Alzheimers disease (AD) may be situated within a cultural landscape produced, in part, by demographics and the marketing strategies of an aggressive biopharmaceutical industry. The simultaneously corporeal and visual domain of advertisements for anti-AD drugs generates dynamic images of gender and embodiment, and it also lends itself to feminist interventions engaging with the images and ideas circulating around aging, medicine and the body. In this article, we investigate advertisements targeting medical practitioners treating patients with AD. Working within a methodological framework we identify as feminist visual studies of technoscience, we want to propel the discussion in the direction of a broader corpus of medical media. Through this limited exercise, we hope to make a scholarly contribution to the feminist community by critiquing some of the images emerging within popular/scientific media with regard to Alzheimers, a disease collectively imagined within an aging Western population.

Alzheimers disease (AD) is emerging into public view in unprecedented ways. Foremost among these is the embodied form of elderly men and women appearing in commercial imagery for patient advocacy groups or pharmaceutical advertisements, but scientific imagery also seeps into the visual media cultures that surround us. The recent reconfiguration of Alzheimers disease is due to expanding ageing populations, an aggressive biopharmaceutical industry becoming a fast-growing material-semiotic realm that is providing powerful images of both gendered and racialized embodiment. Such a visual, and yet highly material, realm is in need of feminist interventions, engaging with the images and ideas that circulate around ageing, medicine, human and non-human embodiment. From a non-representationalist (figural realist) and posthumanist perspective identified as feminist visual studies of technoscience, the authors seek to further the discussion in the direction of understanding the scattered ontologies of Alzheimers - in laboratory practice, the realm of medical media and in commercial appeals to coherent individuality and human cognition - as gendered domains of figural reality and performative matter.

This chapter explores the meaning of "nature" through the modern history of science and contemporary experimental practices from feminist science studies perspectives.  

Taking into account intersecting trends in political, academic, and popular engagements with environmental issues, this paper concerns the development of environmental humanities as an academic field of inquiry, specifically in this new era many are calling the Anthropocene. After a brief outline of the environmental humanities as a field, we delimit four problems that currently frame our relation to the environment, namely: alienation and intangibility; the post-political situation; negative framing of environmental change; and compartmentalization of “the environment” from other spheres of concern. Addressing these problems, we argue, is not possible without environmental humanities. Given that this field is not entirely new, our second objective is to propose specific shifts in the environmental humanities that could address the aforementioned problems. These include attention to environmental imaginaries; rethinking the “green” field; enhanced transdisciplinarity and postdisciplinarity; and increasing “citizen humanities” efforts.

Environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like ecological disasters usually recognised by the general public, and ‘slow violence’, a type of violence that occurs gradually, out of sight and on a long-term scale. Planetary seas and oceans, loaded with cultural meanings of that which ‘hides’ and ‘allows to forget’, are the spaces where such attritional violence unfolds unseen and ‘out of mind’. Simultaneously, conventional concepts of nature and culture, as dichotomous entities, become obsolete. We all inhabit and embody the world differently, as variously situated people, divided by national, sexual, bodily and economic status, and as very variously situated nonhumans in an increasingly anthropogenic world. This chapter focuses on subtle ‘slow violence’ unfolding through the instances of submerged chemical weapons, so-called dead zones, invasive species and high- and low-trophic mariculture in the Baltic and North Sea regions. It zooms in on the select cases of such ‘environed bodies’, their stories of excruciating slow violence and yet also on unexpected encounters with care and hospitality. The aim is to unfold a low-trophic theory for the naturecultural research on violence and care within environmental humanities, and to engage a coexistential ethics of environmental adaptability informed by feminist posthumanities.

BOOK SERIES More Than Human Humanities

The More-Than-Human Humanities focus series aims to attend to human differences entangled with environmental justice, information technologies, AI, synthetic biology, surveillance systems, species extinction, and drastic ecological change. It draws attention not only to the creativity and potentiality of this reinvention of arts and humanities, but also to that which limits or wounds conditions of life on earth. It addresses the question of how we may learn to live with those wounds and limitations in everyday practice. The titles in the series provide insight into the state-of-the art humanities research in a changing world.

First book of this series, Extracting Reconciliation (out Sep 2023), is written by Myra Hird and Hillary Predco.

Extracting Reconciliation: Indigenous Lands, (In)human Wastes, and Colonial Reckoning (full title of book 1 in this series) argues that reconciliation constitutes a critical contemporary mechanism through which colonialism is seeking to ensure continuing access to Indigenous lands and resources.

