25.05, 10:45-11:45am, Schlossplatz 2, Aula (Keynote within NKG 2024) +  25.05, 12-13:30am, Schlossplatz 2, S9 (Workshop within NKG 2024)

Bob Kuřík (Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Charles University, Prague)

“ResisTerra: Conceptualizing More-than-human Resistance of and for the Anthropocene

Who resists? With whom and against whom do they do so? What rights and duties come with recognition of the ability to resist? These questions, long thought to be exclusively human, are increasingly proving more than human in the Anthropocene. Whether referring to granting heroism to weeds, declaring war on viruses or the legal subjectivity of rivers, in all such examples, unruly nature interwoven in myriad human worlds causes trouble together.

In the Anthropocene, mutual interdependence of humans and nature has come to the fore. This manifests in the many emerging forms of so called “more-than-human resistance” (MTHR). The concept of MTHR, which will be introduced in the talk, allows for a rethinking environmental politics by conceptualizing nonhumans not only as passive sources of extraction or objects of protection but as active “subjects”, potential enemies and allies in confronting the threats of the Anthropocene.