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Centre for the Study of Law and Humanities and Law School Staff Seminar

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck Central

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FUNGORUM MORE: THE CONCEPT OF INTERDEPENDENCE FROM HOBBES TO BUTLER

The Hobbesian state of nature revolves around the metaphor of men having grown mushroom-like, fungorum more. This metaphor obscures
the generative power of the mother and thus the human condition of dependence. Confronting this phantasmatic imaginary and identifying an alternative to it is one central goal in contemporary feminist thought, as exemplified in particular by Judith Butler’s political philosophy. Contemporary mycological studies of the real life of fungi and their ability to construct a true “wood-wide web” help facilitate a different imaginary, one which is centered on the question of interdependency among humans, and between humans and non-humans. This essay further questions the possibilities and limits of a political thought that turns the biological fact of interdependency into a value.

Place/Time: Birkbeck Central, room 207, Wednesday 26th of February 12-2.

Format: This seminar will be based on a discussion of an article that is to be published in diacritics and Federico Zappino co-authored with B. Casalini. There will be an introduction by Professor Elena Loizidou, a presentation by Federico Zappino and a discussion of the pre-circulated paper. You can access the paper by emailing e.loizidou@bbk.ac.uk. 

Speaker's Bio: 

Philosopher and translator, Federico Zappino has contributed over the past fifteen years to introducing queer thought in Italy and raising theoretical and political awareness about it. He has translated leading works of queer and feminist thought, including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet and Monique Wittig's The Straight Mind and Other Essays, and is still the Italian translator of Judith Butler's main works. He has also translated into Italian works by Chiara Bottici, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval.

Central to his thought is the attempt to combine queer theory and historical materialism. He is currently doing research on the relationship between capitalism and authoritarianism.

Since 2022 Federico Zappino has been Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of Sassari, where he teaches Gender and Queer Theories and Critical Global Theory, and in 2024 he is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and the Humanities at Birkbeck (London).

His works include Genealogie del presente (ed. with L. Coccoli and M. Tabacchini, 2014), Il genere tra neoliberismo e neofondamentalismo (2016), Comunismo queer (2019, translated into several languages), Un materialismo queer è possibile (2024), Fungorum More: The concept of interdependence from Hobbes to Butler (with B. Casalini, 'Diacritics' 2024), Is a queer materialism possible? Towards a general theory of the heterosexual mode of production (forthcoming).

 

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