Series Editors: Cecilia Åsberg and Marietta Radomska, Linköping University, Sweden 

Violent but slow changes to marine climates and blue biodiversity, to warming oceans and coastal areas have been understood as nested problems in need of increased scientific and technological solutions. Instead, this chapter begins from the position that these interlinked problems of human environmental impact on oceans and coastal areas require connected, affective and cultural studies-informed approaches of more-than-human arts (posthumanities put to practice) to complement scientific insight on how to consume better with the sea. Human-induced impacts range from ocean warming and acidification, loss of biodiversity, eutrophication and marine pollution to local degradation of coastal environments and habitats. In order to deal with the nested challenges of such oceanic environmental violence in terms of consumption and grief, we propose to show four cases of coastal and marine slow violence from our Scandinavian “backyards” with the purpose to story exposures and provide counter-narratives on how to reinvent our consumerist ocean imaginary. From diverse locations in the field and in research, we have developed what is here referred to as “low trophic theory”, a situated local stance that attends to entanglements of cultural theory, food practice, affect and grief, violence, more-than-human humanities, multispecies ethics, and the oceanic consumer imaginary. We combine field-philosophical case studies with insights from marine science, eco-art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region. In the process, we develop analytical notions for the practices and theories of feminist posthumanities. Here in particular as targeted arts of learning to live and die, consume less violently, and to grieve on a damaged blue planet. 

If the humanities and the arts can be said to be broadly concerned with the self-reflection and understanding of the human species, the posthumanities comes about when we recognise the relationships between the multiple planetary alterations that go sometimes under the name the Anthropocene. We have drastic ecological changes to air, soil and biological reproduction, we have rapid species extinction rates, ubiquitous toxic embodiment and environmental health concerns, and non-sustainable climate changes ahead. Posthumanities also comes about with growing computational systems, security terrors, new biomedical ways of life, re-arranged life forms and synthetic biologies, amongst many many many things. All this impel us to recognise the wider forms and constituents of the condition that is no longer nameable simply as humanity. The world is not the same, now more humanised than ever (perhaps even all too human?), so why should the thinking habits and concepts we live our life by be the same? 

More-than-human feminisms across arts and sciences

Feminist theories have long been concerned with the violent impact of (normative) Universal Man on society and nature, aconsequence of a modern phantasy divide between Nature and Culture. In this planetary era some call the Anthropocene, it isclearer to us how the environment is in us, and we humans are fully in the environment. The modern Nature/Culture divideimplodes violently on itself. For too long those regarded as less cultured, less-than-human and particularly nonhumans,like the very ecologies that sustains us, have been approached as mere resours or background for Universal Man. What canbe done - in practice, in thinking and in scholarship in such a situation?The present postnatural situation disrupts modern figurations of thought and scholarly practice, and begs new ones. Withclimate change, oceanic disturbance, habitat loss and rampant species extinction on the one hand, and new syntheticbiologies, technobodies and algorithms we live by on the other, it asks feminist sciences and arts for extradisciplinaryresponses, for new designs of practice.No longer can a division of academic labour be sustained, where technoscience does naked facts, use/abuse nonhumans andextract raw nature while artistic research, humanities and social science does culture, ethics and politics. Spurred by morethan-human feminisms, thicker forms of situated knowing have already emerged, for instance as practices of critical, creativeand feminist posthumanities.Such more-than-human humanities come in response to the pressing need to a) alter and decolonize such dividing knowledgeforms and to b) change the very ways we think, eat, and live with nonhumans in society. Sharing a Darwinian feeling forhow everything is connected, critically and creatively, with a relational ethics of care and concern, more-than-humanfeminisms and postdisciplinary disciplines, have paved way for environmental humanities and other more-than-human formsof the posthumanities. What are the stakes and challenges in these transformations? Why do we need them? And whatfeminist genealogies gets recognized?

G22 Round-table panel, convened by Cecilia Åsberg and The Posthumanities Hub.

Participants:

Cecilia Åsberg1 , Marietta Radomska2 , Christina Fredengren3 , Jesse Peterson4 , Janna Holmstedt5 , Caroline KlingborgElgh 6  and Martin Avila7

1)Professor, Docent, Professor, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet

2) Fil Dr, Biträdande Lektor, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet

3) Professor Konstvetenskapliga Institutionen: Kulturvård, Uppsala Universitet

4) Fil Dr, Postdoktor, Tema Genus, Linköpings universitet and postdok Ekologi, Statens Lantbruksuniversitet

