On October 23, 2024, Dr. Jan Winkler will visit us in Eichstätt to give a guest lecture and teach a workshop for our fellows.
Drawing on diverse case studies, the lecture examines the emotional practices and politics of the climate crisis. It asks how it is precisely through such emotional practices and politics that the climate crisis is made ‘experiencable’ in particular ways (as basis for politicizations) and how, in this context, it is always also spatialized (e.g., territorialized or emplaced). As the contribution shows, spatializations of climate change/climate crisis can be understood as contested ways of making the ‘hyperobject’ of climate crisis (Timothy Morton) visible and tangible. These spatializations often operate through emotional and affective registers, channeling dynamics of subjectivation and potentials for (political) action. In the presentation, these relations are explored through three different case studies. (1) The first investigates the struggles over the destruction of Lützerath in the course of lignite mining in the Rhineland area, illuminating the constitution of Lützerath as a unique place of climate activist experience, and reflecting on the significance of different emplacements of the climate crisis in relation to the affective topologies of opencast minescapes. (2) The second case study analyses an ongoing climate political education program that merges issues of climate protection and global intercultural relations. Here, it will be shown how the climate crisis is given a place within emotional and bodily encounters. The empirical material will show us that once the climate crisis becomes manifested or emplaced within situated dynamics of encounter, its contentious and political nature comes to the fore. (3) The third case study deals with the emotional politics of the climate activist group “Extinction Rebellion”. In this, it can be shown how activists attempt to localize climate change as an experience of affect by facilitating the circulation of climate emotions within local (urban) publics. Local publics thus become the places where the climate crisis should be felt. Taken together, the three case studies enable reflections on the significance of space (or: different spatial registers and operations, like emplacements, localizations, embodiments, etc.) and emotions/affects for the contemporary politics of the climate crisis.
The lecture will take place in O17-011 and will also be livestreamed on Zoom. If you would like to join, please contact us: gk-practicingplace@ku.de
Jan Winkler is research group leader at the European Centre for Just Transition Research and Impact Driven Transfer (JTC) at MLU Halle-Wittenberg (Department of Geography). Currently, he is also principal investigator in the research project “Städtische Geographien des Verlusts” (funded by “Bundesverband Wohnen und Stadtentwicklung”) as well as part of the management of the “Franconian Geographical Society e.V.”.
O17-011