No Special Status: Ecologies Of Agency In Ecology

Abstract

This paper is based on the lecture held on 11th May 2022 in the context of Maska seminar at Nova Pošta and it examines general conceptual distinctions at work in the history of the life sciences (namely agency, form, force, and form) and how these have been emphasized or neglected in the various ontological and ecological turns within the humanities (from the critical humanism of Marxism to post-humanism and the nonhuman). More specifically I look at the work of Sylvia Wynter and how her project of decolonising the notion of ‘Man’ makes the possibility of a counter humanist uptake of a politically critical philosophy of biology.