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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Ecological justice: The 'Natural Contract'

In reflecting on the different ways in which our ‘Worlds’ have responded to the injustices and wrongdoings that humans have perpetrated on the earth, one thing is supremely apparent: humanity is faced with a new ethical imperative to enact justice in relation to the environment. Our examination of connections, flat ontology, ecodiegesis and agency all demand that we give attention and love to all the different worlds that intersect to make Earth. In saying this, I acknowledge the risk of circling back into paternalistic human-centric systems of justice.

However, I draw on the work of Michel Serres, who proposes that the ‘social contract’ which commands our human interpersonal relations must be extended to encompass the world, in a ‘natural contract’. Those duties or responsibilities of care that humans share between one another should be advanced to non-humans as a simple recognition of and appreciation of another’s existence.

As the Plant World shared, towards others, humans must see:

their significance simply because of their existence amongst us

Serres political philosophy draws heavily on ecological thinking, critiquing how humanity has removed ourselves from the system of nature by mastering and possessing the world. The result is that human laws and ethical obligations undermine humanity’s true relationship with the world – of co-dependency, like a single cell.

As Insect worlds quipped, ‘find me one who weeps over a dead mosquito’. But, perhaps the message of our living book is to demand that humans see other lives, the life of the Earth, as grievable, based on a recognition of our commonalities, as well as respect for each other’s unique agency. As the closing lines of Lola’s Diary states: ‘Together, this is our world’.

References:

Serres, Michel 1995, The Natural Contract, trans. Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

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Reflection Our group combines the bird and atmosphere sections. This practice itself is reflective of eco-thoughts. Initially, “bird” and “atmosphere” exist as two concepts, while the process of working on the living book involves breaking down the concepts, finding common grounds and connections, as well as integrating our thoughts together. We then coined the composite word ‘bird-atmosphere’ as our group’s name, which reflects the focus of our critical and creative writings – the relational thinking of a ‘subject constituted in and by multiplicity’ (Braidotti), in the case of bird and atmosphere.

Upon reflection, the close reading of ‘The World’s Largest Membrane’ is a process in which our readings of the text are concurrently within and outside the theoretical lenses. We had slightly different theories in mind – Merah thinks of the text in relation to the aesthetics of atmosphere which proposes ways of looking at the atmosphere through both temporal and geographical dimensions. Gemma thinks about the text in terms of ‘intra-action’, especially how matters or materials are entangled in a complex system. We came with the understanding that there is an overpowering relationality in Thomas’ analogy of the atmosphere as a “membrane”– the planet, seen as a large cell, is breakable into organelles, which are also breakable into smaller chemical compounds. Every element works in relation to each other, some compounds contain others, some connected to others through bonds, and they are all connected through the exchange of energy through time and space, in and out of the membrane. This allows the whole cell to properly function and allowing the individual elements themselves to function as well. The membrane is what encloses the many as one; each of the many relies on others and the membrane to function.

Following this understanding, we start to think of birds, human being, the air, the grasses – every living or non-living things – as elements co-existing under the atmosphere. In writing, we are careful not to ‘examine’ the birds’ world as if they exist in a completely different realm, nor did we attempted to speak for them as their pseudo voices. Instead, we simply looked at the photos to find out what are the elements presented and their possible interconnection. Then, through narrating the possible elements in the photos – as large as the sky, and as small as the bird’s feathers, or one’s acne on the face, we explored how the interaction between humans and birds might produce meaning.

Our voice in this photo essay is self-reflexive, admitting the limitations of our daily observations. The first line “birds always perceive the changes in the atmosphere before we do” is inspired from classical Chinese poet Su Shi’s line literary translated as “when spring water warms/ the duck is first to know” (Edwards 52). It is the perceptibility of the animals – for example, the birds, who are closer to the sky, and the ducks who live in the rivers – that amazes us, sends signals to us, making us recognise humans are never a position any higher or more almighty than the animals.

The understanding of relationality here is deepened by the realisation that the interaction between ecological elements might have the capacity of generating of new forms of being. Knowledge itself, especially those obtained through empirical methods, is a result of such interaction. Here, our group’s ‘new’ knowledge of this revised understanding of relationality, is also indebted to such an interaction – with the texts, photos, and birds... Our photo essay builds upon this idea, to reflect on what else that is ‘new’ had been generated through such relationality – taking human thoughts and birds as two points. We suggested ‘imitation’ as a form of relationality, that the human beings have always been replicating certain aspects of the experiences of animals such as birds. This imitation is what allows generation of the ‘new’, the emergence of the airplane as related to imitating birds’ wings, for example. The impact and level of this imitation are so profound, that the lifestyle that airplane enables, the massive modern migration and urbanisation, is a replica of bird migration.

Interestingly, if we think of the invention of airplane as an example of how interaction generates ‘new forms’ emerging from the ecological elements, then the machines are also to be regarded as elements within the earth’s system, just as humans, animals and other organisms. The implication of seeing machines as products of an ecosystem is that it requires us not put them in opposition to ‘nature’, but consider them through their relations with and within the atmosphere.

References:
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman Hoboken, NJ: Polity, 2013.

Edwards, Richard, and Ma, Yuan (12th/13th century). The heart of Ma Yuan: the search for a Southern Song aesthetic. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.

Readings
Love, Glen A., 1932-. Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003.

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Lola's Diary