Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Aet Annist
(University of Tartu and Tallinn University)
Kadri Tüür (Tallinn University)
Send message to Convenors
Short Abstract:
This panel invites empirically and/or theoretically focused explorations of how disease or collapse, cataclysm or fall of the society has been predicted or anticipated, how people have planned for or failed to plan for such an eventuality, and how they have dealt with the aftermath.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the past and future unwellness of the world with a specific focus on the anticipation of a disaster or a condition, or the aftermath of when it hit. These cataclysms could range from pandemics to environmental disasters, from political to economic shocks. We welcome empirically and/or theoretically focused explorations, including cross-disciplinary, of how disease or collapse, cataclysm or fall of the society has been predicted or anticipated, how people have planned for or failed to plan for such an eventuality, and how they have dealt with the aftermath. Furthermore, what social forms does the anticipation of collapse or actual loss of the sustaining social or environmental structures trigger? If such a fate fails to realise when expected, or keeps being postponed, how do people and social systems they have built to deal with this adjust or respond? When the dreaded reality has come about, what lessons are taken along as the shaken humans will come out from the other end? How are such cases of pre- and post-collapse social life constructed as inevitabilities, both before or after, and conceptualised and rationalised cross time and space?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 11 April, 2023, -Ulrike Plath (Tallinn University Estonian Academy of Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The combination of climate change, famine, war, and the plague around 1700 was the biggest disaster in Baltic history. How these events were foreseen, discussed and used in nowadays description of the similar combination of the apocalyptic riders?
Paper long abstract:
The 17th century is known for its radical climate extremes, for famines and the plague all over Europe. In Baltic history the end of the century brought one of the biggest cataclysms in history: the combination of climate change during the Maunder minimum (1645-1715) - the harshest time of the "Little Ice Age" -, the Great Famine (1795-1797), the Great Nordic War (1700-1710), and the Plague (1708-1712). When the four apocalyptic riders finally left the region, the population of current Estonia and Latvia was diminished to the early-medieval level.
In the paper I will ask if the potential for a big cataclysm was foreseen in calendars that dealt with astrological predictions and which has been the role of climate change in these predictions. In analyzing the main calendars of the region and the larger background of astrology in 17th century Europe I will further ask whether the course of history influenced the public standing of astrology. Finally I will ask, if this example and astrological predictions of an historical cataclysmic disaster have been used to describe the events in 2022. Can historical events be used to prepare for future events?
Daina Pupkevičiūtė (University of Tartu)
Paper short abstract:
After a storm in a valley in Maritime Alps there is a lot to reconstruct. After a big-scale destruction, all hands are needed to mend the hardscapes and relationships between those that dwell there. What, if any, new types of relationalities are nascent in the aftermath of a catastrophe?
Paper long abstract:
After a storm in one valley in Maritime Alps, there is a lot to reconstruct. The road - main artery connecting this French valley to both Ligurian coast and Piedmont, - was mostly eaten by an extreme flooding of the river alongside which it ran. After such a big-scale destruction, all hands are needed to reconstruct bits and pieces of the hardscapes of the valley as well as relationships between those that dwell there. The valley sees an influx of humanitarian aid as well as volunteers from all over France and beyond, and a mobilization of local people, seemingly leading to new solidarities. What new types of relationalities in form of enchantments, disillusionments, caring or others are nascent in the aftermath of a catastrophe? What do they disclose about the relationships between humans and the relationships they have with their environments?
Aet Annist (University of Tartu and Tallinn University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will consider the case of environmental movements on the brink of climate disaster.Based on both off- and online fieldwork amidst Estonian and UK protest and survival groups, I will consider the sociality of preparing for a collapse, and the methodological possibilities this theme offers.
