Deadline: 12/10/2022
Contact: Reuben Martens, AMTD Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Waterloo
Email: reuben.martens@uwaterloo.ca
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
Co-organised by Dr Ida Marie Olsen (Ghent University) and Dr Reuben Martens (University of Waterloo)
If we are to reclaim the commons—setting aside the difficulties of defining commons and who they actually belong to, especially in any North American or postcolonial state—where do we begin? Many commons, whether they be terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric or sociocultural, have been and are still in the process of being actively destroyed in neoliberal capitalist, postcolonial contexts; thinking of Alberta tar sands, Brazilian rainforests, Indigenous communities worldwide, for example, one can easily see that reclaiming ‘the commons’ requires dialogue on rebuilding, reconstructing, and retrofitting ideas of extraction and extinction.
In acknowledging that for many Indigenous nations and peoples, the sixth extinction event already happened with their mass genocide and displacement since Columbus’ arrival, rehashing (Western) dyadic notions of communality, extinction, and extraction is perhaps too convenient. Olsen (2022, 188) has convincingly argued that “there is a need to reconstitute species extinction discourse beyond the subjects, narratives, and biases that tendentially characterise it”. The same is true for the all-to-static idea of extraction, which tends to mostly focus on logistical and biological implications, while the socio-cultural is destroyed all the same.
This panel wants to focus on how literature, cinema, and art more broadly can help (re)configure the commons in postcolonial spaces of extraction and extinction, especially relying on Indigenous scholarship and/or Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and invites papers dealing with ideas such as (but not limited to):
• Indigenous artistic and/or scientific approaches to the natural world as a cosmos of multispecies relationality/communality
• Artistic depictions of Indigenous survivance, moving beyond traditional (post-)extinction narratives
• Artistic reconfigurations of extractive zones and infrastructures (fossil fuels, but also renewables, lithium mining, etc.) into commons or communal spaces
• Deconstructions of how species extinction discourse is indebted to European imperialism and how it risks reinforcing a colonial logic and how artistic works may reconfigure such notions
Submissions from graduate students and emerging scholars are particularly welcomed. Artistic contributions will also be be considered.
The deadline for abstracts is 10 December 2022, 11.59 pm. Please send abstracts of max. 250 words and a short bio (100 words) to reuben.martens@uwaterloo.ca.
Posted on October 17, 2022
