The Life of Objects

Available for over a year

The "thingness" of things is under discussion as academics with different approaches to studying objects come together to look at how their work helps us think about the world we live in. The conversation covers eighteenth century novels, the philosophy of Marx, Heidegger and the ecological insights of Anna Tsing. Lisa Mullen hosts and her guests are Timothy Morton, Rachele Dini, Steven Connor and Caroline Edwards. Producer: Luke Mulhall On the Free Thinking programme website you can find a collection of programmes exploring philosophical thinking and green thinking Timothy Morton is Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University and the author of books including Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People, Being Ecological, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World and they wrote the libretto of the opera Time Time Time by Jennifer Walshe. Rachele Dini is Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at Coventry University and her publications include Consumerism, Waste, and Re-use in Twentieth-Century Fiction: Legacies of the Avant-Garde and All-Electric Narratives”: Time-Saving Appliances and Domesticity in American Literature, 1945-2020 and editing Queer Trash and Feminist Excretions: New Directions in Literary and Cultural Waste Studies. Professor Steven Connor is Director of Research of the Digital Futures Institute, King’s College, London. His most recent books include The Madness of Knowledge: On Wisdom, Ignorance and Fantasies of Knowing, A History of Asking and Dreamwork: Why All Work is Imaginary. Caroline Edwards is Senior Lecturer in contemporary literature at Birkbeck, University of London and her books include Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel, editing The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture, 1945-2020 and she is working on a book called Arcadian Revenge: Science Fiction in the Era of Ecocatastrophe