Nature: Flawed Notion or Last Line of Defence?

Nature is a controversial notion. Modernity has associated it with the whole materiality, or the part not (yet) touched by humankind (Williams 1980). Over time, the distinction has blurred, nature being increasingly replaced by the environment. On paper, the latter offers various advantages. It circumvents criticisms against the former’s metaphysics of separation and hierarchy between the (fully: white, male...) human and the non- or defective human, seen as cornerstone of colonial exploitation, patriarchal domination and capitalist appropriation (Ferdinand 2021). It focuses attention on the interaction between society and its material bases. It acknowledges the growing technoscience-enabled agency over biophysical processes. Indeed, from new gene technologies to AI, from human-machine hybrids to climate engineering, the claim has been gaining ground that there is no difference between nature and technology (Pellizzoni 2025). The convergence between big-tech narratives and decolonial and feminist critiques raises however a question. Should the collapse of the nature/culture distinction still be welcomed as emancipatory? How should one address phenomena such as animal ‘boycotts’ of farm labour (Coulter 2016), weed ‘creative’ reply to genetic attacks (Landecker 2024), the spread of zoonoses and immune diseases, data processing material dependence (NetZeroInsights 2025), or the rise of workers’ ecologism (Bell 2020)? Is the reactivity, the non-malleability of bodies and things an obstacle to be finally overcome or a last line of defence against runaway (self-)exploitation? Is nature coming back as a key notion, perhaps in some de-westernised version? This session welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions aimed at elaborating on this emergent challenge.