Litteraturvidenskab: Grey Matters: Ecocritical Potentials of Lithic Aesthetics

In this course, we will investigate inorganic aesthetics and explore how art and literature can contribute to develop ethical sensitivities for rocks and stones – in dialogue with the research project “Grey Matters: Ecocritical Potentials of Lithic Aesthetics”. Studying interrelations between the sensual and material dimensions of art and stone, we will ask how aesthetic defamiliarization guards stones’ radical difference from humans without reducing them to objects for extractive industries. How do art and literature, through their medializations of rocks and rocky terrains, enable relations that are not intrusive and let stones be stony?

At the basis of these questions is an engagement with contemporary ecocritical theory, which will be introduced and thoroughly negotiated during the classes. As the terms “Green Humanities” and “Blue Humanities” show, the vegetal world and hydrosphere are the central focus of contemporary ecocritical studies of art and literature. The lithosphere, which is a major site of environmental destruction, has so far received comparably little attention. Organic models have predominated since Romanticism while aesthetic processes are often described in vegetal or aquatic terms (e.g. text-textile, flow, fluidity). In the course, we consider the benefits of a “grey turn” in environmental humanities.

Another main concern is expanding the current impoverished cultural imaginary of rocks and stones. Traditionally, stones are associated with lifelessness, muteness, dumbness, immobility, rigidity, passivity – and, more positively, with lastingness. New Materialist theories challenge these associations and try to show that inorganic matter also has agency, and lively qualities, while climate changes confront us on a daily basis with a sense that rocks are more vulnerable than we might think, and that the ground under our feet is less stable than we would hope. We will engage with these developments, discuss their benefits and shortcomings, and seek for alternatives – always hand in hand with analyses of artworks and literature. Historically, we will trace a path of lithic aesthetics from the 19th century to today with special emphasis on romanticism, modernism, and contemporary art and literature.