Re: [-empyre-] Beginning Week 1: Radical Aesthetics, EcoAesthetic Systems and Entanglements

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks, Randall. Your posts are always so enlivening! I, too, respond to 
entanglement as a rich, moist way to think about our co-composing composting 
collaborations. Now that you’ve lured us into the en-space, I wonder what you 
think of Jane Bennett’s enchantment —  “a state of openness to the 
disturbing-captivating elements in everyday experience … a window onto the 
virtual secreted within the actual”  I’m attracted to how enchantment speaks to 
ethics for her: “Without modes of enchantment, we might not have the energy and 
inspiration to enact ecological projects, or to contest ugly and unjust modes 
of commercialization, or to respond generously to humans and nonhumans that 
challenge our settled identities.”Bennett, Jane. 2001. The Enchantment of 
Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings and Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University 
Press.

norie


> On 9 Oct 2017, at 10:46 AM, margaretha haughwout 
>  wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Randall,
> 
> Firstly thank you so much for taking on each aspect of this week's title and 
> thinking it through! I agree with you about the weakness of 
> nodes/networks/connections -- and systems language generally  -- to describe 
> the relationships at play in ecoaesthetics/ across difference and the power 
> of terms like entanglement and enlivenment... I also wonder if these terms 
> are ever at odds though (more on this as a separate post).
> 
> What I love about your terms terroirism and ecoaesthetic systems is that they 
> are not mere metaphors for arts practice; they are requirements for social 
> practice to extend into a space of, as you say, resiliency and regeneration. 
> I also love that you start with soil. In fact, it is so appropriate that all 
> of our discussants have focused on it in one way or another; it all starts 
> (and ends) with soil. As everyone has pointed out, healthy soil food webs are 
> critical for healthy ecologies/ nutritious food. You point to a (downward) 
> direction for artists to begin to actually root and regenerate natureculture.
> 
> My last question is since most art practices end up serving and/or mirroring 
> capital, and I wonder (I am wondering this often -- it will be revisted in 
> week 3) if you see ways that this might be true for ecoaesthetic systems, or 
> if there is something fundamentally different and resistive about these sets 
> of practices that make them immune to cooptation?
> 
> In kindness and gratitiude,
> -M
> 
> 
> --
> beforebefore.net 
> guerrillagrafters.org 
> coastalreadinggroup.com 
> --
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Randall Szott  > wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> I want to thank William and Norie for their thoughts and my fellow 
> conversants for theirs as well. William - I read the article you suggested 
> and it does resonate for me in many ways. One thing I will point out though, 
> is that "sustainability" is not enough. The model of "sustainable" has been 
> increasingly displaced in agricultural circles by "regenerative." Given the 
> amount of damage being done in various domains (including the linguistic - 
> thank you!), we need to do more than sustain, we must regenerate (heal, 
> repair, improve).
> 
> ENTANGLEMENTS:
> 
> A last thought for the last part of the week's title. I find entanglement a 
> powerful descriptive metaphor in describing systemic relationships, much more 
> so than network/connection/node metaphors. However, I want to throw another 
> term into the mix, one of a slightly larger descriptive frame - ENLIVENMENT. 
> This concept comes from a feeling percolating for years that I couldn't quite 
> name, it hovered near readings on pantheism, ecopsychology, and Kathleen Dean 
> Moore's "Holdfast" or  David Abram's "Spell of the Sensuous" among others. 
> Finally, I stumbled across  Andreas Weber's "Enlivenment" and the feeling had 
> finally manifest in words, words which then coalesced into a framework that 
> has shifted my thinking/feeling substantially. The essay is full of magic 
> incantations - worldmaking, householding, poetic objectivity, empirical 
> subjectivity, and the call to shift from the values of the Enlightenment 
> (which Weber describes as an ideology of death) to Enlivenment. Briefly, he 
> characterizes it this way:
> 
> "...a new stage of cultural evolution that can safeguard our scientific (and 
> democratic) ideals of common access to knowledge and the powers connected 
> with it – while at the same time validating personal experience that is felt 
> and subjective: the defining essence of embodied experience. The Enlivenment 
> that I envision includes other animate beings, which, after all, share the 
> 

Re: [-empyre-] Beginning Week 1: Radical Aesthetics, EcoAesthetic Systems and Entanglements

[margaretha haughwout]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Randall,

Firstly thank you so much for taking on each aspect of this week's title
and thinking it through! I agree with you about the weakness of
nodes/networks/connections -- and systems language generally  -- to
describe the relationships at play in ecoaesthetics/ across difference and
the power of terms like entanglement and enlivenment... I also wonder if
these terms are ever at odds though (more on this as a separate post).

