Abstract
In terms of a human responsibility for the wrongful expulsion of non-human nature from natural habitats through wildfires, global warming, the over-exploitation of lands, seas and biological life, humanity is forced to revisit some fundamental issues of late with regard to the ongoing legitimacy of its claims to the Earth’s resources. Can human communities continue to lay claim to remaining essential reserves with little regard for the life situation of non-human others? Should certain principles of distributive and territorial justice, claims of occupancy, freedom of movement, respect, etc., be extended to include non-human nature? In recent months, Europe has begun to explore many of these concerns, noting the trauma experiences of COVID-19 and their interconnection with deepening ecological and health problems as a stimulus to action. This paper notes the relevance of these crisis experiences in moving political debate on the loss of biological diversity forward, prompting a need to extend normative horizons of the common good to include more biologically diverse communities.
Highlights
The contribution of a more-than-human critical theory to an analytical reappraisal of the political aspects of “zoe” or the violence inflicted against non-human “bare life” has been extensive (e.g., Haraway, Donna 2008; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Panelli 2010)
This paper explores the conditions under which a more critical institutional appraisal of ongoing human destructive tendencies emerges. It examines the critical function of crisis experiences, including the COVID-19 global pandemic, in forcing communities to confront the immanence of large-scale ecological disaster and the need to initiate more ethically responsible relations with nature
We are compelled to engage politically with the question of why the planet has entered into the sixth mass extinction and consider why government has failed in its attempts to control rates of loss of biological diversity
Summary
The contribution of a more-than-human critical theory to an analytical reappraisal of the political aspects of “zoe” or the violence inflicted against non-human “bare life” has been extensive (e.g., Haraway, Donna 2008; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Panelli 2010). This paper explores the conditions under which a more critical institutional appraisal of ongoing human destructive tendencies emerges It examines the critical function of crisis experiences, including the COVID-19 global pandemic, in forcing communities to confront the immanence of large-scale ecological disaster and the need to initiate more ethically responsible relations with nature. Critical reflection here provokes a “thinking beyond” current ecological, social and political realities, as a document of institutional failure, into “openness” or a speculative reimagining of what could be on the basis of what presently is (Adorno 2001) It demands transformation of a world where despair rather than hope sounds loudest and challenges us to think again about how democratic traditions, with their promise of freedom and equality, could be imaginatively rethought to incorporate the more-than-human within the scope of their relevance. It considers how declining ecological conditions come to be framed as an index of unacceptable levels of institutional failure and wrongdoing against nature
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