Vortragende Person/Vortragende Personen:
Prof. Jennifer Wenzel, Columbia University, New York

Moderation:
Prof. Dr. Timo Müller

This paper considers the role of petro-magic in the fossil-fueled imaginary and the lived experience of hydrocarbon modernity. The impasse of the present is determined not only by fairy-tale promises of wealth without work, but also by a failure of the imagination in not reckoning with the astonishing ratios associated with the transition from muscular energy to mineral energy. Taking magic for granted creates a kind of everyday inertia, which I defamiliarize by reflecting on “the pedestrian” as both an aesthetic of the ordinary and an alternative embodied politics. This talk raises some fundamental questions about the social imagination in the era of fossil fuels: how do we imagine movement? how do we imagine change? what contradictions are involved in those imaginings? The inadequacy of meaningful individual actions in the face of the overlapping, cascading, and accelerating crises of the present can create a sense of impasse. What is the role of incremental change in an exponential world? Can we chip away at impasse one step at a time?

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Meeting-ID: 915 3170 7702

Kontakt: zkf@uni-konstanz.de