Fathoming postnatural oceans: Towards a low trophic theory in the practices of feminist posthumanities

Marietta Radomska,Cecilia Åsberg

doi:10.1177/25148486211028542

Marietta Radomska, Cecilia Åsberg

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211028542

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Abstract

As the planet’s largest ecosystem, oceans stabilise climate, produce oxygen, store CO2 and host unfathomable biodiversity at a deep time-scale. In recent decades, scientific assessments have indicated that the oceans are seriously degraded to the detriment of most near-future societies. Human-induced impacts range from climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, eutrophication and marine pollution to local degradation of marine and coastal environments. Such environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like oil spills and ‘slow violence’, occurring gradually and out of sight. The purpose of this paper is to show four cases of coastal and marine forms of slow violence and to provide counter-accounts of how to reinvent our consumer imaginary at such locations, as well as to develop what is here referred to as ‘low-trophic theory,’ a situated ethical stance that attends to entanglements of consumption, food, violence, environmental adaptability and more-than-human care from the co-existential perspective of multispecies ethics. We combine field-philosophical case studies with insights from marine science, environmental art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region and feminist posthumanities. The paper shows that the oceanic imaginary is not a unified place, but rather, a set of forces, which requires renewed ethical approaches, conceptual inventiveness and practical creativity. Based on the case studies and examples presented, the authors conclude that the consideration of more-than-human ethical perspectives, provided by environmental arts and humanities is crucial for both research on nature and space, and for the flourishing of local multispecies communities. This paper thus inaugurates thinking and practice along the proposed here ethical stance of low-trophic theory, developed it along the methodological lines of feminist environmental posthumanities.

Highlights

Along with ecological catastrophes, like Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, threats and murders of activists – primarily from the Global South – striving to protect waters, natural resources and landscapes, are some of the often-mentioned examples of direct environmental violence taking toll on both human and nonhuman lives
Drawing on insights from marine science, environmental art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region, as well as feminist posthumanities, this article aims to develop the concept of low-trophic theory, understood as a set of situated approaches that attend to the entanglements of consumption, violence, more-than-human care and co-existential multispecies ethics
It becomes increasingly clear that climate change, environmental destruction and diminishing biological diversity form the key pillars of the present ethicopolitical crisis of planetary proportions

Summary

Introduction

Like Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, threats and murders of activists – primarily from the Global South – striving to protect waters, natural resources and landscapes, are some of the often-mentioned examples of direct environmental violence taking toll on both human and nonhuman lives.

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