Università Roma Tre

We will firstly define the main characteristics and contents of the Environmental humanities study area. Then we will focus on how humanities and social sciences stand before the regulatory ontology of the neoliberal growth system. This is based on an apparently contradictory mixture of vitalistic unleashing and rational anticipatory ordering, where the goal is no longer disciplining the living system and the living beings but the possibility to profit from indeterminacy, i.e. from the continuous liberation of energy.
Humanities and social sciences, increasingly dominated by a neo-materialist perspective, play an ambiguous role in this framework: on the one hand, they aim to eco-critically denounce all forms of domination of the human and the non-human; on the other hand, by working on the deconstruction of some traditional dualisms (nature/culture, nature/technology, words/things, reality/knowledge, living/non-living, etc.), they contribute to settle a de-regulation imaginary in which ecological threats, far from being opposed, are actually indulged.
With this awareness, we will try to reflect on the possible ways out, exploring the analytical, critical, and political potential of some liminal conceptual frames (the "form of life," dépense and the Bataillean general economy, degrowth and so on).

- L. Pellizzoni, "Calvalcare l'ingovernabile. Natura, neoliberalismo e nuovi materialismi", Orthotes, Napoli-Salerno 2023.
- O. Romano, "Go waste. Depensamento e decrescita", Orthotes, Napoli-Salerno 2023.