ASTK18384U Democratic participation in times of the Anthropocene.

This course engages with the emergence of the new geological epoch ‘The Anthropocene’. The geological epoch defines a time where human activity has become a force of nature that radically and irrevocably changes the earth. Rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity and other irreversible tipping points illustrate this – but it also underscores the connectedness of humans and non-humans / culture and nature. In the course we will investigate how democracies can face the predicament posed by the Anthropocene, especially how and whether the political norm of democratic participation can or should be expanded to non-humans. The purpose of the course is to translate abstract political theory into practice, thus institutionalizing the normative commitments in the Anthropocene. The course will follow the role-play ‘Vitalism in action: Imagining a new collective for the Anthropocene’ organized by Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology and funded by the research project ‘Vital Politics: Rethinking Normativity in the Anthropocene (VIPO)’.

Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to follow the process of establishing the role-play, and to think with the role-play to develop their own research agendas. The course investigates the potentials in creative knowledge generation and alternative ways of conducting research in social science. Furthermore, the course is driven by an ambition and commitment to integrating research in teaching. Students will be introduced to the VIPO research group and to research in the department on the Anthropocene. Furthermore, students will be working independently on potential research agendas inspired by the data-collection from the role-play.

The course is structured in five parts. First, we will investigate the Anthropocene as a condition for contemporary political science. In the second part of the course, we will explore vitalism, thing-power and new materialism. Subsequently, this is put into the context of democratic participation in the third part of the course, which investigates the concept of democratic participation in the Anthropocene and how to give voice to non-humans. The fourth part of the course is methodological and reflects on how we – as researchers – can generate knowledge from performances. The role-play is situated within this theme, where the students and lecture will discuss ways of observing or participating in the role-play. Finally, we will discuss the data generated by the students from the role-play. The students will give each other feedback, and collaborate in the sense-making process. The course will be concluded with a session on critique, and its role in the Anthropocene.