Philosophy. Next to that, she is head of the program board at philosophical café Felix & Sofie in Amsterdam. In her PhD project, Sophie van Balen develops a politics of air, air pollution and breathability in face of ecological crises. To this end, she brings together foam theory (Sloterdijk, 2016) with a new materialist, more than human politics of care. In 2019, Sophie van Balen organised the fourth biennial conference in Performance Philosophy ‘Intervention? Intoxication!’ and was guest-editor for the subsequent journal issue.

12.00h-13.00h CET; online through Zoom: https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/95643879935
Meeting ID: 956 4387 9935

SWIP-NL Academic Lectures: In February 2020, just before the Covid-19 crisis, we organized the first event in our new series of academic lectures (Jingjing Li, The Yogācāra Dialectics of Gender, Leiden University). We recently decided for now to continue the series online.