Donna Haraway, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.’
Emphasises the intra/inter actions that have been a part of the planet for so long
The prefixes are not very clear which one indicates what; inter = human interaction or intra = extraneous variables that are naturally occurring processes by means of ecosystems/ecology exclusively
Biotic and abiotic
Not a pre-human 'static' or harmonious nature - the living world always shaping and being shaped by living things - humanity is part of that 'inter/intra - action'
‘The spread of seed-dispersing plants millions of years before human agriculture was a planet-changing development, and so were many other revolutionary evolutionary ecological developmental historical events.’
This makes me think of biodiversity and the process of natural regeneration, and how flora/fauna adapt to a new ecosystem
It is not only humans who have terraforming agency
Accountability
'The constant question when considering systemic phenomena has to be, when do changes in degree become changes in kind, and what are the effects of bioculturally, biotechnically, biopolitically, historically situated people (not Man) relative to, and combined with, the effects of other species assemblages and other biotic/abiotic forces?'
I.e. when do humans become the dominant force - when do we overstretch the interactive tendencies of all living things?
inflection point of consequence
Instead of golden spike
The idea of inhabitable world and destruction of habitat as well as extinction, not limited to animals but humans
the point in which nature cannot bounce back
James Moore ‘cheap nature’? = capitalism law of value
‘It was “cheap” in a specific sense, deploying the capacities of capital, empire, and science to appropriate the unpaid work/energy of global natures within reach of capitalist power’
Important point about extraction and cheap nature. It is not capitalism as a concept or force that's at stake - it's the specific things that this mode of production and extraction does people and the plant
But these have been exhausted
Anthropocene as boundary relating to the rights of humans; such as refuge? ‘Warranted’
‘Perhaps the outrage meriting a name like Anthropocene is about the destruction of places and times of refuge for people and other critters’
I think our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to
cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge.
How does this way of thinking about the anthropocene - as not a kind of permanent damage but a boundary/opening into a new world change things for you?
Story/semantic medium
Holistic
Excellent Harrawayisms - points here about replacing geological/scientific with creative/ indigenous/ mythic/ temporal, which stories tell stories. Not just that stories will save the world but the imaginary is part of problem solving language
Stories are anthropological they reflect how humans have made sense of the world around them including nature and human input
Makes me think of infusing sentient into something percieved as scientific more in tune to the human emotions/conscience/being; it somehow makes it more accessible and manageable
I am calling all this the Chthulucene—past, present, and to come.
Feminism as an displaced blame for anger?
Specific reductionistic feminism = reason for future human extinction?
Compost theory? Waht is dat
‘If there is to be multispecies ecojustice, which can also embrace diverse human people, it is high time that feminists exercise leadership in imagination, theory, and action to unravel the ties of both genealogy and kin, and kin and species.’
Controversial theory = birth rate
Idea of us ‘earthlings’ are ‘kin in the deepest sense’ making kin with the earth in other words
sense of being beyond birth and genealogy
Felt that this warranted more explaination, specifically context
‘I think that the stretch and recomposition of kin are allowed by the fact that all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense, and it is past time to practice better care of kinds-as-assemblages (not species one at a time). Kin is an assembling sort of word. All critters share a common “flesh,” laterally, semiotically, and genealogically. Ancestors turn out to be very interesting strangers; kin are unfamiliar (outside what we thought was family or gens), uncanny, haunting, active’
Queer ecology
Plantationocene (footnotes)
Idea of making connections on the planet is more important than producing offspring in the long run?
Holistic - creating new words to indicate or represent a specific period?
Is she anti-babies
Not completely?
She explains that connections require hard work but unfortunately that is not the case in a lot of instances where consent is absent
Making the most of what we have got - we need to try and connect rather than not to distant from eachother
Humans ar etrees; human are animals