5) Fil Dr, Forskare, Forskningsavdelningen, Statens Historiska Muséer

6) MA, Doktorand, Tema: Tema Genus, Linköpings Universitet

7) Professor, Dr, Professor, Design, Konstfack

Feminist theories have long been concerned with the violent impact of (normative) Universal Man on society and nature, aconsequence of a modern phantasy divide between Nature and Culture. In this planetary era some call the Anthropocene, it isclearer to us how the environment is in us, and we humans are fully in the environment. The modern Nature/Culture divideimplodes violently on itself. For too long those regarded as less cultured, less-than-human and particularly nonhumans,like the very ecologies that sustains us, have been approached as mere resours or background for Universal Man. What canbe done - in practice, in thinking and in scholarship in such a situation?The present postnatural situation disrupts modern figurations of thought and scholarly practice, and begs new ones. Withclimate change, oceanic disturbance, habitat loss and rampant species extinction on the one hand, and new syntheticbiologies, technobodies and algorithms we live by on the other, it asks feminist sciences and arts for extradisciplinaryresponses, for new designs of practice.No longer can a division of academic labour be sustained, where technoscience does naked facts, use/abuse nonhumans andextract raw nature while artistic research, humanities and social science does culture, ethics and politics. Spurred by morethan-human feminisms, thicker forms of situated knowing have already emerged, for instance as practices of critical, creativeand feminist posthumanities.Such more-than-human humanities come in response to the pressing need to a) alter and decolonize such dividing knowledgeforms and to b) change the very ways we think, eat, and live with nonhumans in society. Sharing a Darwinian feeling forhow everything is connected, critically and creatively, with a relational ethics of care and concern, more-than-humanfeminisms and postdisciplinary disciplines, have paved way for environmental humanities and other more-than-human formsof the posthumanities. What are the stakes and challenges in these transformations? Why do we need them? And whatfeminist genealogies gets recognized?This lively round-table talk brings diverse scholars together for a spirited conversation on the usefulness and potential impactof feminist theorizing on sustainability, design, and on how to bring art and science to the social humanities, and insights tothe people living in a more-than-human world. It will be fun, but deadly serious.  

Celebrating more than two decades of feminist theory and gender research, this book provides an essential overview of current theoretical positions, hot topics and state-of-the-art perspectives in the field of Nordic Gender Studies: an area currently facing the challenges of internationalization and destabilized well fare states, intersectionality, materiality, and academic transformation.

Forming an overview, the introductory texts collected here are intended for Nordic and international students and teachers specializing in gender studies or related areas of interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences. With vibrant contributions from Nordic and international key scholars, think pieces and position papers culled from NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, are in fact essential reading for anyone in need of accessible yet condensed guidance on key discussion points, such as post-constructionism and new materialism, neo-liberal academia and interdisciplinarity, and the role of critical gender theory and posthumanism. The volume also looks at the differences within Nordic Gender Studies of today.

This book is made up of material that was previously published in various issues of NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research.

In lieu of an abstract:

In this editorial material, we sum up our three years of editorial work for the international peer reviewed journal NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research and discuss the publishing situation for gender scholars.

In this issue of NORA we present three original articles on three diverse topics by authors from three different countries. The first article in this issue concerns popular therapeutic culture, such as self-help books, TV programmes, and Internet resources, that help us make sense of the ideal of “the good couple”. In this article, Sara Eldén argues that the cultural narratives of “the good couple” both reproduce and resist stereotypes. This is true not least with reference to gender and gender inequality. The second article, an Icelandic piece by Anna Karlsdóttir and Audur H. Ingólfsdóttir, maps out the demographic changes in a rural Icelandic village and the gendered outcome of such socio-economic rearrangements. The third article, by Ingrid Guldvik, grapples with the pros and cons of the introduction and adoption of gender quotas. She explores and evaluates the criteria that form the basis for a strong  gender quota regime in the Norwegian context of local politics.

This issue’s Taking Turns text, “Feminist Theory and that Critical Edge”, by Icelandic anthropologist Kristín Loftsdóttir, highlights the need for self-positioning in feminist theorizing and research in order to nourish the critical edge that remains so essential to feminist studies. In her text she underlines the importance of being careful with how we use central concepts, such as “gender equality”, especially in relation to fields such as international development and peace-keeping, as well as research addressing multiculturalism. These are all fields where Loftsdo´ ttir sees profound risks of reproducing colonizing discourses and relationships, not least in the Nordic countries, which have often been misperceived as standing outside the history of colonialism.

This issue of NORA brings together three articles that could be seen as addressing the question “What is normal?” in three very different ways. These articles demonstrate that this seemingly simple question opens up possibilities for an immense variety of inquiries. All three could be said to be dealing with the making normal of certain heterosexual practices. Two of them explicitly address how heteronormativity (a term well known for the NORA readers versed in queer feminist theory) and personhood are co-constituted, while the third one is a much-needed cartography of assumptions within research on violence and gender.

This issue of NORA is dedicated to quite diverse narratives of survival and the feminist politics of rescilience and endurance. In this editorial (editorial survey) we discuss such recent research.

