Diego León-Villagrá: Figurations of ‘Malignant Nature’ in 20th and 21st Century Illness-Thinking
Thursday | June 19, 2025 | 2:00-2:45
Goethe and Schiller Archive, Jenaer Straße 1, 99423 Weimar
Abstract:
Exemplarily focusing figures of thought of ‘malignant nature’ as modes of description of cancer in the 20th and 21st Century, my proposed contribution aims at addressing relations between subject and environment as a whole. These phenomena of ‘nature in ourselves’ as well as carcinogenic natural environments in the Anthropocene and the relatability of different organic entities are observable in both artistic and scientific practices. Facing cancer, figurations of non-absent ‘evil’ or ‘malignant nature’ in ourselves, the differentiation between ‘Nature’ and the Self becomes so problematic that, as I want to argue, only their relations and general relatability (but not their relata) become addressable and analyzable.