This is the first of the interview series initiated by the PENTACLE team. The preparation, translation, and the revision of the questions are done collaboratively by Sevilay Keçelioğlu, Başak Ağın, and Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Türkçe versiyon için buraya tıklayınız.
Dr. Peggy Karpouzou is Associate Professor of Theory of Literature at the Faculty of Philology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.
Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki is Post-doc Researcher at the Faculty of Philology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.
Dear Peggy and Nikoleta, thank you for accepting our invitation for an interview with PENTACLE. When we take a look at your academic backgrounds, we see that Professor Karpouzou is a literary theorist, working on the Posthumanities, Environmental Humanities, etc., among other disciplines, and Dr. Zampaki is also working on the same fields, including Digital Humanities. How do you think having a background knowledge in literary studies contributes to a scholar’s studies on Environmental Humanities and Posthumanities respectively?
Thank you for your question. Studying on the Environmental Humanities and Posthumanities –two of the most current research fields in the terrain of Humanities nowadays– presupposes an academic background on Literary Studies theoretically and practically. This means that a scholar who studies any literary tradition with the use of current literary theories can offer insightful approaches on texts as they are and in pairs with other literary texts from other literary traditions. Due to the crisis that Humanities face nowadays, it is important to re-consider the orientation of Humanities in general. We see that many interdisciplinary literary projects open the dialogue to other research fields, e.g. Sciences, Technologies, etc., highlighting at the same time that literary studies mark a different orientation than that of the past (a more traditional and focused on e.g. one literary tradition as case study). Through a critical, theoretical and cultural analysis of texts, by also studying the jargon of both Environmental Humanities and Posthumanities, it is very useful to follow our time and challenges for providing sustainable solutions for our future, including the important role that Humanities play in our moment when all around collapse and multiple crises (climate change, deforestation, etc.) are around.
Nowadays, Environmental Humanities is open to more fields of research. Many scholars work on interdisciplinary projects including Narratology, so in your opinion which is the role that environmental and posthuman narrations play in human-nature relationship? How about the changing or improvement of narrations in these areas?
Narratology studies the ways that narrative structures our perception of both the cultural artifacts and the world around us, articulated as environment. The human perception is affected by the latter and we see e.g. that the field of Eco-narratology studies more closely the mechanics and structures of various narrations focusing on the relationship between life-forms. Indeed, we see that narrating of such relationships is different when writing for them in terms of different perspectives. For example, an eco-narration describes the ways under/through which life-forms are represented and perceived. Another kind of narration is the digital one (digital storytelling) in which narrative structures and techniques are perplexed with the digital ones (computer networks, codes, etc.). Through any kind of narration we can understand the complex nature of the relationships between human and more-than-human world, that map multiplicities and varieties.
The role of narrative is also seen in Dr. Zampaki’s work titled “Poetry and Art in the Age of the Anthropocene: Metabolic Pathways of Flesh.” As far as we understand, the Merleau-Pontian concept of “flesh” is here analyzed in terms of posthuman bodies while studying the relationship between humans and more-than-human world. Could you elaborate more on the analysis of the “flesh of the world”?
The Merleau-Pontian “flesh of the world” is a core concept, articulated as the central dynamics of Being, but not to confuse it with the Absolute, or other similar terms, even substances. If we could briefly define what the “flesh of the world” is, we can actually make a short statement: it is the universe’s question mark that make the world around us move, change, operate, etc. It is a matter of consistency between the life-forms. The “flesh of the world” is a good start to analyze and approach the life-forms as they are in terms of many of their characteristics.
Now let’s talk about your book series titled “Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures,” published by Rowman & Littlefield. Based on this series, what do you think about the future of humanities in terms of our relationship with each other, the environment, and non-human others? How are they affected by studies conducted in the fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities in the future?
Given the rapid and extensive developments in the techno-scientific sphere, there is a need to conceive new narratives for our species and planet that extend beyond anthropocentrism. Our book series reflects on the possible future outcomes of humanity and defamiliarizes the mainstream narratives about how we construct, perform, and protect our identities as humans. We explore the implications of human and non-human life forms’ coexistence within our networked world, foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and scholars around the world, and explore the intersection between biosphere and technosphere in a more-than-human world, and our future.
From your newly published volume about symbiosis, we can see that the relationships between life-forms are the core key to understanding the future of relationships. Especially in your Introduction titled “Towards a Symbiosis of Posthumanism and Environmental Humanities or Paving Narratives for the Symbiocene,” you emphasize on the importance of the symbiosis between humans and environment. We live in a world full of transitions and changes, that is, humanity has a worldview as if everything exists for humans. How do you think that people could adopt and implement such a symbiotic lifestyle now and how about all these in a symbiotically shaped and oriented future?
Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, our volume examines the changing conception of human subjectivity, agency, and citizenship as shaped by the dynamic interplays between nature, technology, science, and culture. The proposed ‘symbiotic turn,’ (the awareness of the multitude of interactions and mutual interdependencies among humans, non-humans and their environment) aspires to explore the complex recompositions of the “human” in the 21st century. By organizing and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue at multiple levels, both in theory and practice, Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies is suggested as a new narrative about the biosphere and technosphere, which is embodied literarily, philosophically, and artistically. Our volume proposes exactly what you ask: the adoption and implementation of symbiotic lifestyle in praxis as examples from literature, arts, etc. lay the ground for such a way of life not only for now but following it in the future, aiming to a more sustainable relationship between human and more-than-human world.
Works Cited
Karpouzou, Peggy and Zampaki, Nikoleta (eds.). “Introduction: Towards a Symbiosis of Posthumanism and Environmental Humanities or Paving Narratives for the Symbiocene.” In Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art, edited by Peggy Karpouzou and Nikoleta Zampaki (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023), pp. 11-39.
Zampaki, Nikoleta. “Poetry and Art in the Age of the Anthropocene: Metabolic Pathways of Flesh.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Medical-Environmental Humanities, edited by Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, and Vidya Sarveswaran (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), pp. 171-182.
