In the Spotlight: Jana Cattien
What were your first thoughts when you saw the call for applications for the fellowship?
I thought: this sounds fun! The apocalypse is not something I had particularly studied or researched before, but the call for applications helped me formulate ideas for a research project that had been lingering around in my head for a while.
What does the apocalypse and/or post-apocalypse mean for you?
I’m not sure I have a succinct answer to that question! I’ve been here for a few months and have already heard so many different ways of understanding the apocalypse.
In my own work, I’m interested in how the apocalypse is ascribed to people and places—China and Chinese people, in particular. In the way that I use the term, apocalypse is definitely an Othering strategy: we project the end of the world onto other people, in order to continue being able to think of ‘us’ as being in charge of the continuity of the world.
What is your fellowship trying to achieve?
For my CAPAS research project, I critically analyse how the end of the West is imagined through the trope of what I call ‘apocalyptic China’. Pandemics are definitely part of this trope (just think of the rise of anti-Chinese racism and Sinophobia we saw during the Covid pandemic), but there are also other discourses and narratives that I’m interested in: the notion of ‘the China syndrome’, for example, which describes an apocalyptic event in which nuclear fuel is imagined to burn its way through the center of the earth—theoretically, all the way to China. But why China? This is one of the questions I want to address.
How does the fellowship project build on or connect to your previous career or biography?
I completed my PhD in 2020. During the pandemic, I wrote a short piece on anti-Chinese racism and the resistance to mask wearing in some Western countries. Although my idea for the CAPAS project grew out of that piece, I also wanted to move away from centering my analysis on the Covid-19 pandemic. More generally, my CAPAS project sits very squarely within my current academic discipline—postcolonial theory and political philosophy.
What do you hope to take with you from the project and its results?
I want to turn my CAPAS lecture into an article, and then reassess and consider if there might be a longer project in it. I will also take away my conversations with the other fellows and the rest of the CAPAS team!
What are the aspects you profited most from at CAPAS?
The exchange with the other fellows and staff at CAPAS has been really fruitful and inspiring so far. I particularly enjoy the intimacy of the working group format—it’s been nice reading outside of my disciplinary comfort zone, even if also challenging at times. I’m very lucky to be one of the fellows who gets to welcome a second cohort of fellows in the summer semester, and I’m looking forward to building on conversations from previous semesters while also receiving input from new colleagues!
To get some practical advice: What would be the three things you would definitely need in a post-apocalyptic world?
My favourite people!
What are some of your favourite pop culture references to the/an (post)apocalypse?
I loved the novel Severance by Ling Ma—we read an excerpt from it during one of our working group sessions at CAPAS. I also loved The Last of Us, even though it really freaked me out! Carol & The End of the World made me feel weird, but in a good way.
Jana Cattien is Assistant Professor in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, in the capacity group Philosophy and Public Affairs. Her research and teaching is situated in continental philosophy (phenomenology, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism), feminist theory, critical race theory and postcolonial theory.