Ook in Rotterdam: SCHOOL’S OUT! #31 with Lisa Doeland

In February, the guest speaker for School’s Out! by Independent School for the City, will be Lisa Doeland. She is a philosopher and the author of a.o. Apocalypsofie. Her interests lie in ontology and waste, hauntology, dark ecology, the uncanny, capitalism and desire and apocalyptic thought.

Lisa Doeland will introduce us to her view on the Anthropocene. She looks at it with a general feeling of pessimism, as a good antidote to the unfounded belief in technological solutions, so common in the architectural world and beyond. Doeland is a philosopher. She lectures at both Radboud University and the University of Amsterdam in ethics and in contemporary issues, such as ecology, green ideology, the Anthropocene and the Apocalypse. In her PhD research she explores the myriad ways in which we are haunted by these things we (call) waste. Drawing on the work of philosopher Jacques Derrida and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan she traces the “spectre of waste” and sketches a hauntology of waste, that forces us to rethink being (ontology) – to be is to haunt and be haunted – and allows us to critically reflects on (eco)modern myths and fantasies, such as recycling without remainders within a circular economy.

As she writes: “We tend to imagine the end of the world as something futural. We also tend to imagine it as an all-encompassing event. What if we think of the end of the world as something that has already occurred? And what if instead we inquire into the ends of worlds (plural)? We should think of the Apocalypse as engagement with the impossibility of the present. Things cannot go on like this and we know it (but still…). Apocalypse literally means “revelation” and what is revealed is the coming mass extinction. But it shouldn’t end here. Apocalypsophy tries to think through the end and inquires how we can learn to live in the ruins. Another end of the world is possible.”

Next to her talk, you can expect drinks, bites and a short movie handpicked by AFFR curator Jord den Hollander. Doors open at 18:00, lecture starts at 19:00. Tickets available for 5 euro. Get them here.