Both authors will discuss the relationship of the idea of the avant to their own work and the extent to which it is or isn't a useful way to think about ideas of time and temporality, newness and oldness, chronology and succession, beforeness and afterness, and the layered, textured,
multi — species spaces in which
culture (and not just human
culture) happens: Morton in relation to his writings on literature, art, music, and ecology in landmark texts such as Ecology Without Nature, The Ecological Thought, Hyperobjects, and Dark Ecology; and Wolfe in relation to his work as both author (Critical
Environments, Animal Rites, and What Is Posthumanism?)