What I love about your terms terroirism and ecoaesthetic systems is that
they are not mere metaphors for arts practice; they are requirements for
social practice to extend into a space of, as you say, resiliency and
regeneration. I also love that you start with soil. In fact, it is so
appropriate that all of our discussants have focused on it in one way or
another; it all starts (and ends) with soil. As everyone has pointed out,
healthy soil food webs are critical for healthy ecologies/ nutritious food.
You point to a (downward) direction for artists to begin to actually root
and regenerate natureculture.

My last question is since most art practices end up serving and/or
mirroring capital, and I wonder (I am wondering this often -- it will be
revisted in week 3) if you see ways that this might be true for
ecoaesthetic systems, or if there is something fundamentally different and
resistive about these sets of practices that make them immune to
cooptation?

In kindness and gratitiude,
-M


--
beforebefore.net
guerrillagrafters.org
coastalreadinggroup.com
--



On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Randall Szott  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> I want to thank William and Norie for their thoughts and my fellow
> conversants for theirs as well. William - I read the article you suggested
> and it does resonate for me in many ways. One thing I will point out
> though, is that "sustainability" is not enough. The model of "sustainable"
> has been increasingly displaced in agricultural circles by "regenerative."
> Given the amount of damage being done in various domains (including the
> linguistic - thank you!), we need to do more than sustain, we must
> regenerate (heal, repair, improve).
>
> ENTANGLEMENTS:
>
> A last thought for the last part of the week's title. I find entanglement
> a powerful descriptive metaphor in describing systemic relationships, much
> more so than network/connection/node metaphors. However, I want to throw
> another term into the mix, one of a slightly larger descriptive frame -
> ENLIVENMENT. This concept comes from a feeling percolating for years that I
> couldn't quite name, it hovered near readings on pantheism, ecopsychology,
> and Kathleen Dean Moore's "Holdfast" or  David Abram's "Spell of the
> Sensuous" among others. Finally, I stumbled across  Andreas Weber's
> "Enlivenment" and the feeling had finally manifest in words, words which
> then coalesced into a framework that has shifted my thinking/feeling
> substantially. The essay is full of magic incantations - worldmaking,
> householding, poetic objectivity, empirical subjectivity, and the call to
> shift from the values of the Enlightenment (which Weber describes as an
> ideology of death) to Enlivenment. Briefly, he characterizes it this way:
>
> "...a new stage of cultural evolution that can safeguard our scientific
> (and democratic) ideals of common access to knowledge and the powers
> connected with it – while at the same time validating personal experience
> that is felt and subjective: the defining essence of embodied
> experience. The Enlivenment that I envision includes other animate beings,
> which, after all, share the same capacities for embodied experiences and
> «worldmaking.»
>
> Enlivenment therefore is not just another naturalist account to
> describe ourselves and our world that can then automatically dictate
> specific policies or economic solutions...[it is] a naturalism that is
> based on the idea of nature as an unfolding process of ever-growing freedom
> and creativity paradoxically linked to material and embodied processes. The
> biosphere is alive in the sense that it does not only obey the rules of
> deterministic or stochastic interactions of particles, molecules, atoms,
> fields and waves. The biosphere is also very much about producing agency,
> expression, and meaning."
>
> Onward, then in enlivened entanglements with each other and our nonhuman
> poetic collaborators!
>
> -r
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 154, Issue 4

