This talk, very much a meditation-in-progress, asks a series of questions about how we (in the Western European intellectual tradition) come to think about the categories of history and evolution and the various ways we might deconstruct this opposition, making way for co-constitutive material histories of the living. It also asks whether, in the time of the now, we are prepared to overcome a Cartesian inheritance to confront a shared, shattered, and shattering historical predicament together with other living others.

Carla Freccero is Distinguished Professor of Literature and History of Consciousness at UCSC, where she has taught since 1991. Trained in early modern continental European history and literature, she also publishes in US popular culture, queer and feminist theory, and, most recently, animal studies. Author of three books (on Rabelais; on popular culture; and on Queer Early Modernity) and co-editor of a number of journal issues dealing with sexuality, race and animality, her in-progress book is tentatively titled Animate Figures.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM. Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.