In Latour, Bruno. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns, we read that it is much too easy for artists to take the unreality of their creations for granted and indulge in „real fakery“ in the name of the enduring rights of the imagination creativity.
Latour invites us to abstain from taking fictional beings to be mere products of the imagination and to trust in their existence that offers us an imagination that we would not have had without them.
The aim of the seminar is (with cross references to Experimental Studies III, see there), first, to investigate this topic within the moral territory that is decribed as "Fables". We understand fables as complex interspecies relationships that form our so-called human nature. How should modern fables be constructed? Is ethology (the scientific study of animal behaviour), or, the emergence of multispecies ethnography, giving us ideas to construct fables that may enrich our morality as humans and thus immunising us against purifying activities in the political domain? The second aim is to draft fables that address this research question.

Exploring and representing projects in small groups; 80% attendance; active collaboration in form of research and presentations, reading the literature and preparation of introductory notes.

limited number of participants

scheduled meetings on appointment