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Brian, where are you writing from?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Elaine Gan  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Thanks so much, Margaretha, for bringing us together around these great
> (and hard) themes. Everyone's posts this week has me thinking about many
> things—thank you!—but particularly the work of art in what Isabelle
> Stengers calls "catastrophic times." I don't want to grieve. No, not yet. I
> want to learn how to live again and again: we are still here and that
> recognition demands that we make kin, kin through which and with which "we"
> are being remade. Maybe that's what Margaretha calls "personhood"?— the
> ability to make kin and keep each other alive when a hurricane, earthquake,
> or plague of human exceptionalism obliterates "us."
>
> I'm interested in radicalities, work(s) of art, that aren't defined
> entirely by refusal against or critique of the Capitalocene, but by
> capacities to make kin. I learn this from Donna Haraway: making kin comes
> before, after, and in between the cracks and crap of capitalism and
> bourgeois liberalism. I'm looking for propositions for more-than-human
> worlding, for Haraway's Chthulucene, the "not yet finished, ongoing,
> abyssal and dreadful ones that are generative *and *destructive..." I
> don't want to grieve the road kill. I don't want to care for invasive
> species and toxic waste. I follow weeds, but I also fear them. I want to
> learn how we can bend our roads, design our cities and stomachs—so that
> they do not collide with migration routes of monarch butterflies, breeding
> grounds of giant catfish, life cycles of too many companions. If capitalism
> is a way of organizing things, as Jason Moore theorizes, then what is a way
> of making, making-with, kin? How might we map this double internality?
>
> I met a non-native yesterday, hanging out in Echo Park lake (one of the
> oldest and likely most haunted) in LA. I met several non-natives, in fact,
> but one that made me stop was a red-eared slider turtle who swam up to me,
> likely trained to equate people with easy food. These turtles are common,
> listed on many websites as "cute" little things that make "great household
> pets." Hundreds live in the lake; most likely, abandoned by owners who
> decided they just weren't so cute anymore. From what I could find online
> last night, this group of turtles has only been around since the lake's
> overhaul in 2012. Of course, my first question was: hey, what happened to
> the turtles that lived in the lake when it was drained completely for a
> two-year renovation? The next few questions were harder: are these turtles
> kin? Are they nature or culture in the Capitalocene or the Chthulucene?
> What is my/our responsibility to species that we've domesticated,
> displaced, mutated, and rendered disposable, when they've gone feral and
> survive outside of human control? Some become road kill. Some become new
> companions. But others are taking over, creating new indeterminacies
> (generative *and* destructive naturecultures). What then is the work of
> art in attending to these that are changing what it means to be human (and
> nonhuman)?
>
> xElaine
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 9:49 AM, Brian Karl  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> I've been dipping in and out of Charles Foster's "Being a Beast" of
>> late (sub-title: "Adventures Across the Species Divide"), in which he
>> rather literally tries to embody a phenomenological experience closer
>> to that of a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer and a swift by burrowing
>> in and snuffling about closer to the earth for days and weeks at a
>> time in the wild. He fully admits the absurdity as well as doomed
>> enterprise of this, but meanwhile gets in a lot of philosophizing
>> about human species' different relation to nature as well as lots of
>> good sensorial thinking about different ways of relating to the
>> complex and interactive physical world--what is framed and highlighted
>> (or high-smelled or -heard) by different species' sensory organs and
>> foraging needs...
>>
>> Responding to Margaretha's last inquiry:
>>
>> Well, my non-humans of late are pretty diverse: long, ongoing
>> relationship continues with Bando, my mostly outdoors Siamese cat, who
>> still sleeps with us humans most mornings after long nights
>> tree-climbing and...who knows what adventuring.
>>
>> We have been together for going on six years, but it's changed and
>> deepened in new ways since moving to the edge of a big open space
>> trail last year where both he and I encounter different species every
>> day--perhaps most spectacularly of late when he led me down the
>> beginning of the trail one night a few weeks ago to discover the sound
>> of rustling in some bushes to be caused by a pretty good-sized
>> rattlesnake -- we got 

Re: [-empyre-] short answer post :: all of -empyre-, what non-human relationships are you cultivating?