In the land of feminist scholars no wo/man is a scholastic island, entire unto herself. We would like to start with the above paraphrase. We devote this editorial piece to an important theme in contemporary feminist ethics: how we as feminist scholars can be accountable for how we are (always already) becoming with others in various scholarly and political constellations. More precisely, we would briefly like to zoomin on the matter of how we work together in the power-saturated academic settings inorder to create purposeful social change of a feminist kind.

Before the trains of thought have been firmly laid down, we ask in this article about the very nature and histories of the speculative of the speculative-materialist turn. We do this from the intertwined interfaces of curious feminist materialisms, foregrounding sexual difference, post-positivist critique and posthumanist performativity such as is being done in various strands of feminist theory today (new materialist feminism, new feminist science studies, feminist posthumanities etc.). The question of speculation plays a constitutive role in feminist critique and in several new or neo-materialist traditions. In fact, many interesting materialisms—Marxism, French feminism—can be named ‘speculative’. We argue that in spite of what the recent ‘speculative turn’ professes, speculative materialisms have a complex genealogy. Speculation functions transversally in a materialist genealogy (dis)-connecting the archive of feminist approaches in particular. In order to be able to imagine a different (feminist) world we need to think through a stifled and sexually differentiated present from which a qualitative shift and political breakthrough can be formulated, and hopefully achieved. However, in what is currently called ‘speculative realism’ or ‘object-oriented ontologies’ neither speculation nor the speculative are reflected upon as a heritage from and alliance with feminist and politically materialist positions. What are the onto-epistemological stakes of this body of work? And what ethico-political horizons are drawn here? We stand speculative before such turn.

 What does it mean to be adopted and of colour and growing up in a white family? This scientific report provides a feminist social perspective and critical insight on how young, adopted adults renegotiate their collective, multiethnic and individual identitity in Dutch society.

Forskningskommunikation kring klimat och hållbarhet måste också förmedla kunskapen och känslan av att framtiden går att påverka. Det skriver Cecilia Åsberg som lett ett tvärvetenskapligt projekt (RECLAIMING FUTURES) som vänt sig till gymnasieungdomar. Nu ska erfarenheterna från projektet omsättas i undervisningen.

This piece introduces the research topic of philosophy of technology, especially ethics, and it is done in the light of climate change.

     Opublicerad rapport från den vetenskapliga uppföljningen av SeniorITa projektet 1997-1998.

Mitt bland sop-bergen på Gärstadverken i Linköping så berättar Prof Åsberg och prof Fredengren om miljöhumaniora och varför det behövs en mindre snäv (mer-än-mänsklig) etik för att vi alla i samhället ska kunna ta oss an plaster och annat miljöskräp som vi för vidare till framtida generationers människor - och till hela ekologier på land, i hav och i kroppar.

- Hur kan vi bli bättre förmödrar till framtida generationer i Antropocen-åldern? Först måste vi, argumenterar Åsberg, sätta människor inte bara i kulturell och samhällelig kontext utan också i vår ekologiska kontext. Sedan måste vi ta ombord icke-mänskliga krafter, som plastens effekter, djur och teknik i den kulturella kontexten - göra det icke-mänskliga och det mer-än-mänskliga del av den kulturella analysen och samhällsförståelsen. Det är ju inte bara vissa männskors handlande så får effekter i världen, utan många krafter samverkar. 

I Reclaiming Futures - Storying Change möts ungdomar och forskare för samtal om klimatförändringar, miljöfrågor och vårt förhållande till naturen. Projektet har bland annat resulterat i ett antal kortfilmer. Nu presenteras delar av arbetet på en vetenskapsfestival med ett gediget program skapat och producerat av ungdomarna i samarbete med forskare och kulturaktörer. 

The Posthumanities Hub round-table workshop On "Creative with concepts"

Speakers: Prof. Nanna Verhoeff (Utrecht University), Prof. Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University), Dr Janna Holmstedt (Sweden’s Historical Museums), Prof. Christina Fredengren (Uppsala University), Prof. Paola Ruiz Moltó (Universitat Jaume) & Prof. Cecilia Åsberg (LiU) with friends.

11th May, 2023 on-location workshop at Linköping University

Engaging with what concepts can do, we explore in this experimental round-table workshop what happens in the arts and creative humanities when "theory words" (concepts) work across different research practices. We move through a set of concepts, like, "assembling", "cartography", "curation", "dirt", "following", "micrology", "unlearning" and "wonder" (all from Iris van der Tuin & Nanna Verhoeff's (2022) Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities, see below how to download it!). Such concepts are put to work differently across the invited speakers' various research projects. Come meet artistic research on soil and sustainability; museum ecologies and heritage research on past and future waste sites of the present Antropocene; imaginative teacher education with art, science and tiny, tiny critters, as well as other forms of blue/ environmental/ feminist/ more-than-human and creative humanities.