Tag: Queer Death Studies

Routledge International Handbook of Queer Death Studies is finally OUT!

At the end of October 2025 – after five intense years of hard work – the long awaited publication came out!

The 758-page volume: Routledge International Hanbook of Queer Death Studies, edited by Nina Lykke, Tara Mehrabi, and yours truly (i.e. Marietta Radomska), encompasses 63 chapters, written by 75 authors. The book consists of seven thematic sections: I. Rethinking  Life/Death Ecologies and Temporalities; II. Anthropocene Necropolitics and Extinction; III. Caring Death Activism; IV. Aesthetics and Mediated Imaginaries of Death; V. Politics and Ethics of Grieving Practices and Remembrance; VI. Co-Becoming with the Dead and Spectral Mourning; and VII. Imagining Life/Death Entanglements Differently.

Broadly speaking, the Handbook aims to provide a comprehensive, international cartography of Queer Death Studies, offering broad, in-depth insights into the field and its emergence through tentacular transdisciplinary networking. Taking research and art-making on death, dying, mourning, and afterlife into new directions, it explores the multiple effects of contemporary necropolitics and the proliferation of death-worlds during the current period of Earth’s history, ‘The Anthropocene’ or ‘the Age of Man’.

Informed by queer, critical posthumanist, decolonial, and feminist approaches, the Handbook presents a unique variety of both critical and affirmative reflections upon the world’s intersecting necropowers, and ethico-political potentials for social and environmental change. Contributors speculate on ways to reimagine life/ death-relations as vibrant entanglements. They also investigate modes of mourning differently, resisting necropolitical regimes that deem human and non-human individuals and populations to be disposable and non-grievable when they differ too much from the normative modern subject, Universal Man, in terms of intersections of gender, racialisation, class, sexuality, embodiment, embrainment, geopolitical positioning, or species.

A thought provoking read, this Handbook is intended for broad global audiences of researchers, artists, teachers, students, death-professionals, (health)careworkers, activists, and NGOs interested in tools to rethink and reimagine death, dying, mourning, and afterlife from intersections of queering, decolonising, posthumanising, and feminist perspectives.

The volume includes two chapters that are available in OPEN ACCESS.

Docent lecture ‘Biophilosophical Investigations: Between Environmental Humanities, Queer Death Studies, and Artistic Research’

While I have held the title of docent (Swedish equivalent of continental-European habilitation) since June’24, it is only now that there is a chance for a moment of celebration.

Namely, if you are in Linköping on 25th February, please join us for the Docent and Professor’s Lectures organised by the Department of Thematic Studies (TEMA), where I will have a pleasure to present along with Prof. Thomas Kaiserfeld.

In my docent lecture ‘Biophilosophical Investigations: Between Environmental Humanities, Queer Death Studies, and Artistic Research’, I will take you on a little tour de force through my post-PhD research.
Hope to see you there.

New publication: “Mourning the More-Than-Human: Somatechnics of Environmental Violence, Ethical Imaginaries, and Arts of Eco-Grief”

Exciting news! The long awaited part 2 of the special issue of the journal Somatechnics, focused on the ‘Somatechnics of Violence: (Im)material, Affective, and Digital Transformations’ is finally out!

I feel privileged to have had a chance to contribute with an article (available in Open Access) to this wonderful, brilliant, and particularly timely volume!

Big congratulations of course go to the special issue editors: Evelien Geerts, Chantelle Gray and Delphi Carstens, and to all the wonderful contributors!

HERE you can check the entire issue.

And of course you are warmly invited to check out my contribution “Mourning the More-Than-Human: Somatechnics of Environmental Violence, Ethical Imaginaries, and Arts of Eco-Grief”, available in OA.

The article also discusses and features visual artworks by artists and creators: Polina Choni (UA), and Eglė Plytnikaitė, Agnė Stirnė and Oskaras Stirna (LT).

More about the article:

Theoretically grounded in queer death studies and environmental humanities, this article has a twofold aim. Firstly, it explores the somatechnics of environmental violence in the context of Northern and Eastern Europe, while paying attention to ongoing ecocide inflicted by Russia on Ukraine, and to the post-WW2 chemical weapon dumps in the Baltic Sea. Secondly, the article examines the concept of eco-grief in its close relation to artistic narratives on ecocide. By bridging the discussion on environmental violence and artistic renderings of eco-grief, the article hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the socio-cultural responses to more-than-human death and loss, and their accompanying ethical imaginaries and affordances.

Keywords: contemporary art; ecocide; eco-grief; environmental humanities; environmental violence; queer death studies.

Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning: Volume I. International Symposium, 23 March 2023, Norrköping

Ecologies of Death, Ecologies of Mourning: Volume I

International Symposium

23RD MARCH 2023, 13:00 – 18:00

Organised by The Eco- and Bioart Lab, in collaboration with Queer Death Studies Network

VENUE: ARBETETS MUSEUM (THE MUSEUM OF WORK), NORRKÖPING
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Prof. Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)

Prof. Em. Nina Lykke (Linköping University, SE/Aarhus University, DK)

SPEAKERS:

Dr Evelien Geerts (University of Birmingham, UK)

Prof. Christina Fredengren (Uppsala University, SE)

Dr Tara Mehrabi & Dr Wibke Straube (Karlstad University, SE)

Dr Marietta Radomska (Linköping University, SE)

In the Anthropocene, the epoch of climate change and environmental destruction that render certain habitats unliveable and induce socio-economic inequalities and shared ‘more-than-human’ vulnerabilities, death and loss become urgent environmental concerns. As climate scientists indicate, in order to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), a much more radical transformative action is needed from all stakeholders: governments, the private sector, communities and individuals (Höhne et al. 2020).

