Troy Vettese (Artist Talk)
he/him
Sat May 31 | de Brakke Grond
Title of talk: Becoming Animal or Becoming With? Daoist Ecosocialism, Wilderness and Healing the Civilizational Wound.
What happens when the history of civilisation is no longer seen as a story of progress, but rather of accident, oppression, and decline? The origins of civilisation have their root in the social cage of circumscribed ecosystems, such as the Nile Valley, which in turn were often caused by anthropomorphic environmental change. What if by domesticating animals we domesticated ourselves?
During his artist talk, Troy will dive into the topics of Wilderness and Healing the Civilisational Wound. In this context, the topics are connected to his book Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change, and Pandemics. Vettese argues that when farming societies spread, they forced unequal social structures on humans, who had mostly lived as equals before. At the same time, these societies also brought new diseases with them. One such disease, the Black Death, led to the unintentional genesis of capitalism, which would eventually transform animal husbandry into the ethical and epidemiological disaster of factory farming. To heal this civilisational wound, Troy will counterpose Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's 'becoming animal' to Donna Haraway's 'becoming with'.
About the speaker
Troy Vettese is writer, historian and a Ciriacy-Wantrup research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He has held fellowships at New York University, Harvard University, University of Copenhagen, and the European University Institute. He is currently working with Drew Pendergrass on a sequel to Half-Earth Socialism, which has been translated into five languages and inspired an educational video game. Vettese's writing has appeared in both popular and scholarly publications, including the New Left Review, Critical Historical Studies, the Guardian, n+1, the New Republic, and Jacobin.