[Jordan Matthew Yerman]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
My portrait work for The Street Cat Project normally requires a sort of 
journalistic distance: I don’t make cutesy noises to draw my subjects’ 
attention, nor do I bribe them with treats. 
Rather, I make myself as unobtrusive as possible and let them carry out their 
daily tasks, much as if I were photographing human urbanites.
Sometimes, though, the cats themselves break that unspoken social contract and 
approach me. While street cat behavior varies per city—and even per 
neighborhood—reticence around strangers is virtually a global given. 
But not always.
In Rome a few days ago, an earless street cat became more comfortable in my 
presence than I had anticipated during the course of a shoot, so I responded 
with a friendly gesture.

Image for reference:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gv11miwzt1juvfu/Animal%20Approach.png?dl=0

I suppose this is a roundabout way of saying “I pet a cat the other day.”




jordan matthew yerman
+1.778.384.0079
jordanmatthewyerman.com
jor...@internationaljettrash.com
instagram.com/jordanyerman
twitter.com/jordanyerman
Street Cat Photo Booth: twitter.com/streetcatphotos


___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 154, Issue 4

[Brian Karl]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
I've been dipping in and out of Charles Foster's "Being a Beast" of
late (sub-title: "Adventures Across the Species Divide"), in which he
rather literally tries to embody a phenomenological experience closer
to that of a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer and a swift by burrowing
in and snuffling about closer to the earth for days and weeks at a
time in the wild. He fully admits the absurdity as well as doomed
enterprise of this, but meanwhile gets in a lot of philosophizing
about human species' different relation to nature as well as lots of
good sensorial thinking about different ways of relating to the
complex and interactive physical world--what is framed and highlighted
(or high-smelled or -heard) by different species' sensory organs and
foraging needs...

Responding to Margaretha's last inquiry:

Well, my non-humans of late are pretty diverse: long, ongoing
relationship continues with Bando, my mostly outdoors Siamese cat, who
still sleeps with us humans most mornings after long nights
tree-climbing and...who knows what adventuring.

We have been together for going on six years, but it's changed and
deepened in new ways since moving to the edge of a big open space
trail last year where both he and I encounter different species every
day--perhaps most spectacularly of late when he led me down the
beginning of the trail one night a few weeks ago to discover the sound
of rustling in some bushes to be caused by a pretty good-sized
rattlesnake -- we got within five feet before my phone-light made out
the coiled shape just as it began to hum and buzz at us...I think
Bando got my intensely adverse response since he allowed me to scoop
him up and carry him back down the trail right quick, where often he
is a muscular wriggling objector...

Bando's mouse-hunting season seemed to have mostly ended a few weeks
back til last night we heard the tell-tale crunching of tiny bones
through our bedroom window (he was bringing back inside several mouse
bodies a week for quite a while there during late spring and summer,
and he consumed them pretty much entire -- save usually for the guts
-- munching them during the wee hours while we humans listen in the
dark in exasperated, embarrassed, brutalized, just-woken agony (I've
managed to save a couple that he brought in pre-kill, as well as a
couple lizards that he also doesn't seem to want to kill and consume
as quickly). We also have an occasional tussle around the catdoor, as
a raccoon tries to get in, and that triggers the cat into action, and
us into...a holding pattern of too-adrenalited helplessness at 2.am.
or whenever...

I've been learning to drive more slowly around the bends of our little
canyon road so I have better chances of not hitting any of the many
deer that stumble and nimble and amble around here. I startled a
resting one into lumbering up from a kneel the other morning out in
the yard -- little staghorn nubs on his just-past adolescent head
maybe ten feet away. They usually come in small families, of course,
but occasionally as solo ramblers.

And speaking of solo ramblers, the local coyotes move around too much
to get to know them as individuals, but, still, spotting them trotting
along even country roads, varying from the size of a large fox to a
large german shepherd  (three different times in the last week)
reminds that they must be constantly nearby, even when unseen (and of
course occasionally we hear the group howls from up in the hills
somewhere).

The madrones' and eucalyptus' different peeling bark patterns
(non-patterns?) never cease to fascinate, and I notice the big
California Buckeye bulbs are coming out on the trees again (looking
forward to the fat, long, aromatic blossom branches in the spring).
Occasional chittering of squirrels and raucous jay or crow calls from
a near distance. And more occasionally a solo owl hooing. Swells of
crickets near and far we can count on every night -- the frogs have
taken their mating calls somewhere else of late...

