2024-25 yearly theme: Energies of Energy

2024-2025 energies of energy

The convening topic for 2024-2025 is “Energies of Energy,” a meta-critical reflection on the emerging field of Energy Humanities in conversation with the traditional toolkit literary and cultural criticism. Our events will build upon the previous years’ discussion on the interrelationships between human collectivities and their so-called instruments, but this time our focus will be to survey the latest developments in that subfield since the 2017 anthology Energy Humanities by Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer (Johns Hopkins UP). As the collection highlights, “to be modern is to depend on the capacities and abilities generated by energy” (11). In this context, our events may workshop approaches to the current pressing questions of oil and gas, sources of dissonance in the governmental agendas of the South Atlantic and beyond; of burnout, such as in its potential slippages between work and combustion; and of the growing recurrence of droughts, like the recent-current ones of millennial proportions in California. Continuing our work on the import of narration and correlate aesthetic materializations of energy for thinking modern society in relation to its futurities, we aim to discuss the role of cultural criticism in these conditions. Is the emergence of energy as a critical category a sign of post-humanization in labor? What futures does energy tell? How does energy mediate between human work and the Heideggerian notion of nature as standing reserve? How to square the metaphorical and the literal meanings of energy? Whither energy and acceleration? What hermeneutic practices result from focalizing energy?

We look forward to seeing you at materia‘s events this year! Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any inquiries. More news and event calendar coming soon!