#tentacular thinking

[aram]

My Worldview Today is Wave Play;

Dancing with Pendulums

Alchemy x Light Work x Shadow Play

Got my netbag attached to a bouy,

Riding waves between windmills at sea.

- "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulucene" - Donna Haraway

[patadave]

Three Stories from the Chthulucene

Some cool scholarship from Alex Prong. I love the genre of research-creation/creation-as-research AND I love tentacular thinking.

“Three Stories from the Chthulucene” attempts to work through some of the theoretical framework outlined in Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene.1 The term “Chthulucene” derives from H. P. Lovecraft’s science-fictional tentacled being, the Cthulhu. Haraway theorizes the Chthulucene as an alternative to dominant notions of our time as the Anthropocene. Rather than seeing humans as separate from the environment and acting on it, Chthulucene theorists see humans as part of an intricate web of relations between human and more-than-human life, where humans act through the environment. The methodology used in this article is research-creation, specifically creation as research. This article begins with three autofictional vignettes that aim to play with research questions such as: How might Haraway’s concept of “tentacular thinking" impact the way narrative is structured? Is there an accessible way to write Haraway’s theories so that they are approachable but still “writerly"? How can writer and reader together (re)imagine utopias, in particular queer utopias, so that they are still situated strongly in the present? A supplementary essay follows these three vignettes and attempts to tease out some of these findings within a more typically academic format.

[dannyfoley]

LennonTaylor

Oct 4th @ 14:30 Talk by Peter Doran (scroll and find in link^) at the Staying With the Trouble SYMPOSIUM at the James Barry Arts Centre in MTU as part of the Tentacular Thinking Exhibition

Peter Doran is an activist-law academic with a long-standing interest in political ecology and international affairs. His research and interests include degrowth and the wellbeing economy, climate justice, global environmental politics, and the intersections of Zen philosophy, ecology, and wellbeing. His most recent publication is the book, A Political Economy of Attention: Reclaiming the Mindful Commons (Routledge 2018). He is also a senior editor/writer for the International Institute for Sustainable Development at United Nations conferences on the environment and development. He has worked on environmental policy and campaigns in both government and NGO settings for over thirty years. Peter is on the steering group of Environmental Justice Network Ireland.

"The Rights of Nature movement is capturing the imaginations of communities across the world because it helps to turn our narratives of transition towards the ‘more-than-human': that intimate web of nature and meaning in which we are all entangled and implicated. It also represents an expression of a ‘biocentric’ or ‘ecocentric’ turn in the law: a decentring of ‘the human’ in favour of protecting the intrinsic rights of other beings”. Peter Doran et al, 2021.

Doran makes a point in his talk that resonated me, that since the European enlightenment of the 17th and 18th century, and the emergence of ‘modernity’, brought with it a human centric understanding of human dominance over other forms of life in a strive for societal “progress” that neglects the rights of nature and that working towards environmental justice can create a disruption in this kind of “colonial thinking” (humans being the colonisers of other forms of life on the planet).

In this way, I believe learning from and recognising of the rights of nature and indigenous practices (such as that in Ecuador) could potentially aid humanity in being able to have empathy for other humans and as well other forms of life on our planet, encouraging more humans to stop taking from others and the environment and questioning what is “progress”.

About Peter Doran Link to Environmental Justice Network Website

About Environmental Justice Network Ireland | EJNI

To advance environmental justice for a peaceful society, a healthier democracy, the rights of nature and a sustainable economy.

[wikipediapersonallife]

We just read Donna J. Haraway’s “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene” in my Anthropology class. After getting distracted by my squeamishness (the pdf we read included pictures of tardigrades ugh) and grossly misinterpreting “Octopi Wall Street” (hint: it’s not antisemitic; the octopus was one of the protesters), discussing the text in class made a lightbulb go off.

I’m still not sure whether I agree with the conclusion (couldn’t tell if Haraway was arguing against the defeatism of Capitalocene theory from a “reform capitalism” or “dismantle capitalism” angle) but I’ll reread it sometime soon.

Here’s a free link, though tumblr may call it inaccessible, but when I find more free time I can explain it with my notes from class.