Underground Ecocriticism Liveblog 5

The first panel Q&A:

Castricano: acausal causality. Synchronicity (Pauli, Jung). Anti-reductionism.
Religion and the gothic? Religion does underpin it (and often it's a Protestant parody of Catholicism)
It begins with notions of rightful inheritance? What is the inheritance of materialism? What does it disavow? The sense that we are living with various other consciousnesses.

Simonsen: Q: coprophagic dogs are imitating the mother's striving for cleanliness. New notions of immunology. Alaimo: 35% of us is inorganic matter we have ingested through toothpaste, makeup, creams etc. Isn't this a more pressing issue?
A There are ancient bacteria that have coevolved with us. Less and less children have them.

Q: Is this a return to Nature? Microbiologists only think about antibiotics. But there are still loads of other things. The shit seems benign by comparison.
A: Exactly. Connecting with familial matter. An interesting shift in how we think intimacy.

Willmott Q: Idea of charisma and hidden labor. We tend to grant charisma only to certain animals. Plagues and Sphinxes: what is that moment?
A: In the absence of a strong description of what we do (Vattimo's idea of the strong, we live in a world of interpretations)

Castricano: Disgust rules everything. There is a link between aesthetics and shit, and that's gothic.