Mihaela Mihai – Eco-Emotions, Resonance and Rituals of Staying with the Trouble – CRITIQUE-PTRG Seminar (27th November)

Mihaela Mihai (Edinburgh) will be discussing a paper co-authored with Danielle Celermajer (Sydney):

As environmental crises intensify, growing numbers of people experience painful emotions – grief, despair, and horror – at ongoing devastation. While eco-emotions largely remain trapped within presentist and anthropocentric frameworks (i.e., they are informed by present humans’ interests), many are increasingly mourning more-than-human loss, present and future. In dialogue with social theory, anthropology and political theory, we make two contributions: first, we read eco-emotions as effects of what social theorist Hartmut Rosa (2019) conceptualised as resonance, i.e. adaptive and transformative, non-alienated relationships to the world, in times  of intertwined environmental, democratic and psychological crises. We critically adjust Rosa’s account to theorise eco-emotions as non-transient, painful expressions of enduring resonance with the environment and Earth Others. Second, building on theorisations of ritual, we show how, when validated culturally, resonant eco-emotions can have a transformative role. Two cases concretise our argument: the podcast ‘Climate Change and Happiness’ and the ‘Work that Reconnects’ project.

This is a pre-read seminar. For a copy of the paper, please contact tom.oshea@ed.ac.uk.

Wednesday 27th November, 3pm-4:30pm
Chrystal Macmillan, Room 3.15