Università Roma Tre

UNLEARNING ANTHROPOCENTRISM: The course considers diverse conceptualizations and representations of the relation between humans and more-than-human nature. It rejects the ontological singularity of the human, either as a biological species (homo) or as a planetary super-agent (anthropos) and argues for a perspective that is centred on companionship and shared vulnerability. Students will gain familiarity with leading thinkers in the field of posthumanism (Rosi Braidotti; Bruno Latour; Donna Haraway) and transhumanism, and will explore important differences between these two currents of thought. Novels and short stories by Dino Buzzati, Tommaso Landolfi, Primo Levi, Anna Maria Ortese and Paolo Volponi will provide a basis for focused discussion. The specificity of each literary text serves to counter a growing tendency to generalize and address the human species at large, in the singular. The planetary future of humans cannot be deduced from any single cultural or geopolitical context or expressed through universalizing categories. It will instead be understood – through the productive ambiguity of literary texts – as a process of becoming: a complex set of material and semiotic practices shaping open-ended, transformative trajectories.

THEORETICAL TEXTS
• Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013)
• Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (2016)
• Bruno Latour, After Lockdown (2021)

LITERARY TEXTS
• Tommaso Landolfi, La pietra lunare (1939)
• Dino Buzzati, Il grande ritratto (1960)
• Anna Maria Ortese, L’iguana (1965)
• Primo Levi, Storie naturali (1966)
• Paolo Volponi, Il pianeta irritabile (1978)

ANTHOLOGY
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism (2020).