Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics

Global → Terrestrial; Producing → Engendering: for these two frames, I am taken by Latour’s idea of ‘terrestrial’ as a move towards post-human exceptionalism. His proposal explores the possibility of 'de-centring the human', and acknowledging that we are in constant interaction with other beings and natural phenomena. And more importantly, a demand... See more

As we sway between doom and denial, we are stuck in what Lauren Berlant calls a ‘State of Impasse’ — a moment where existing social imaginaries and practices no longer produce the outcomes they once did, but no new imaginaries or practices have yet been created.

“We have created things that we can hardly understand let alone control, let alone make sensible political decisions about. A new word to understand how mind-blowing it is — is hyperobjects. Hyperobjects are phenomena like radioactive materials and global warming. Hyperobjects stretch our ideas of time and space, since they far outlast most human t... See more

multi-species anthropologist Anne Galloway’s work, who was simply asking “What if we deny that human beings are exceptional? What if we stop speaking and listening only to ourselves?

Today the constructs that form our understanding of the world are being continually out-paced by the sheer force and speed of technological, political and social change.

Extinction → Precarity: The philosophical construct of considering ‘life as precarious’ (Ann Tsing) foregrounds both life and death. It focuses on how human existence is deeply interdependent with other life and therefore necessitates the need for care of others, the need for being vulnerable to others and to put unpredictable encounters at the cen... See more

there are no futures without histories.

Innovation → Resurgence: Innovation is a tricky one, unfortunately, co-opted by the association-of-move-fast-and-break-things as (infinite) growth, addition and mutation. Innovation fixates on new; different; change. On the other hand, ‘resurgence’ (renewing, restoring, regenerating) focuses less on endless growth and more on cyclical forms of nurt... See more

how do we resist the gravitational pull of the impasse and deflect these invisible forces of power? How do we imagine different worlds within the current political landscape?

We are a collective body of many parts, both inside and out. By seeing the self not as an individual hero, but as one among many — human and non-human — a new kind of tentacular, multi-kind, multi-species politics of care might emerge, as Isabelle Stengers and Philippe Pignarre would argue.