Simultaneously, planetary environmental disruption, contributing to the mortality of humans and nonhumans, destruction of entire ecosystems, the sixth mass extinction, both abrupt and ‘slow’ violence (Nixon 2011), evoke feelings of anxiety, anger and grief, manifested in popular-scientific and cultural narratives, art, and activism. These feelings are not always openly acknowledged or accepted in society; and the ecological, more-than-human dimensions of death have traditionally been underplayed in public debates. Yet, what we need now – more than ever – is the systematic problematisation of the planetary-scale mechanisms of annihilation of the more-than-human world in their philosophical, socio-cultural, ethico-political and very material dimensions. Only then will it be possible to talk about the issues of responsibility, accountability and care for more-than-human worlds (Radomska & Lykke 2022).

Taking its starting point in critically investigating and challenging conventional normativities, assumptions and expectations surrounding issues of death, dying and mourning in the contemporary world (Radomska, Meharbi & Lykke 2020; https://queerdeathstudies.net/), this interdisciplinary symposium zooms in on more-than-human ecologies of death, dying, grief and mourning across spatial and temporal scales.

The event is combined with the official launch of the four-year research project Ecological Grief, Crisis Imaginaries and Resilience in Nordic Lights (2022-26), led by Dr Marietta Radomska and generously funded by FORMAS: a Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.

Detailed Programme: TBA

REGISTRATION:

The participation in the symposium is free of charge, but we have a limited number of seats. If you wish to take part in the event, please, fill out the form: https://forms.office.com/e/Yb4qXpyVtX

Registration deadline: 15th March 2023 or until the event is fully booked.

NB! In case you register and it turns out you can no longer participate, please let us know by sending an email to: ecobioartlab[at]liu.se . In this way we may be able to let in anyone who may be on the waiting list.

Igor Zabel Association: International Conference “So Close: Ecologies of Life and Death”

This month I have an honour and pleasure to speak at the International Conference “So Close: Ecologies of Life and Death”, organised by Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory. The event takes place on 17th November in Ljubljana (and is livestreamed on YouTube – see details below). Here comes some brief info:

International Conference “So Close: Ecologies of Life and Death”

The theme of the conference is the future of life on our planet from the perspective of life’s end, drawing attention to reconsiderations of loss, decline, mourning, and death. In this way, it seeks to transcend the binary of, on the one hand, dystopian pessimism about the future and, on the other, utopian optimism in the all-powerful human capacity to overcome the end.

Speakers: Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Thom van Dooren, Šejla Kamerić, Marietta Radomska, Boštjan Videmšek, and Mick Wilson

To take part in the conference online, don’t miss the YouTube stream (https://bit.ly/3zCOBhq): click the “notify me” button to get a reminder. You can also follow along via e-flux Live (https://bit.ly/3suq9dQ).

Read more about the event: https://www.igorzabel.org/en/news/2022/international-conference-2022

The event schedule and registration instruction are available on the event website: https://award.igorzabel.org/

The conference is supported by ERSTE Foundation.

Queer Ecologies, Art and Science: Panel talk by Mary Maggic and Marietta Radomska

During the past several months I have given a number of talks in many diverse places and on different occasions. I haven’t been very good at documenting them, though.

Yet, this week I’ve had a great pleasure to take part in an event organised by The Archive of Pink Noises/Arkivet för Rosa Brus: a panel talk/conversation between artist Mary Maggic and myself, focused on the topic of Queer Ecologies, Art and Science.

The panel talk was livestreamed on Facebook on 8th December at 19h00-21h00 CET. In case you missed it, you can still watch the recording HERE.

And here comes the description of the event published by Rosa Brus:

As part of a series of panel talks, the queer sound archive The Archive of Pink Noises has invited scholar Marietta Radomska and artist Mary Maggic to discuss the emerging scholarly and artistic field of “queer ecologies” based in their own scientific and artistic practices.How can we imagine and critically understand the relations between life/death, living/non-living, human/non-human in a world of evironmental toxicities and hormone biopolitics from different queer ecological and/or ecophilosophical perspectives? What role can art play as a political tool in this endeavour? Conversely, what role can science and critical theory play in one’s art practices? What arenas of public discourse are the most important and urgent ones in which to intervene politically? And what methods and methodologies can one develop in one’s own science and art practices?The duration of the talk is approximately 60 minutes, with time for questions after the main talk.

MARY MAGGIC
Mary Maggic (b. Los Angeles, ’91) is a non-binary artist working at the intersection of cultural discourse, body and gender politics and ecological alienations. Using biohacking and public amateurism as a critical practice of care, Maggic investigates the micro-performativity of hormones and works collaboratively to demystify their molecular colonization.
https://maggic.ooo

MARIETTA RADOMSKA
Marietta Radomska, PhD, Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities, Linköping University (Unit Gender Studies), Sweden; director of The Eco- and Bioart Lab; co-director of The Posthumanities Hub; and co-founder of Queer Death Studies Network. She works at the intersection of posthumanities, philosophy, queer death studies, and visual culture. www.mariettaradomska.com

THE ARCHIVE OF PINK NOISES
Arkivet för Rosa Brus (The Archive of Pink Noises) is a queer sound archive that aims to collect, archive and publish queer culture production in sonic form and we view (queer) sound as a bearer of history. We do this in collaboration with other archives, artists, activists and scholars. By collecting, archiving, reading and arranging public events in the shape of festivals, workshops and site-specific sound pieces around Sweden, we explore together with all the participants what pink noise and a queer sound archive can be. The work of AfRB is made in collaboration with the cultural association Tupilak (www.tupilak.org) and with grants from Kulturbryggan (Konstnärsnämnden/The Swedish Arts Grants Committee).
For more information or for submitting material to the archive please visit us at www.rosabrus.nu

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