Ecologies of Violence: Crimes against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination

About

The ongoing destruction of the natural world raises critical questions about responsibility. How do we remember the victims, both human and non-human? And how do we negotiate the difficult question of who is to blame, especially in situations where we are all in one way or another implicated? Contemporary culture plays a crucial role in addressing these questions.

The aim of this project is to understand how environmental degradation is being framed and remembered as violence in contemporary culture, and how representations of such ecological violence articulate and reflect on questions of guilt, implication, and responsibility. Ecological violence has deep historical roots that tie it to other forms of violence, especially colonialism and genocide. Writers, artists, and filmmakers are finding ways of representing these ‘ecologies of violence,’ making visible the historical, structural and discursive links between crimes against humanity and crimes against nature.

This will be the first large-scale cross-media study of the cultural imagination of ecocide and other forms of eco-violence. Drawing on recent approaches in memory studies and ecocriticism, we will elaborate an innovative ecological approach that can account for the connections between different forms of violence and their cultural representation and memory.

This project will effect a reorientation in cultural memory studies and ecocriticism toward a conceptualization of cultural memory in more-than-human terms. Paying attention to how the histories of suffering of humans and non-humans are entangled fundamentally changes the way we think about responsibility.

News

  • Susanne Knittel talks about Ecocide in knowledge clip for Conceptualizing Ecocide project

    Susanne Knittel talks about Ecocide in knowledge clip for Conceptualizing Ecocide project

    The Conceptualizing Ecocide project has launched various knowlegde clips. One of the clips features Susanne Knittel. We are reposting the clip here below. Susanne is member of the Ecocide Knowlegde Hub. For further information on the project and view other knowlegde clips, check out the link.

  • ‘Border Depositions’ by Ifor Duncan and Stefanos Levidis, currently on show in Bratislava.

    ‘Border Depositions’ by Ifor Duncan and Stefanos Levidis, currently on show in Bratislava.

    Our postdoctoral fellow Ifor Duncan is currently exhibiting the collaborative multimedia installation Border Depositions with Stefanos Levidis for the Liminal Ecologies: Thresholds of Transition and Entanglement Exhibition curated by Marianna Tsionki and Mariana Cunha at Tranzit.sk in Bratislava (27/03/2025-11/07/2025). Ifor and Stefanos activated the opening of the Exhibition by presenting their media lecture Weaponizing a…

  • Ifor Duncan reflects on Tekla Aslanishvili’s work in new publication

    Ifor Duncan reflects on Tekla Aslanishvili’s work in new publication

    Our postdoctoral fellow Ifor Duncan recently contributed the chapter ‘Rivers Shape Mountains: Mountains Become Rivers’ to the book The Mountain Speaks to the Sea: Tekla Aslanishvili, edited by Silvia Franceschini & Tekla Aslanishvili published by Eindhoven based Onomatopee. Reflecting on the experimental documentary practice of Tekla Aslanishvili, the chapter follows the sedimentary poetics of rivers,…

More News

Agenda

  • Public reading Jennifer Scappettone and Ifor Duncan

    Public reading Jennifer Scappettone and Ifor Duncan

    On Wednesday, 21 May, the Network for Environmental Humanities and BAK Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries are organizing a public presentation featuring Jennifer Scappettone (University of Chicago) and Ifor Duncan. This is the third session of the collaborative reading series The Florilegia (‘flower-gatherings’). The series features readings by international and local writers working at the intersection of language justice and climate justice through…

  • This Is Not A Trial

    This Is Not A Trial

    A theatrical experiment on justice in times of ecological crisis Tickets: 15 Euro regular 10 Euro discounted THIS IS NOT A TRIALis a theatrical experiment that invites you to become part of the urgent conversation on how society can assign accountability for environmental destruction. On 18 and 19 June, a group of artists, actors, and…

  • Workshop Representing violent pasts: museums, colonialism and environmental degradation

    Workshop Representing violent pasts: museums, colonialism and environmental degradation

    On 10 April, the Memory & Heritage Network of Utrecht University and the ERC project Ecologies of Violence: Crimes Against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination (Eco-Violence) are organizing a workshop on the representation of colonial and ecological violence in museums. This workshop is aimed at scholars and cultural practitioners (such as curators and museum…