Year Zero: More-Than-Human Worlding After 1945

1945 marks the end of a world war, the rise of decolonized states, the beginning of an unruly geological epoch. This symposium brings together extraordinary scholars who cross disciplinary boundaries to examine intersecting materialities and unprecedented logics of this postwar rupture, a Year Zero in which humans, nonhumans, and machines were violently remade.

Thinking of security and affect through nuclear ruins (Joseph Masco), ecological consequences of growth paradigms (Julie Livingston), queer postcolonial bodies through chemical fertilizers (Vanessa Agard-Jones), remaking of a global South through oranges (Tiago Saraiva), smartness and resilience through infrastructure (Orit Halpern), and the emergence of metadata after the war (Lisa Gitelman), this symposium gathers together a striking array of critical-creative practices for tracing more-than-human worlding and inhabiting their relentless, differential trajectories.

Convened by

• Elaine Gan, Faculty Fellow, XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement
• Una Chaudhuri, Director, XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement

In Collaboration with