More than enough from me, for now. Enjoy your trip to the farther
northeast, Margaretha!

B.


On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 6:00 PM,
 wrote:
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>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>1. Re: Beginning Week 1: Radical Aesthetics, EcoAesthetic
>   Systems and Entanglements (Randall Szott)
>2. short answer 

Re: [-empyre-] Introducing a guest, Antonio Roman-Alcala

[Antonio Roman-Alcala]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Margaretha and everyone-

Agroecology is one of those terms that defies easy definition. In part this
is because it is mobilized by different sectors differently: scientists use
it one way, farmers another, farmer movements another (though there are
overlaps, of course).

The closest to a pithy description for agroecology I can come up with is
that it is a form of food production that is based on foundational
organizing principles which are antithetical to the simplifying industrial
capitalist model. Agroecological farming is rooted in specific cultures,
worldviews, and experiences of relating to specific ecologies on the
planet.

Agroecology's principles include diversity and diversification (in
temporal, spatial, and cultural dimensions); nutrient cycling and the
avoidance of inputs; and enhancement and regeneration of biodiversity.
Ultimately, agroecosystems should mimic the functioning of local ecosystems.

In practice, agroecological farms produce a diversity of products, for
local and regional consumption, on farms that are not reliant on outside
inputs (of say, chemical fertilizers or pesticides), and contribute to
greater rather than diminished habitats for other non-human life forms.
Agroecological farms treat pest issues through diversification, improvement
of soil through additions of organic matter, and the stewarding of
*greater* biodiversity
for improved ecological function (e.g. owl boxes to reduce rodent pest
pressure rather than poisoning the rodents). Compost is key, but so is
reverent water stewardship.

What I most appreciated regarding LVC is their active creation of unity in
diversity, of reaching across human difference from various spaces of being
subjected to the worst of modernity, in order to create a living, changing
visionary alternative form of modernity out of that difference and that
experience. What's particularly inspiring to me is that this vision is
anti-capitalist. At the same time, it doesn't propose a singular
alternative like 'communism' -- in fact, some LVC members have experiences
of statist communism and want nothing to do with such an 'ism'. And being
food producers who most often sell into local markets, it isn't a strident
anti-capitalism that sees any commerce as wrong, but one that objects to
the structures of capitalist reproduction, seeking a new form of production
and distribution based on values of ecology, egalitarianism, and democratic
participation that moves way beyond its current sclerotic forms.

Some of the ways this looks in practice is the support of 'peasant
markets', localization of distribution, production being directed towards
feeding people rather than profit (or land being used to produce fuel or
animal feed), CSAs, various forms of 'fair trade' relations, support for
subsistence/self-reliance production, opposition to GMOs and synthetic
inputs, etc

Hope this helps to explain!
Antonio


On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 7:30 AM, margaretha haughwout <
margaretha.anne.haughw...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Dear Antonio,
>
> Thank you so much for this post, and for echoing the concerns of our other
> discussants in ways that provide new possibilities for action.
>
> I'm wondering, before this week comes to a close, if you might share some
> of the material ways that the CLVC envisions that we can relate to
> "communities of more distant soil." Are there certain modes of circulation
> that you found inspiring, or worth pursuing, for example?
>
> I'm also wondering how you describe agroecology. What are the common
> practices that distinguish it from common agriculture?
>
> Thank you again, Antonio --
> -M
>
>
>
>
> --
> beforebefore.net
> guerrillagrafters.org
> coastalreadinggroup.com
> --
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Antonio Roman-Alcala <
> antidogmat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> > Hello all, and thanks to the other contributors, and to Margaretha for
> asking me to contribute.
> >
> >
> >
> > In general, I’m interested in these same questions and issues and have
> tried mostly to develop relational human-centered work (a.k.a.
> “organizing”) to address them. I’m also interested in doing this across
> geographical scales, without reifying one scale as the only or proper space
> for engagement. Thus I appreciate Valentine’s concern for the concrete
> question of “how to practice relating to the communities of more distant
> soil”, and offer some recent experiences that may relate.
> >
> >
> >
> > I was privileged to be a delegate to the 7th International Conference of
> La Vía Campesina this past July. For those who aren’t familiar, LVC is the
> world’s largest social movement of food producers, including ‘peasants’,
> indigenous groups, fishers, and ‘family’ farmers, and the conference is its
> preeminent decision-making space. The movement is a heterogeneous
> 

