Thinking Nature Thinking

The Thinking Nature Thinking project at University of Dundee is located at the intersection of philosophy and poetics, between the conceptual labor of exploring and the poetic labor of inventing the idea of nature.

Overview

Context of Thinking Nature Thinking project at University of Dundee

The project asks: how do we speak of, what do we speak of, and what do we expose, when we talk about, refer to or think of nature?

The project aims to examine how it is possible to work through and account for all the things we invest, libidinize, imply and presuppose when we think nature (itself). It is a peculiar concept, because it immediately tends to naturalize itself. For this purpose, the present project begins from the assumption that “nature” is a non-natural (i.e. cultural) creation.

The project in this way aims to tackle from a different starting point questions of contemporary ecological politics and political ecology – traversing and working through the dominant imaginations of nature and by taking seriously that “nature remains a problem” (Hegel).

Program Structure

• The present project thereby aims to examine the natural(ized) assumption that there is and exists a (consistent and inherently unified, a substantial) nature – by investigating the multiple ways in which ‘nature’ is inherently constituted by non-natural or de-natural (and today undoubtedly capitalist) processes and by taking note of the fact that these processes seem, ‘naturally’, to resist and persist even after being identified, critiqued, or analyzed.
• Do we unavoidably presuppose that there is (a) nature? How can we examine the modes, forms, and media in which we presuppose? To begin from the assumption that “nature” is a concept, and hence not natural, means to think through the ways philosophy and poetry can contribute to making us understand what we imagine to be nature.

Admission requirements