Off-centring empire in the Anthropocene: towards multispecies intimacies and nonhuman agents of survival

Annika Kirbis

doi:10.1080/09502386.2020.1780279

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines colonial legacies in human-nonhuman relations to off-centre empire in the Anthropocene. Imperial methods of collecting, preserving and displaying nature profoundly shaped species perception, which in turn affected the scientific attention and ecological relevance a species was granted. In particular, I reflect on the category of invasibility to show how empire sanctioned the mobility of specific population groups and animal species as border-crossing. This further shows how speciesist logics served to extend, maintain and legitimize imperial power. This analysis is relevant in the Anthropocene where invasibility is mobilised to police movement in the context of increased human and nonhuman migration. Further, I discuss how invasibility is considered as one of main threats for biodiversity, which may misdirect conservation efforts. Overall, the article examines the potential in human-nonhuman encounters to challenge colonial legacies. Based on an ethnographic example of multispecies homemaking with species considered invasive in (hetero)normative modes of intimacy and domesticity, I argue that colonial legacies of racialized, gendered and speciesist hierarchies can be disturbed by human-nonhuman relations of companionship, care and interdependence. Finally, I scale-up the analysis to the landscape, by tracing the transformation of a former imperial wasteland in Vienna’s peripheral South from being perceived as economically and aesthetically worthless to a natural monument. Attending to multispecies entanglements is key here to understand the transformative process that led to the recovery of this wasteland. Here I off-centre empire by challenging anthropocentric narrations of how landscape transforms in favour of a narration that re-centres nonhuman agency. I argue that stories of wasteland recovery guided by nonhuman animals are crucial due to the increase in industrial wasteland and environmental degradation in the Anthropocene.

Highlights

In his 2015 film The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos utilizes the grotesque stylistic form to explore the contemporary moment as one marked by increasingA
This paper explores how multispecies encounters and their concomitant intimacies may point to this new world, tracing the working of more-thanhuman relations within and off-centre to the legacies of empire
In the Anthropocene, the unsettling effects of environmental degradation and changing climate zones result in increased migration of human and nonhuman animals and plants alike

Summary

Introduction

In his 2015 film The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos utilizes the grotesque stylistic form to explore the contemporary moment as one marked by increasing. The section begins by highlighting the radical ethics of a woman in postwar Guatemala City, whose practice of making home with slugs, a species considered invasive in normative modes of intimacy and domesticity, upsets the imposed speciesist hierarchies of colonialism. While the emphasis of this article remains on highlighting the emancipatory potential of multispecies intimacies, it is important to be aware that the open-ended nature of these practices holds a certain vulnerability As it has been argued, in the Anthropocene a new web of relations among all living beings is required based on companionship, care and interdependence. Environmental degradation and the creation of wasteland in conjunction with colonial imperialism intensifies as the Anthropocene progresses, spurred by harmful industries and more extreme weather events As it has been argued throughout the article, human conservation efforts often implicate and reproduce colonial legacies through a focus on ‘flagship species’, invasibility, and nostalgic imaginaries of ‘nature’. I argue that interdependence re-centres life in all its forms, offcentring the colonial practice of ranking lives according to speciesist, racialized, gendered logics

Conclusion

Findings

Notes on contributor