Dear colleagues,
it is our pleasure to cordially invite you to the workshop
"Myth and the More-than-Human Community in the Twenty-First Century"
that will take place 8–9 October 2026 at the University of Vienna, NIG, 3rd floor, room 3A.
Organised by Matthäus Leidenfrost (Berlin), Lukas Geiszler (Vienna), Georg Harfensteller (Vienna), and Michael Staudigl (Vienna), this workshop is made possible with the support of the Vienna Doctoral School of Philosophy and the Research Centre "Religion and Transformation".
Please find the programme below, the poster attached, and further information at the workshop website:
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The workshop asks whether community — and more-than-human community in particular — can be conceived as anything other than a myth. It places the constitutive ambivalence of myth at the centre of its inquiry: myth as ideological fiction on the one hand, and as a primordial, potentially non-hierarchical form of world-disclosure on the other. Topics include inter-species relations, ecological entanglements, becoming-animal, sovereignty and immunisation, and relational and Indigenous ontologies. Theoretical reference points include Derrida, Nancy, Latour, Haraway, and Nietzschean and post-Nietzschean critiques of humanism.
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The workshop-sessions will be held at
University of Vienna, Institute of Philosophy, 3rd floor
Room 3A (NIG)
Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien, Austria
starting Thu. 8 October at 09:00 and Fri. 9 October at 10:30. No prior registration is required.
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As part of the workshop, we are happy to announce that keynote lectures will be held by
Thu., 8 October, 16:30 - 18:00, Room 3D (NIG):
Vanessa Lemm (London) - Rooted in Other Worlds
Fri., 9 October, 14:15 - 15:45, Room 3B (NIG):
Laurens ten Kate (Utrecht) - The Divine Stranger: Communities
after the Interruption of Myth: Revisiting the Theory of the
‘Axial Age’
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Feel free to share the invitation in your networks - and the link to the full programme:
https://phaenomenologie.univie.ac.at/forschung/myth-community/
We are looking forward to seeing you there and to interesting discussions!
Best wishes,
Matthäus Leidenfrost - Lukas Geiszler - Georg Harfensteller -
Michael Staudigl
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Workshop Programme
Venue: NIG – Neues Institutsgebäude, University
of Vienna, Institute of Philosophy
Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
Presentations: 20-minute presentation · 30-minute discussion · 10-minute break
Room 3A
09:00 · Welcome and Introduction
09:30 · Eliška Fulínová
Center for Theoretical Study, Prague
Gods, Animals, and Mortals: Hesiod's Cosmological
Communities and the Return of Gaia in Anthropocene Thought
10:30 · Isabella Schlehaider
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Sensing Otherwise or What a Theory Can Do: Whitehead,
Haraway and Stengers on the Aesthetics of Theory
11:30 · Michael Zangerl
University of Vienna
Eco-poetics as a “New Mythology”? Interrogating
Contemporary Romantic Studies with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
12:30–14:00 · Lunch Break
14:00 · Matteo Maria Paolucci
University of Milan “La Statale” & University of Bari
“Aldo Moro”
Parole naissante: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Mythical Writing
of Community
15:00 · Matthäus Leidenfrost
Freie Universität Berlin
Myth as Trickster: Toward a Material-Semiotic Theory of
Myth
16:00 · End of Workshop Sessions
16:30–18:00 · Keynote: Vanessa Lemm
Rooted in Other Worlds
Room 3D
18:30–21:00 · Reception, Exhibition
Tour, Food & Drinks
Postsparkasse, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Room 3A
09:30 · Miriam Hamburger
University of California, Santa Barbara
Myth and Kinship as the Work of Autochthony
10:30 · Stélia Muianga
Universidade Pedagógica de Maputo
Plural Rationality Through Myth: African Hermeneutics and
the Reconfiguration of Philosophical Thought
11:30 · Alessandro Jesi
University of Turin
The Myth of Community and Pastoral Power: Weber, Foucault,
and Canetti
12:30–14:00 · Lunch Break
14:15–15:45 · Keynote: Laurens ten Kate
The Divine Stranger: Communities after the Interruption of
Myth: Revisiting the Theory of the “Axial Age”
Room 3B
16:00 · Daniel Costa Jařab
Masaryk University Brno
Modern Technology in Indigenous Hands – Threat or
Opportunity? Some Preliminary Notes from the Amazonian
Rainforest
17:00 · Lukas Geiszler
University of Vienna
Beyond GAIA as Myth and Metaphor? Investigating B.
Latour's notion of the Planetary as irreductive actant.
18:00 · End of Workshop
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