Abstract

Community Economies thinking emphasises the importance of looking for possibilities in the here and now, and to not be bound by ways of thinking that impose limits. In a similar way, in a piece entitled ‘Gaia, the Urgency to Think (and Feel),’ Isabelle Stengers explains how much academic thinking (and feeling) is tied to “seemingly insuperable dilemmas which strangle us, leave us free to denounce and debunk, certainly, but not to add reality, not to sustain what may be possible against sad probabilities.” Drawing on Donna Haraway, she argues for the value of science fiction and speculation fabulation as a means of showing how “our world does not need to be what it is, does not need to be thought and felt as it seems to authoritatively demand.” It turns out that CERN members have been experimenting with speculative forms of writing as a means for thinking and feeling new possibilities in the here and now. In this workshop there will be time for CERN members to share what they have been doing, and time for participants to experiment with individual or joint forms of speculative writing for community economies.

Presenters/Facilitators: Jenny Cameron, Katherine Gibson, Molly Mullen, Heather McLean