#more-than-human

[ramskeleton]

fled twitter because it was bad for brain but man, gotta say, entomology and especially critical bee twitter went hard. never was great at connecting on tumblr but now that i’m here again, wondering if there are political ecologists/(more-than) human geographers/pollinator people on this website, and if so, hit me up! right now i’m especially interested in thinking about how concepts like metabolic rift can help us understand biodiversity crises esp. in regards to the relationship between managed/domesticated and wild populations (Tony Weis’s “Ghosts and Things: Agriculture and Animal Life really kickstarted this for me and I think these ideas can be relevant for thinking about pollinators) 

[dmcreativestudio]

Neil Harbisson

[mod2amaryllis]

i love being married to a straight guy. this morning we were parallel chilling and i glance at his computer and he's watching a drill fight tournament. as in, guys attaching drills to the same rod and turning them on until one breaks. to find the strongest drill. jose noticed me staring and rolled out of the way so i could see the screen. he knew every drill brand and told me their quality and price. i watched the whole thing without comment. the violence was enchanting. i never would have found this. he's a vector to an entirely alien, often beautiful, world.

[enfinizatics]

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

safety first, always. if you know someone who’s had an abortion, no you don’t. if you know someone is trans, no you don’t. if you know people who help with safe abortions, no you don’t—at least not until you know it’s 100% safe to share. if you are queer or have had an abortion, only share this with people you trust fully. most importantly, not everyone has to be an activist just because they’re part of a minority. if it feels unsafe to share that you're queer, trans, etc., then don’t. it doesn’t make you any less queer.

use secure, encrypted messaging like signal for conversations on potentially risky topics, such as queerness, abortion, organizing counter-actions, protests—anything that might be used against you.

stay anonymous online. if you want to research or report something without surveillance, do not use regular internet. get a vpn (mullvad is affordable and reliable), download the tor browser (for both onion and standard links), and if you plan to whistleblow, consider using a riseup email account.

organize and build networks. community is everything now. support each other, foster independence, because your government won’t have your back. set up collectives, grassroots movements. create lists of trusted professionals—lawyers, doctors, etc.—who can offer support.

to lawyers and doctors: please consider pro-bono work. this is what got us through poland’s hardest times. your work will be needed now more than ever.

for protests or risky actions: always write a pro-bono lawyer’s number on your arm with a permanent marker.

get to know the anarchist black cross federation and other resources on safety culture: "Starting an anarchist black cross group: A guide"; Still We Rise - A resource pack for transgender and non-gender conforming people in prison; Safe OUTside the system by the Audre Lorde Project;

for safe abortion info or involvement: get familiar with womenhelpwomen.

stay radical, stay strong, stay informed: The Anarchist Library

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

[cleekleequlee]

More than “more-than-human centered design”

Earlier this year when presenting in EASA 2024 with anthropologists and peer design researchers, I (after my presentation done and a drink in the kitchen at 11pm Hong Kong time) responded rather strongly to the idea of more-than-human design as “more-than-human centered” design. Example is to consider how wildboar moves around and create tunnel in urban spaces. At that time I cannot quite articulate where that sentiment is from. I still cannot today, but finds two reference helpful in explaining my opinion, that more-than-human design, or more accurately posthumanist design, is not just design for more-than-human.

One reference is Alex Wilkie’s co-authored paper on speculative design brief. Knowing his strong theoretical foothold in process theory gave me the confidence to read the paper in detail and multiple times. What I take away so far is that the design brief meant by Wilkie and authors is not only concerned with the outcome of design but also the process of design. This is key for understanding their concept of “design event”. This is under the premise that designers don’t start the design process knowing exactly what they want to design. Rather than “allowing drift” which is the idea of “design drift”, Wilkie takes a more radical position seeing this formulation of design brief as part of design process. This the design brief includes the intention of design and instructs processes for designers to map the network with existing and absent (more-than-human) actors. Theoretical conceptualization proceeds the forming of brief for articulation through design. In an other word, theory not only serves as providing the mechanism of design (as designers always go to psychology for ways to do something), but is the fundamental reason and drive for design articulation.

