Timothy Morton joins The Blake Society to discuss their new book, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, and how they took Blake as their inspiration on a mission to bend, reroute and reorder the heartlines of Christianity. The talk will be chaired by Andy Wilson, of the Blake blog, The Traveller in the Evening.
Morton argues that there is an unexpected yet profound relationship between religion and ecology that can guide a planet-scale response to the climate crisis. Spiritual and mystical feelings deeply resonate with ecological thinking. Together they provide the resources environmentalism desperately needs in this time of climate emergency. Morton finds solutions in a radical revaluation of Christianity, furnishing ecological politics with a language of mercy and forgiveness that draws from Christian traditions without bringing along their baggage. Morton calls for a global environmental movement that fuses ecology and mysticism and puts race and gender front and centre. This nonviolent resistance can stage an all-out assault on the ultimate Satanic Mill: the concept of master and slave, manifesting today in white supremacy, patriarchy, and environmental destruction.
Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of Being Ecological (2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), The Ecological Thought (2010), Ecology without Nature (2007), ten other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.
Andy Wilson lived in Sunderland, Seaham Harbour, Peterlee, Hartlepool, Kings Lynn, Coventry, Torpoint, Eastleigh, Lee-on-Solent, Portland, Weymouth, Loughborough, York and Liverpool before dropping anchor in London. He runs the blog The Traveller in the Evening: Reflections on William Blake, Radical Theology, Politics and Surrealism, founded Reservists Against War and co-founded the Association of Musical Marxists (AMM). He is the author of Faust: Stretch Out Time 1970-75 (2006), Cosmic Orgasm: The Music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram (2013), and The Brilliant New Hercules: A Blake Reader (2015). With Michael Tencer he edited The Assassin (2014), and with Jules Alford, Khiyana: Daesh, the Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution (2015).
Timothy Morton – The Marriage of Religion and the Biosphere takes place via Zoom on April 17, 19.30-21.00 BST, and registration is via The Blake Society web site.