Automotive futures

Session co-organised by the French Association Passé Présent Mobilité and the Vendredis Mobilité. It will be organised around a presentation of the book Post-Automobility Futures: Technology, Power, and Imaginaries by the authors, followed by a discussion with Natalia Kotelnikova-Weiler based on her work on the autonomous vehicle.

Apparatuses of the Anthropocene: Automobility In their recent book, Post-Automobility Futures: Technology, Power, and Imaginaries, Robert Braun and Richard Randell argue that automobility is an “ill-named thing.” In this webinar they will provide a brief overview of how automobility is conceptualized in their book and why they think “automobility” is an “ill” name. The key argument in the book and in their other publications is that automobility is a political ontology that suppresses and conceals the violent mechanisms, processes, and agencies by and through which automobility is continuously and routinely constituted. The second part of the talk will focus on their current work on automobility and its relationship to the Anthropocene. If the Anthropocene is conceptualized not as a geological epoch but as a political ontology, automobility provides us with a window into how the Anthropocene has been constituted, how it is reproduced, what it is. We need to get beyond thinking about automobility and the Anthropocene in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and instead think about automobility as one of the central apparatuses of the Anthropocene.

Robert Braun and Richard Randell, Institute for Advanced Studies Vienne, Natalia Kotelnikova-Weiler, LVMT, Université Gustave Eiffel.

Further details see : https://vmob.hypotheses.org/ Registration : https://framaforms.org/vmob-31st-of-march-2023-14-1600-paris-time-automotive-futures-1677682672