archaeologists

This is out of Brown University:

“Papers in the session will confront the impact and challenges of an ontological approach to archaeological theory. We’re interested in how relational ontologies affect archaeological theory from any perspective, including research that incorporates the work of theorists in feminism (Karen Barad, Elizabeth Grosz, Donna Haraway, Marilyn Strathern) the hard sciences (e.g. Karen Barad, Donna Haraway), political ecology (e.g. Arturo Escobar), philosophy (e.g. Graham Harman, Elizabeth Grosz, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda), and anthropology (e.g. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Martin Holbraad, Tim Ingold, Marilyn Strathern). Interrogating our theoretical lexicon, methodologies and techniques for the role they play in reproducing particular ontologies is crucial. What shape do key concepts such as ‘matter’ and ‘materiality’, ‘theory’, ‘nature/culture’, ‘body’, ‘sex/gender’, begin to take if we accept their ontological specificity in Western thought? Moreover, how do we manage and imagine the interface between various, possibly incommensurable, ontologies – modern scientific, alternative modern, and nonmodern – when producing archaeological theory?”

I’ve had contact with two of the participants, Severin Fowles and Chris Witmore, so it’s not entirely surprising, but I wish I could see some of these panels.