The paper proposes several possible advantages of eyelessness, such as allowing the animal to conserve the large amount of energy it takes to maintain an eye and to expend it, instead, on traits that are
useful in a dark environment.
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?)