More-Than-Human Aesthetics
Venturing Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature
Edited by Melanie Sehgal and Alex Wilkie
Published
May 20, 2025Page count
258 pagesBrowse the series
Dis-positions: Troubling Methods and Theory in STSISBN
978-1529227796Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
May 28, 2024Page count
258 pagesBrowse the series
Dis-positions: Troubling Methods and Theory in STSISBN
978-1529227789Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
May 28, 2024Page count
258 pagesBrowse the series
Dis-positions: Troubling Methods and Theory in STSISBN
978-1529227802Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
May 28, 2024Page count
258 pagesBrowse the series
Dis-positions: Troubling Methods and Theory in STSISBN
978-1529227802Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
More-Than-Human Aesthetics
In a present marked by planetary crisis, a radical rethinking of aesthetics is necessary. This inspirational collection proposes a new way of thinking about aesthetics as fundamental to cultivating more liveable futures.
Drawing on the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Félix Guattari, the book develops aesthetics as central to all more-than-human forms of experience, including knowledge practices. Each contribution invites readers on an adventure to explore how this broader view of aesthetics can reshape areas including biomedicine, geological forensics, nuclear waste, race, as well as arts and education.
This is an agenda-setting contribution to understanding the significance of aesthetics in science and technology studies, as well social and cultural research more broadly.
“Alfred N. Whitehead’s daring protest against the ‘bifurcation of nature’ called for the liberation of aesthetics from human exceptionality. More-Than-Human Aesthetics turns this protest into a compelling multifaceted exploration. How would our practices be transformed if we recognized that none of them can be divorced from an aesthetic experience which humans share with all other inhabitants of the earth?” Isabelle Stengers, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Melanie Sehgal is Director of Research at the Institute for Basic Research into the History of Philosophy at the University of Wuppertal.
Alex Wilkie is Professor of Design and Societies and a Director of the Design Societies Research Unit in the Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: Tracing More-Than-Human Aesthetics in Times of Socio- Ecological Crisis - Melanie Sehgal and Alex Wilkie
PART I Feeling and Experiencing
2 Whitehead, Dewey, Metaphysics, Aesthetics, Experience and Our World(s) - Michael Halewood
3 Eternal Objects of Nuclear Waste Futures - Thomas P. Keating
4 Geo-Narrativity: Anthropocene, Aesthetics, Forensics - Alexander Damianos
5 Race and Reality: Towards a Social Aesthetics of Race - Michael L. Thomas
PART II Problematizing and (Re)Valuing
6 A New Taste for Life? Value Ecologies and the Aesthetics of the Outside - Martin Savransky
7 Variations on the Great Refusal via Dante and Whitehead - Cécile Malaspina
8 Aesthetic Axiology: Amanda Piña’s Climatic Dances/ Danzas Climáticas - Maximilian Haas
PART III Infecting and Caring
9 To Err is More Than More-Than-Human: Patient Safety and the Aesthetics of a Never Event - Alex Wilkie
10 Machinic Highs and Pathic Patchworks of Addicted Systems - Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey
11 On the Aesthetics of Care/ Care of Aesthetics in Social Scientific Research - Mike Michael
PART IV (Un)Learning and Luring
12 An Ethology of Abstractions: Learning How to Cultivate Our Modes of Thought with Stengers - Didier Debaise
13 Back to the Classroom: What Whitehead Took from Art, and What a New Aesthetic Paradigm Can Take from Whitehead - Nicholas Gaskill
14 Schools of Feeling: Unlearning the Bifurcation of Nature Through Aesthetic Education - Melanie Sehgal
