Flowers for Agouti: Epigenetics and the Genealogy of Uplift – Ben Woodard

Abstract:

The notion of uplift has a science-fictional and social justice connotation: it is the raising up of one species by another as well as a historical (and often racially codified) way of speaking of how one group raises itself up above limiting structural conditions. While these notions seem disparate they in fact have a shared history that hybridizes fictional and non-fictional aspirations for future humanity as well as the  origins of civilization as such.
This talk examines how recent discussions of epigenetics complicates notions of a too hasty equation of cognition and agency both within humanity and across species that the concept of uplift as championed as an anti-Darwinian politics of Eurocentric teleology.

This event is part of our winter semester 2023/24 Lecture Series Lifelikeness.

To take part either online or in presence, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.