Re: [-empyre-] Introducing a guest, Antonio Roman-Alcala

[margaretha haughwout]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear Antonio,

Thank you so much for this post, and for echoing the concerns of our other
discussants in ways that provide new possibilities for action.

I'm wondering, before this week comes to a close, if you might share some
of the material ways that the CLVC envisions that we can relate to
"communities of more distant soil." Are there certain modes of circulation
that you found inspiring, or worth pursuing, for example?

I'm also wondering how you describe agroecology. What are the common
practices that distinguish it from common agriculture?

Thank you again, Antonio --
-M




--
beforebefore.net
guerrillagrafters.org
coastalreadinggroup.com
--



On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Antonio Roman-Alcala <
antidogmat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello all, and thanks to the other contributors, and to Margaretha for
asking me to contribute.
>
>
>
> In general, I’m interested in these same questions and issues and have
tried mostly to develop relational human-centered work (a.k.a.
“organizing”) to address them. I’m also interested in doing this across
geographical scales, without reifying one scale as the only or proper space
for engagement. Thus I appreciate Valentine’s concern for the concrete
question of “how to practice relating to the communities of more distant
soil”, and offer some recent experiences that may relate.
>
>
>
> I was privileged to be a delegate to the 7th International Conference of
La Vía Campesina this past July. For those who aren’t familiar, LVC is the
world’s largest social movement of food producers, including ‘peasants’,
indigenous groups, fishers, and ‘family’ farmers, and the conference is its
preeminent decision-making space. The movement is a heterogeneous
agglomeration with a distinctive politics and hybrid cosmovision.
>
>
>
> Some observers have proposed that LVC’s politics and cosmovision –
founded on twin concepts of agroecology and food sovereignty – offers a new
vision for modernity. That vision is fundamentally about dismantling the
nature-society dichotomy, as the process of food production embedded in
place and in longstanding (yet dynamic) culture brings to the fore
immediate, physical and spiritual interrogations of the (false) division
between human and non-human natures. Jason Moore and others have argued
this division has underpinned the extractive period of the Capitalocene,
and I would concur.
>
>
>
> My experience at the LVC conference showed me an imperfect but inspiring
process of dismantling that divide, within our ‘local’ communities and
between them, as an ever-expanding circle of solidarious relationships.
Agroecology serves LVC – and can serve others, perhaps – as a means to
build human-serving agroecosystems that are also constitutive of
human/nonhuman alliances.
>
>
>
> Simultaneously interpreted between 13 or more languages, the
conversations amongst 500 delegates from 80 countries revolved around
ending capitalism, advancing (human) justice and the rights of nature, and
defending indigenous and campesino ways of life under threat. The
conversations advanced an agenda and strategy for the movement, but equally
they offered spaces of encounter, of simple mutual listening.
>
>
>
> Combined with the ‘mystica’ (an LVC ritual of sharing of our different
(rural) cultures in song, dance, theater and music), the ostensibly
political direction of the conversations to me seemed at its core to be
about “relating to the communities of more distant soil”, as a precondition
for developing a powerful and effective oppositional movement to the
structural violence of capitalist modernity.
>
>
>
> I will close here, so as not to go on too long, by arguing for seeing the
slow and concrete building of shared affinity, solidarity and (political)
alignment as key tasks for creating a more-than-human post-Capitalocene.
While we may not yet have the volunteer interpretation force necessary to
bring our non-human allies into our human-centered conversations, if we are
building up from communities of practice – whose lives and worldviews are
steeped in an everyday co-construction of life with non-human allies – a
new politics and vision, and organization to bring these about, I am
confident that we will be on a better path towards healing.

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