Category: Essays
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Role-Playing Queer Assemblages Amidst Capitalist Ruins
in EssaysNat Mesnard’s new game, Assemblage, allows players to build and role-play an imaginary multispecies universe. Even more interesting than the creatures themselves: the stunning meditation they elicit on extinction, grief, and collaborative, queer survival in the Anthropocene.
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Squished Bugs and the Sticky Questions of Fieldwork
in EssaysOur views of the multispecies world are smudged through windshield graveyards. Anissa Bejaoui peers through the stories squished bugs tell about the ethics of knowledge production and the praxis of conservation.
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El Asunto del Tiempo
in EssaysMonika Szuba enfrenta el tiempo profundo a través del examen de la descomposición, entre lo que es real y lo que es sintético. En este contexto, escribe que la longue durée no es lo suficientemente larga para concebir el cambio antropogénico que se despliega a nuestro alrededor.
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The Rise and Demise of Equine “Cyborg” Labor
in EssaysU.S. cities were built with and around horse-human-machine assemblages. Bri Meyer explores the one-time prominence and lasting impact of “cyborg” equine labor on Madison, Wisconsin.
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The Colonial Depths of Seasteading
in EssaysIvey Wexler draws parallels between libertarian’s interest in seasteading to oceanic colonialism in the nineteenth century, especially as Robert Stevenson illustrated in The Ebb-Tide.
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Bearing Colonialism in Japanese Popular Culture
in EssaysBenjamin Chin-Hung Kao looks beyond the often-cutesy appearance of bears in Japanese popular culture to discover their role in the country’s violent colonial history and present.
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Troubling Dualisms with the God in the Aquarium
in EssaysGod, pet, and research subject, axolotls transgress Western dualisms. Alex Ventimilla explores what these creatures tell us about science, companionship, and life in the Anthropocene.
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Carp as Villains and Victims
in EssaysTeri Harman considers resilience, fishy companionship, and the culpability of “invasive” carp in Utah Lake. Are carp villains or victims?
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A Cage of One’s Own? On Interspecies Captive-ation
in EssaysUsing the concept of captivation, Quinn Georgic unpacks human-animal interspecies relations by looking closely at mutual power that binds humans and primates together—from HBO’s CHIMP CRAZY to fieldwork with lemurs.
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Kelp Can Help Build More Just Futures
in EssaysLydia Lapporte traces how the project of kelp recovery in the Pacific Ocean connects to the mission of decarceration. Relational companionship and abolition ecologies can be useful for both kelp and incarcerated people.