The next reference comes from a quick read of Annemarie Mol’s latest book Eating in Theory. I have yet to wade through the whole book. But based on the first chapter where Mol introduced the intention and structure of the book, it surprisingly shed some light on my research. In this new book the topic Mol explored is eating - an mundane, too ordinary experience that everyone cannot do without for every 12 hours they are alive on earth. Mol sets off to challenge the separation between survival and living, between labor and actualization which is very much in line with my idea of practice theory. What makes my eyes wide open with excitement is how she does that by reframing the not-worth-mentioning experience of eating. There is nothing new actively being done or designed, but this reframing is enlightening for us to take another look at all the everyday experience we have and see them in new, philosophical lights. In a nuanced way this reframing to me is connected to what Foucault and Braidotti always does, and according to (the amusingly mysterious) Barad, another way of spacetimemattering. If we call any intentional doing with a purpose as design, then Mol’s approach is also design with changed theoretical lens (from Hannah Arendt / Aristotelian) division of body and mind (labor, work and politics) to something else. A missing step if there is to call it design is to prove that such reframing gets to people’s mind, and make concrete, material change in their doing, even if it is just to feel how their throat is in touch with the other - plants and animals that we call food. I was definitely inspired by a talk by design researcher /to-be anthropologist Duan Zhipeng last week that what interests him more is not doing any form of intervention directly - like me he is no believer that the top-down approach would work, but to better “describe”. In this sense, the cosmetic work of design - I have graphic design in mind - can also be critical in forming new ways of thinking, and a lot of the top-down structures that we have relied so much in the past won’t be too helpful in achieving this vision of graphic design.

So design - I’ll use the term posthumanist design for now, is not about more-than-human centered. It is the reshuffling the conceptual construction of the world for everyone, from designers (in Wilkie’s case of attuning to MTH as part of design brief) to people who eats (which is everyone who is alive). If this can be done in the most mundane experience of eating, it can certainly be done for other groups - certain professions, certain geographies, certain practices. Finding the existing contact with MTH or stage such contact, reframe the experience as transformative learning opportunities (Mezirow) to prepare for the conditions of social change (Manzini).

ps. Some of the discussion on the relationship between theory and empirical in introductory chapter also reminds me of the many methodological books by Matz Alvesson where the empirical is not only for applying theory but for generating novel theories.

I hope I will get more thinking disturbed in reading Mol - I’m in discussion with peer PhD student to do a book club on Mol’s two books. I also am curious how other design students think of them.

References:

Wilkie, A. and M. Michael (2023). "The aesthetics of more-than-human design: speculative energy briefs for the Chthulucene." Human–Computer Interaction: 1-13.

Mol, A. (2021). "Eating in Theory."

Alvesson, M. and D. Kärreman (2011). Qualitative research and theory development : mystery as method. London, Sage.

Alvesson, M. and K. Sköldberg (2009). Reflexive methodology : new vistas for qualitative research. London ;, SAGE.

[noknowshame]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

[astraystayyh]

this post actually broke my heart.

[ochibrochi]

weird looking cat

[flagellant]

yeah we might be brothers in christ but so were cain and abel so shut the fuck up before i decide to find a rock about it

[finneroo]

I am a violin maker learning to tattoo so here is a banana with the decoration from the Hellier Strad violin

[existennialmemes]

It's cute that humans make domesticated forests with just fruit and nut trees.

"Orchard" yeah ok, you domesticated a forest is what you did. Look at it. It's got symmetry.

[akanemnon]

We didn't even get an answer, and we never will (at least it's not determination)

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[ruporas]

need to exist in your warmth (id in alt)

[cleekleequlee]

Guitar, mushroom and apples

Among the many signals I sent to the cosmos, this one was liked by my friend who also had experience working in corporate. “So that resonates!” And it leads to a few more thoughts.

