New Book Salon, “Writing Borderless Histories of Art: Human Exceptionalism and the Climate Crisis”

This aspirational, historical, and critical book offers a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between humans and the rest of nature — a vital perspective in a moment defined by environmental crisis, increasing authoritarianism, social justice movements, and global calls for systemic change. Drawing upon writings from a wide range of fields, Claire Farago combines a deep knowledge of European ancient to early modern thought with an expansive view of contemporary global society, tracing the origins of human exceptionalism in European thought to the present.

Spanning four centuries of art discourse, Writing Borderless Histories of Art examines how global capitalism, coloniality, and disciplinary formations have shaped the way art and its histories are understood. Farago argues for a transcultural, relational approach that abandons entrenched structures of domination and embraces ontologies that collapse the binary of nature and culture, recognizing the sentience and interconnection of all living beings. To develop a more-than-human framework that sustains life on our shared planet, Farago shows through a close reading of primary texts that it is necessary to consider how the discourse on art was involved in debates on the humanity of Indigenous peoples that began with the European conquest/invasion of the Americas in the early sixteenth century, two centuries before Enlightenment thinkers authorized the European understanding of art as the index of humanness.

Taking counterexamples from Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, and drawing upon contemporary artistic practices, she advocates ontologies that do not distinguish between the sentience of humans and other animals and go beyond the dualistic metaphysics of the nature/culture divide.

Claire Farago (University of Colorado Boulder)

In discussion with Amelia Jones (USC)

Register to attend via ZOOM

Claire Farago is Professor Emerita at the University of Colorado Boulder, currently living in Los Angeles. She has written extensively on processes of transculturation, the epistemological foundations of art history, art theory, and museums. Her anthology, Reframing the Renaissance (1995), was a groundbreaking contribution to transcultural studies in art history. 

Amelia Jones, Robert A. Day Professor of Art and Design, USC, is a widely published writer and curator on feminist art history, performance studies, queer studies, and visual culture.