"I treat philosophy as an instrument to create more habitable futures."

In your recent lecture in Prague, you suggested some of your plans as Research Team Leader of CETE-P. You proposed that there should be an ethical and political philosophical framework for social transformation based on specific experiences from Central and Eastern Europe. Could you please describe some of these specifics? How do you envision such a project, especially in terms of environmental and technology ethics, and why is this "localization" important to you?

I am keen to develop Central and Eastern European perspectives at CETE-P because this part of Europe has been neglected in global discussions on questions of ecology and emerging technologies. Specifically with climate change, we lack images of what climate change looks like in Central and Eastern Europe and we lack cultural narratives around how it affects the region. Bringing this part of Europe into focus is important in at least two ways. First, locally: We need a language (whether philosophical, political, ethical or artistic) to process collectively the rapid ecological and technological changes that are taking place in our part of the world and that are impacting our lives both as individuals and as communities. This is because politics is always embedded. Articulating this new reality to ourselves collectively should, ideally, help us organize politically to respond appropriately to these challenges. Second, perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe are important also more broadly. What this region offers is an understanding that large social, political and economic systems can be changed: that it is possible to radically transition from one system to another and survive, even thrive. This experience of radical and large-scale social transformation should be shared more broadly, particularly in a world that can’t imagine an alternative to paradigms of infinite growth and productivity.

Naturally, a follow-up question is, what will be the role of CETE-P in developing this framework? Do you plan to build a research team and focus its activities mainly around this idea, or are there other important areas and activities that the team should also focus on?

Central and Eastern European perspectives will definitely be one research focus that I would like to develop with my team through relevant scientific events such as region-specific workshops, conferences, summer schools and public talks. However, there are also several other research areas that I would like to explore. For instance, I am interested in developing, what could be provisionally called, ‘ecological AI’. This term can be understood in several ways. Considering that AI has a considerable impact on the environment, for instance, through an extensive use of natural resources, we should ask how we can develop alternative models of AI? How can conceptualizing AI in ecological terms - as a complex, interlinked and embedded ecosystem - help us rethink AI in a more responsible way? How can ecology feed into our thinking about AI, for instance, in shifting our thinking from centralized large language models to decentralized local systems? There already exist some fascinating attempts to combine thinking about AI and ecology in different fields but they are often dispersed and ignored. I believe that it is crucial to bring these conversations together and put a spotlight on ecologically motivated alternative AI models.

Another research stream that I am particularly interested in exploring is the affective aspect of our ecological and technological entanglements in the world. Both technology and natural environments generate a wealth of sensations that we are often unable to name. While philosophers are very good at coming up with new concepts to help us orient ourselves in the world today, the emotional aspects of the rapid changes in climate and technology are less frequently addressed. Yet, it is essential to explore how current technological and ecological mutations reconfigure the way we feel, sense, desire and what long-term effects these changes have on mental health and existential well-being of individuals as well as communities. What is more, we need to ask how these new affects can make us more resilient in a world where we are at risk from both our natural and technological environments. The specific shape of our research agenda will of course also depend on the research expertise and interests of the postdoctoral researchers and PhD students that will join the team.

You have been deeply engaged with the topic of social transformation in your work. For instance, in your first book, you examined contemporary anarchism; now you focus on transformative politics in the context of climate change, particularly beyond the human perspective. Could you briefly describe what questions this new form of politics opens, which new concepts are involved and what practices it entails?

With the rapidly changing world, there is a pressing need to include entities such as AI, natural environments, plants and animals into our notions of politics. Our traditional notions of politics are ill-suited to the present-day realities, as they only recognize humans as political agents and consider the idea of nation-state as a key political notion. However, climate change and AI do not respect national borders nor the standard rules of politics. My work focuses on the political relationship of humans to nonhumans in an age of climate crisis and what it means to do politics in our world today. I’m interested in the fundamental questions of: How to define politics today? Who is a political subject? What is a political practice? I conceptualize ‘nonhuman politics’ in terms of anarché, that is, politics without pre-established organising power or foundation, which allows me to draw on contemporary grassroots ecological practices that radically renew our understanding of politics. In this context, I argue that the concept of ‘coarticulation’ – which means a mutual human-nonhuman transformation – captures a new form of political and ethical subjectification between humans and nonhumans. What is more, questions of habitability on our planet have become the central political concern of our times. My current work articulates a new multispecies ‘politics of cohabitability’ between human and nonhuman worlds. In order to pursue this question, I have recently turned to ecofeminist philosophies and practices as I believe that they offer invaluable tools for our collective multispecies living on Earth in the 21st century. 

Since one of the main agendas of CETE-P is to explore connections between environment and technology, could you suggest how you thematize this relation in your research?

Nature and technology were traditionally considered not only incompatible but also inherently antagonistic. Ecology – as the sphere of nature – encompassed physical phenomena and products of the Earth that were ‘out there’, while technology – as the sphere of artifice – encompassed all that was created by humans. This clear-cut distinction does not hold anymore in light of human-induced climate change and rapid developments of newest technologies reliant on depleting natural resources. In fact, such a traditional approach is a stumbling block to a much-needed radical rethinking of our world today. My work responds to this conceptual impasse. Specifically, I rethink key concepts from the Western philosophical tradition – such as politics, solidarity, community – to make them more effective in responding to the challenges that we face today. I treat philosophy as an instrument to create more habitable futures. New concepts are powerful because they open up different theoretical imaginaries that allow us to draw a more accurate map of our relations to human and nonhumans worlds. More recently, I have been interested in how we can tell a new story - a new grand narrative - about who we are and what our place is on this planet. I believe that we need such a new ecological metanarrative, one of our interdependence with the nonhuman world rather than of our independence from it.

The interview was conducted by Vojtěch Svěrák. More about Iwona Janicka can be found in this link.