Paper long abstract:
As disastrous climate change is increasingly discussed as an inevitability, the groups closest to these discussions - climate protesters, survivalists and deep adapters - have started to add to their protest and general trepidation various forms of actual preparation for the climate changed future. Considering the flourishing literature on changes to the perception of anticipation of the impending catastrophes, I propose the concept of dispossession of the future and discuss how the present practices align with the discussions of and challenges to the surrounding societal institutions, systems and structures, and what role do various power relations - present, desired and feared - have in this. As protesters and activists, the members of these groups share an ethos to change the world and to function as "prophylaxis" to the society. Aware of the knowledge systems, fatalism, insularity or hope(lessness) of other doomsday and millenarian movements, these groups also build on or avoid such histories of relating to the collapse. I will discuss the value this adds to the group members and/or the society they inhabit, and how does their relationship with the catastrophic future evolve.
Methodologically, the discussions with the members of such groups could be seen as a type of "oral history", always in need to consider "the time of the telling" and "the time of the event". Taken from the point of the relationship with the future, we could also lay the groundworks of studying "the time of the coming", and draw from the memories of the future.
Sara Bédard-Goulet (University of Tartu) Timo Maran
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to observe possibilities of anticipating ecological disasters from the point of view of semiotics, applying the theoretical framework to Vinciane Despret’s fictional narrative “Autobiographie d’un poulpe ou la communauté des Ulysse” (2021).
Paper long abstract:
This paper builds on the perspective of umwelt theory to look into personal worlds of animals, which fragment and decay in ecological crises, and identify the role of embodiment and ecosystem memory in this process, as well as potential avenues of anticipating such collapse. Within this semiotic framework, we examine Vinciane Despret’s fictional narrative “Autobiographie d’un poulpe ou la communauté des Ulysse” published in the collection Autobiographie d’un poulpe et autres récits d’anticipation (2021). The short story features a human community living in symbiosis with an octopus community that has gone extinct but that will slowly be revived as a few octopuses return to the site.
Following Jakob von Uexküll, umwelt can be interpreted as a sum of structural correspondences between animals’ subjective experience, surrounding ecosystem (environmental affordances), physiology (body) and behavior. In environmental conditions, where a species has evolved or developed for a long time, experience, ecosystem, body and behaviour correspond well to one another. In ecological crises and environmental change, the connections between these different aspects of umwelt become unreliable and may break down, leading to species extinction. Despret’s narrative offers valuable proposals to understand and potentially prevent the loss of ecosystem memory that takes place during the extinction process. Our text analysis will focus on the symbiotic practices between humans and octopuses, and the efforts of the former to decipher a message left in ink on pottery fragments by the latter, which highlights the risks of memory loss that goes together with ecological disaster.
Kadri Tüür (Tallinn University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the notion of (cultural) explosion as developed in the works of an influential theoretician of semiotics, Juri Lotman, and explores the possibilities of applying his ideas in interpreting global ecological disasters that humankind faces in the 21st century.
Paper long abstract:
In his seminal book Culture and explosion (in English, 2009), semiotician Juri Lotman argues that there are two principal forms of cultural dynamics: explosion and development. Their intermingling is the basis for all cultural processes. In the presentation, I will focus on Lotman's model of 'cultural explosion' and its possible applications in the situation of global environmental crisis.
In Lotman's argumentation, uninterrupted development is characterised by culturally acknowledged predictability. The situation of explosion (be it cultural, societal, or environmental) is its opposite, a fully unpredictable abrupt change. Whereas stable development has no specific characteristics (cf 'norm'), the moment of explosion reveals an unlimited amount of characteristics, and it is impossible to predict which of those would actualise as the moment of explosion passes. Paradoxically, when the moment of explosion has already passed, and we look back at it as a historical event, the results of the explosion seem to have been inevitable.
However, as Lotman points out, from a semiotic perspective, culture is a multi-layered system where nothing is irreversibly lost. Some cultural information may become obsolete as a result of some abrupt changes, but thanks to the parallel existence of the processes of development and explosion in different layers of culture (such as local, regional, or global), the stability of cultural dynamics is ensured. In the presentation, I will ask whether Lotman's ideas would be applicable also in anticipating and interpreting global ecological disasters.