Book Talk:
Making Kin with Trees. A Cultural Poetics of
Interspecies Care
by Solvejg
Nitzke (Ruhr-University Bochum)
Moderation:
Catherin Persing (Ruhr-University Bochum)
Recent years
have seen a surge of tree-discourse. Whether fictional or non-fictional – trees
draw attention and with this attention comes debate or outright dispute.
Whether or not trees can communicate with non-human and human others, whether
trees are intelligent or social, whether it is ok to anthropomorphize and
romanticize trees is being hotly contested. Yet, it remains a question whether
these debates concern trees and/or whether they are one of the contemporary
sites on which we negotiate modes of knowing, of representing and of relating
with more-than-human worlds which are under immense pressure. Making Kin with Trees draws on Solvejg
Nitzke’s literary and cultural plant studies work on arboreal poetics, to
explore ways of relating to tree through a wide spectrum of non-fiction
writing. It is a fundamental critique of the modes and normative assumptions of
presenting knowledge and managing attention that veers between a desire to make
kin with trees and to protect trees from human desires and appropriation.
Covering reading habits, artistic perception, knowledge production, feminist epistemologies,
care and narrative potentials of arboreal communication, this study proposes
ways of making kin that learn from literary and artistic modes of knowledge
without giving up their rootedness in science.
Please register to receive the zoom-link - the event is free of charge!
