Abstract
Francophone political ecology treats the climate crisis as a fundamentally political question. In recent years, the focus has shifted from questions around resource management to a more fundamental rethinking of the very bases of our societies. Specifically, contemporary French political ecology is particularly thought provoking today because it turns to the question of living beings (le vivant)—animals, plants, soil, ecosystems—in order to understand the climate crisis and how to live with it.
In that line of thought – in the development of which Francophone thought since Bruno Latour and Phillipe Descola has played an important role -, climate change is posed as a crisis in our relations with living beings. In order to overcome it, we need to fundamentally change how we relate to non-human life – to learn how not to exploit the world but instead to share it. The crucial political and philosophical question is how to live together in a world of radical differences. The workshop’s objective is to bring together several important francophone scholars of political ecology to Prague to discuss how to rethink the collective habitability of Earth in the 21st century. In particular, the workshop focuses on feminist and queer approaches to rethinking ecology. The aim is not only to reconceptualize political ecology along the theoretical lines of the living (le vivant) but also to provide a dedicated space for a new generation of francophone scholars to share their ideas with scholars based in Central Europe and devise new ways of thinking about our contemporary ecological trajectories.
Programme
20th November
09.50 – 10.00 Welcome from the organisers (Iwona Janicka, Mateusz Chmurski)
10.00 – 11.00 Fatima Ouassak
“Pirate-Thinking”
11.00 – 12.00 Christina Kkona
“Queer Eco-Cosmopolitanism?”
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch
13.30 – 15.00 Panel I: Terrestrial Bodies
Jeanne Etelain
“Essay for a Theory of the Body-Zone”
Alžbeta Kuchtová
“Borderlands of My Body, Borderlands of the Territory”
Chiara Mengozzi
“Echoes from the Earth: Hearing Devices, Listening Exercises”
15.00 – 15.30 Coffee Break
15.30 – 17.00 Panel II: Affectivity and Labour
Cannelle Gignoux
“Cannibalistic Dynamics and Sphere Theory in Nancy Fraser”
Cécile Rosat
“Rethinking Environmental Responsibility as Relational and Affective”
Jan Bierhanzl
“Uprootednedness (Simone Weil) and the Urban Fabric”
17.00 End
21st November
14:00-15:00
Ohlédnutí za historií programu, slovo děkanky doc. Věry Sokolové (tým GS; česky, anglicky)
15:15-16:30
Care as taking part
Estelle Ferrarese (Picardie-Jules-Verne University; Institut Universitaire de France)
in English
After nearly forty years of discussion, contemporary feminist philosophies are pulling care ethics in two opposite directions. On the one hand, care is viewed through the lens of the ‘crisis’ it is said to be experiencing: a shortage is said to be affecting the Global North, driving migration and creating new forms of domination. In this context, care becomes a limited resource, the distribution of which must be reconsidered. On the other hand, care is merged with the categories and assumptions of ecofeminism. In this model, care is a skill assigned to women due to their supposed innate awareness of their connection with nature.
In contrast to these two models, I would like to propose a conception of care as participation (understood as taking part) in relationships and, simultaneously, in a political community. Care work is as much a result of political organisation as it is a means of constructing it, and it is important today to reflect on this ‘taking part’.
This presentation will be an opportunity to reflect on the current worldwide rise of brutality, of “I don’t care” as a political style, as well as the backlash against feminism that this has caused.
Estelle Ferrarese is a professor of moral and political philosophy at Picardie-Jules-Verne University (France). She is a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She was the head of the Gender Institute in Paris from 2020 to 2024.
She was a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York. She has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation fellowship at Humboldt University in Berlin, and a fellowship at the University of Potsdam.
Her books include : Une philosophie des sanglots, Paris, Rivages, 2025; Le Marché de la Vertu, Paris, Vrin, 2023 (english translation : The Market of Virtue, Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming, 2026); Vulnerability and Critical Theory, Boston/ Leiden, Brill, 2018, La fragilité du souci des autres. Adorno et le care, Lyon, ENS éditions, 2018 (english translation: Adorno and the Fragility of Caring for Others, Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Ethique et politique de l’espace public. Habermas et la discussion, Paris, Vrin, 2015. She is also the author of numerous articles on Critical Theory, feminism, forms of life, and vulnerability.
