I find myself very moved by these words from "Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene"
• Curious;
• Experimental;
• Open;
• Adaptive;
• Imaginative;
• Responsive; and
• Responsible.
STORIES
• Developing new languages for our changing world;
• Stepping into the unknown;
• Making risky attachments; and
• Joining and supporting concerned others.
COLLEAGUES, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE, PUT YOUR RESEARCH TO WORK AND TAKE A STAND FOR LIFE!
This is the greater part of a manifesto signed by "key thinkers from the fields of Anthropology, Education, Human Geography, Philosophy, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Political Theory, Communications and Film" on a riverbank near the University of Western Sydney in 2010 (including Deborah Bird Rose).
I don't think it's a coincidence that Australians (and people who've made Australia their home, like Rose) are particularly perceptive on the reality and challenges of the Anthropocene. (The New Schools great Anthropocene theorist is from Australia, too.) I'm not sure quite how to explain why I feel this, but it's something like this. These folks - all (so far as I can judge from their names) settler-descendants - have grown up in a society which feels like a mismatch with the land it occupies. Remember that the formative settler Australian myth isn't pioneers who take civilization further and further across an accommodating continent, but explorers who try to cross the continent and vanish, consumed by it. Further, settler Australians (some of them at least) are aware that the continent in question was already settled and well tended by its traditional owners before - an order disrupted to the point of extinction by the depredations of settler society, and for many traditional inhabitants, human and other, damaged beyond the point of no return.
It's Anthropocene in miniature. You feel in your bones that the civilization you have grown up with is unsustainable, out of place, illegitimate. An American might then cry that our civilization is already dead, but this kind of settler descendant Australian has no time for such drama: our civilization also nearly destroyed others, and to their memory and their descendants we have responsibilities.
This motivates efforts to learn to appreciate 'country' the way Aboriginal peoples have, listening to the wisdom of those who knew how to flourish in and with this land (and who manage, if they can, to keep going on in the face of the decimation of their world), and to recognize and where possible revitalize fragile networks through which species have helped each other thrive. From this, along with a deep sense of grief and responsibility, can come - I sense it in this Manifesto - a remarkable commitment to life, celebrating it, learning from it, letting it be, joining it. Deborah Bird Rose describes this paradoxical commitment in terms of "love on the edge of extinction." It's not optimism, certainly not the technofuturism which sees Anthropocene as an initial stumble in what will be the glorious history of humanity remaking the world in its image. It's hope born of near-despair, joy at the marvel of being part of the community of living things born of responsibility to the dead, and to the not yet dead.
THINKING
We want to engage in life and the living world in an unconstrained and expansive way. Our thinking needs to be in the
service of life—and so does our language. This means giving
up preconceptions, and instead listening to the world. This means giving up delusions of mastery and control, and instead seeing the world as uncertain and yet unfolding. So our
thinking needs to be—
• Experimental;
• Open;
• Adaptive;
• Imaginative;
• Responsive; and
• Responsible.
We are committed to thinking with the community of life and contributing to healing.
STORIES
Stories are important for understanding and communicating
the significance of our times. We aim to tell stories that—
• Enact connectivity, entangling us in the lives of others;
• Have the capacity to reach beyond abstractions and
move us to concern and action;
• Are rich sources of reflection; and
• Enliven moral imagination, drawing us into deeper understandings of responsibilities, reparative possibilities, and alternative futures.
RESEARCHING
While we continue our traditions of critical analysis, we are
forging new research practices to excavate, encounter and
extend reparative possibilities for alternative futures. We
look and listen for life-giving potentialities (past and present)
by charting connections, re-mapping the familiar and open-
ing ourselves to what can be learned from what already is happening in the world. As participants in a changing world,
we advocate—
• Stepping into the unknown;
• Making risky attachments; and
• Joining and supporting concerned others.
COLLEAGUES, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE, PUT YOUR RESEARCH TO WORK AND TAKE A STAND FOR LIFE!
This is the greater part of a manifesto signed by "key thinkers from the fields of Anthropology, Education, Human Geography, Philosophy, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Political Theory, Communications and Film" on a riverbank near the University of Western Sydney in 2010 (including Deborah Bird Rose).
I don't think it's a coincidence that Australians (and people who've made Australia their home, like Rose) are particularly perceptive on the reality and challenges of the Anthropocene. (The New Schools great Anthropocene theorist is from Australia, too.) I'm not sure quite how to explain why I feel this, but it's something like this. These folks - all (so far as I can judge from their names) settler-descendants - have grown up in a society which feels like a mismatch with the land it occupies. Remember that the formative settler Australian myth isn't pioneers who take civilization further and further across an accommodating continent, but explorers who try to cross the continent and vanish, consumed by it. Further, settler Australians (some of them at least) are aware that the continent in question was already settled and well tended by its traditional owners before - an order disrupted to the point of extinction by the depredations of settler society, and for many traditional inhabitants, human and other, damaged beyond the point of no return.
It's Anthropocene in miniature. You feel in your bones that the civilization you have grown up with is unsustainable, out of place, illegitimate. An American might then cry that our civilization is already dead, but this kind of settler descendant Australian has no time for such drama: our civilization also nearly destroyed others, and to their memory and their descendants we have responsibilities.
This motivates efforts to learn to appreciate 'country' the way Aboriginal peoples have, listening to the wisdom of those who knew how to flourish in and with this land (and who manage, if they can, to keep going on in the face of the decimation of their world), and to recognize and where possible revitalize fragile networks through which species have helped each other thrive. From this, along with a deep sense of grief and responsibility, can come - I sense it in this Manifesto - a remarkable commitment to life, celebrating it, learning from it, letting it be, joining it. Deborah Bird Rose describes this paradoxical commitment in terms of "love on the edge of extinction." It's not optimism, certainly not the technofuturism which sees Anthropocene as an initial stumble in what will be the glorious history of humanity remaking the world in its image. It's hope born of near-despair, joy at the marvel of being part of the community of living things born of responsibility to the dead, and to the not yet dead.