This paper I screen capped and posted on instagram stories (Gibson & Warren, 2020) was about temporalities of forest. Interestingly the authors situate this paper in the upstream tracing of the value chain of guitar-making which is the supply of mature wood. A small group of people who dedicated themselves in planting for the future - sowing saplings of trees which have long growth cycles thus don’t fit the fast-harvesting, industrial monoculture plantation, and take care of them till end of their lives. These people are both loggers and m keen forest lovers at the same time - there are indeed more conflicts and ethical dilemmas at practical level! Between necessity of logging and love of trees planting for future was taken as a resolution.

One among the many countless thoughts I had about my PhD topic is (at least partly) about how to incorporate the more-than-human into the everyday grounded activities of organizations. I had a lot of thoughts and doubt that how can this incorporation actually be done by many companies who already happens “only in the office and in the meeting room”. That leads me to think of where the more-than-human actually already participating in the economy or company activity - they must be somewhere as our world doesn’t exist in vacuum. One quick and direct answer is the raw material that many industries work with. In the case of to the guitar industry in this paper, indeed “nature” still exists and at the very source of value chain when people cutting trees down. For these people doing the actual cutting, as we can imagine how they live at the border of forests, going in when it’s humid and misty, enjoy cold stream to wash off sweat and dust, and go home in golden sunshine, affective relationships with the forest are developed. This affective relationship leads to balancing act of planting over an expanded temporal horizon. This complicated but reciprocal relationship has been well captured by many ecofeminist writers including Ariel Salleh, and is a key connection that I see between ecofeminism and practice theory.

But this affect can hardly be passed down to other parts of the value chain. Captured in the above screenshot is the works, or practices that as a fact erase this affective relationship and eliminates its traces. People doing it are not evil… people like me who has grown up being educated about the abstractions of the world didn’t even know how the tree world actually exists (apart of being aesthetic and academic objects).

This work of elimination done through “sumif()”s and pivot tables in excel as a key step of disconnecting us, the broader human society from the living world of more-than-human brings new light to another work that also works on supply chain - Anna Tsing’s mushroom! My previous wonder about the book was - funny enough and against my expectation - positive for the capitalism! I see how different patches of cultures and communities - from foragers in forests to gifting managers in Japan - are connected because of this chain of Matsutake. Translation, according to Tsing, works as adhesives, counters the friction on the border, connects these people and makes it work. But one thing that Tsing doesn’t articulate maybe because of its stronger opinion of criticism, is how these translation works erase and eliminate the liveliness of the more-than-human being. Mushrooms are shipped but not the excitement, the moment of ecstasy hitting by its trace, the disappointment of false alarm, the rewarding feeling accompanied by tiredness. That translation is part of the process of objectification and commodification. That is the work I personally participated in the past. After all, translation is never lossless.

With the 15 minutes I have left before morning chaos kicks in I will not be able to delve deeply in how globalization as a phenomenon expertly described by Tsing is deeply rooted in economic 101 that is division of labor and the fundamental mechanism of trading. With this logic we have indeed done really well and pushed it to the extreme that the globe can no longer hold us. But from above analysis it seems globalization, or the very starting idea of “get 1 apple and 1 orange by trade is better than growing my own apple” without other balancing mechanisms will lead to our situation - supermarket shelves of apples and oranges and pears and watermelon and kiwi and this and that berries … all at the same time no matter which season, placeless and rootless. They used to be on trees, heavy, low-hanging, and shared by birds. In seeing them as lives and enjoying abundance, can we really have it all?

Apple tree in Campbell, Tasmania

[uncanny-tranny]

The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:

[nova-rpv]

a redraw of the first drawing i posted here to celebrate the fact that ive been in tumblr for more than a whole year posting my shit and havent deleted my blog in panic yippee \:D/ (mushy rant in tags)