Journal | Lagoonscapes
Monographic journal issue | 1 | 1 | 2021
Research Article | A Constitution for the Anthropocene Body Politic
Abstract
The following article is a slightly revised version of Serenella Iovino’s Keynote Address at the 2021 European Conference for the Humanities, jointly organised in Lisbon (5-7 May) by the UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Programme, the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The theme of the Conference Section inaugurated by this lecture was “The Humanities in the Twenty-First Century”. By acknowledging the official approval of the BRIDGES Project on education for sustainability as a partner of the UNESCO Management of Social Transformation Program, Iovino evaluated the role of the Environmental Humanities in the agenda of the so-called ‘New Humanities’, paying special attention to their relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this framework, Venice emerged both as a symbol and as a very concrete object of care, proving to be “a thinking machine” for contemporary natural-cultural dynamics, as Salvatore Settis has defined it. The lecture ended with the invitation to turn the current crisis into a constitutive moment for the ‘Anthropocene body politic’, namely, the earthly collective of agents and of processes, both human and nonhuman, natural and technological.
Submitted: Sept. 13, 2021 | Published Dec. 20, 2021 | Language: en
Keywords UNESCO • Environmental Humanities • Venice • New Humanities • Body politic
Copyright © 2021 Serenella Iovino. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP//2021/01/004