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# 7

Made of mud… how compost builds the world

My partner Rusten Hogness suggested compost instead of posthuman(ism) (a thought tradition that criticises the role of the human at the center), as well as humusities instead of humanities, and I jumped into that wormy pile. 

Human as humus has potential, if we could chop and shred human as Homo, the detumescing project of a self-making and planet-destroying CEO. Imagine a conference not on the Future of the Humanities in the Capitalist Restructuring University, but instead on the Power of the Humusities for a Habitable Multispecies Muddle!

Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
  • What captured our attention
  • What if we tell a different history
  • What if “Nature” does not exist
  • What if we invent an ecosystemic economy
  • What do you think?
  • Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
Collections that include this source
  • Imagine an Ecosystemic Europe
  • Imagine an Altereurope
Keep exploring
  • Cross Idea
  • According to myths, Europa was named after an Asian princess. Europa was abducted by Zeus, who had transformed himself into a bull, while she was picking flowers with her friends on the beaches of Tyre, a city in modern-day Lebanon. The animal carried her from Asia across the sea to Crete, where it …
  • Giovanni Ambrosio. Ius Soli. Chapter one: waiting, passing, redemption. Soils: Tessuto non tessuto. 2018-

What if we tell a different history

Can we change history by renaming practices? What would happen if we speak of compost instead of posthumanism, humusities instead of humanities, and humus instead of humans? Is name-giving a productive process that can change, or even create, realities? The suggestion of a new set of words might be seen as a provocation, even a joke, but it is also a serious search for a language that hasn't been co-opted by institutions. It challenges their practice of adopting new, supposedly critical labels that function like superficial brand names, while still being an integral part of the same old system of resource exploitation.

of our Imagination