Stockholm Archipelago Lecture Series
The Stockholm Archipelago Lectures are part of the public activities of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. The series was initiated in 2012.
The 11th Archipelago Lecture, November 10, 2022:
Rob Nixon
The Less Selfish Gene: Forest Altruism, Neoliberalism, and the Tree of Life
Recording:
Abstract
Why have millions of readers and viewers become magnetized by the hitherto arcane field of plant communication? Since the great recession of 2008, we have witnessed an upsurge in public science writing that has popularized research into forest sentience, forest suffering and the forest as collective intelligence.
This talk roots the current appeal of forest communication in a widespread discontent with neoliberalism’s antipathy to cooperative ways of being. Nixon argues that the science of forest dynamics offers a counter-narrative of flourishing, an allegory for what George Monbiot has called “private sufficiency and public wealth.
