EcoMaterialisms Collective
Scales of Matter(ing)
Statement of purpose:
During the 2014-2015 academic year, the EcoMaterialisms Collective engaged
with the discussions occurring around the so-called new materialisms through an
interdisciplinary approach, providing a solid theoretical and historical grounding in this
field’s most influential thinkers and texts. This year, the EMC will continue as a
graduate-run research collective operating across four UCs, including Berkeley, Davis,
Irvine, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara. Continuing the research of the EMC’s first year,
this collective will explore the theme “Scales of Matter(ing),” with a focus on the
histories and theories of the organism, of ecologies, and of cosmologies in the fall, spring,
and winter quarters respectively.
Distribution of Labor:
For those participants who are taking the reading group for credit, you will be
expected to prepare and lead discussion related to the readings throughout each quarter.
How many sessions each participant will be responsible for will depend on the number of
students enrolled for credit and will be subject to further negotiation and discussion
during a preliminary meeting prior to each quarter. For-credit participants will also be
expected to (1) prepare and deliver an end-of-quarter presentation that rigorously engages
with the readings for that quarter in relation to their own research interests and (2)
participate in a collective writing exercise that will be discussed prior to the start of the
quarter.
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Fall 2015
Histories and Theories of the Organism
Week 1: Canguilhem and Foucault: A Critical Introduction
Required:
Georges Canguilhem:
Knowledge of Life
Machine and Organism
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
Part I, Ch. 5. Classifying.
Part II, Ch. 7. The Organic Structure of Beings.
Part II, Ch. 8. Cuvier.
Suggested:
Hans Jonas: The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, sels.
Richard Lewontin: Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
Ch. 2. All in the Genes?
Week 2: Maupertuis and Buffon: The Reproduction and Generation of Animals
Required:
Pierre Louis Maupertuis: The Earthly Venus
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon: Natural History, General and Particular
Ch. 2. Of Reproduction in General.
Ch. 3. Of the Generation of Animals.
Ch. 9. Varieties in the Generation of Animals.
Ch. 10. Of the Formation of the Foetus.
Ch. 11. Of the Expansion, Growth, and Delivery of the Foetus.
Suggested:
Michael Hoffheimer: “Maupertuis and the Eighteenth-Century Critique of Pre-Existence”
in Journal of the History of Biology 15(1): 119-144 (1982).
Paul Farber: “Buffon and the Concept of Species” in Journal of the History of Biology
5.2 (1972): 259-284.
Week 3: Lamarck and Bichat: Speculative Biology
Required:
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: Zoological Philosophy
Introduction
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PartI. Ch. 7.
Part II.
Marie François Xavier Bichat: Physiological Researches Upon Life and Death
Suggested:
William Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and
Transformation.
Ch. 1. Biology.
Ch. 2. Form: Cell Theory.
Ch. 3. Form: Individual Development.
Ch. 4. Tranformation.
Week 4: Humboldt and Cuvier: Life and the Geo-Sciences
Required:
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt: Cosmos, sels.
Georges Cuvier: Essay on the Theory of the Earth, sels.
Suggested:
William Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and
Transformation.
Ch. 5. Man.
Ch. 6. Function: The Animal Machine.
Ch. 7. The Experimental Ideal.
Week 5: Comte and Darwin: Evolution, Social and Biological
Auguste Comte: Course on Positive Philosophy.
“Considerations on Biological Science as a Whole”
Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species, sels.
Suggested:
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man, sels.
Elizabeth Grosz: The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely.
Part I. Darwin and Evolution.
Week 6: Goldstein and Uexküll: The World of the Organism
3
Required:
Jakob von Uexküll:
A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with a Theory of Meaning
“Theoretical Biology”
Kurt Goldstein: The Organism
3
Suggested:
Ian Buchanan: Onto-Ethologies: The Animal Environments of Uexküll, Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze.
Introduction: Between Ontology and Ethology.
Ch. 1. Jakob von Uexküll’s Theories of Life.
Ch. 5. The-Animal-Stalks-at-Five-O’Clock: Deleuze’s Affection for Uexküll.
Conclusion. Uexküll and Us.
Gilles Deleuze: Spinoza: Practical Philosophy
Ch. 6. Spinoza and Us.
Donna Haraway: Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in TwentiethCentury Developmental Biology.
Week 7: Freud: The Cellular Unconscious
Required:
Sigmund Freud:
Project for a Scientific Psychology, Part I.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Suggested:
Georges Canguilhem: The Normal and the Pathological.
Week 8: Heidegger: Ontology and Ethology
Required:
Martin Heidegger: The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude.
Part II, Chs. 2-6.
Suggested:
Ian Buchanan: Onto-Ethologies: The Animal Environments of Uexküll, Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze.
Ch. 2. Making a Path into the Environments of Animals.
Ch. 3. Disruptive Behavior: Heidegger and the Captivated Animal.
Michael Haar: The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of
Being.
Martin Heidegger: The Origin of the Work of Art
Week 9: Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology and Nature
Required:
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France.
Suggested:
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Ian Buchanan: Onto-Ethologies: The Animal Environments of Uexküll, Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze.
Ch. 4. The Theme of the Animal Melody: Merleau-Ponty and the Umwelt.
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