A reading circle held online on 25.07.21
Donna Haraway uses various formulations to encourage us to maintain our critical projects without foreclosing the radical difficulty of our encounters with our interests in their contexts. ‘Thick Present’ is the rich multi-dimensional poly-temporary place where we and everything else that lives live. Thinking and acting in a thick present recalls all that which we don't perceive but which are necessary for the persistence of our projects. Haraway is uniquely both radically permissive in terms of accepting our complex condition in all its acceptable and unacceptable minutiae, and irrepressibly opinionated and critical of the techno-industrial tendency we are enmeshed in. Staying with the Trouble, involves the careful, patient process of being both completely involved, integrated, and subject, and still being demanding, analytical and active. Staying with the Trouble is a passionate plea to take the difficulty of our life in this world seriously, not accept any easy fixes because there are none, but also not give to up on one's commitment to oneself, to one-another, to all life.
readings
Isabel Stengers: the Intrusion of Gaia