Hope for a New Us/Earth via E-Co-Affectivity and Jeong (정 情)

In E-Co-Affectivity, Marjolein Oele explores the deep connectivity and relational entanglements of plants, animals, humans, and the soil as elemental components of a co-affective community. Her deconstructive reading of the Aristotelian conception of degrees of three souls, with such hierarchy of humans-animals-vegetables via what she calls "categorical contamination,” is a brilliant example of how re-reading the western canon can cast important interpretive light upon contemporary ethico-political questions. Oele’s work shows how it is crucial to foreground (eco)feminist re-interpretations of the writings of major figures in the western philosophical traditions. It is reconstruction and construction of feminist hermeneutics so that it is not a mere interpretation, but a transformation of old traditions into planetary cosmo-centric new-becomings. Through my reading of E-Co-Affectivity, I focus on the coherence of the crucial themes of the middle voice, precarity, and e-co-affectivity, from my comparative ecofeminist perspective. The Korean concept of jeong, which can be a healing mechanism in the midst of our planetary crises, I will suggest, resonates profoundly with e-co-affectivity.