New Books Network Chad Augustine Córdova, "Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
Dec 6, 2025
Chad Córdova, Assistant Professor at Cornell University, delves into the connections between aesthetics and ecology in his work, *Toward a Premodern Posthumanism*. He argues that aesthetics can challenge anthropocentrism and reveals how beings are interrelated, independent of reason. Córdova explores the influences of Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger, and reinterprets Montaigne's essays as non-teleological reflections. He emphasizes a mycorrhizal approach, linking plant-fungal relationships to contemporary posthumanist thought, revealing nature's intricate interconnectedness.
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Posthumanism As Metaphysical Reorientation
- Post-humanism requires rethinking metaphysics, not just studying nonhuman content like plants or animals.
- Anarchic ontology frames beings as relational, nonteleological, and politically significant.
How The Project Emerged
- Chad Córdova traced his project from doctoral work on anti-humanism to an eco-turn that pushed him toward eco-deconstruction.
- He shaped the corpus to intervene in Kantian aesthetics and to bridge early modernists with theoretical readers.
Recovering Aesthetics For Ecology
- Aesthetic theory can reveal relational, noninstrumental modes of encountering the nonhuman that exceed modern metaphysics.
- Córdova reads Kant's Analytic of the Beautiful as opening toward a proto-ecological, response-able relation to nature.
