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<br>
<br>Call for papers: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, Cardiff University,
<br>2831 August 2018
<br>
<br>Excavating multispecies landscapes: temporalities, materialities and the
<br>more-than-human Anthropocene
<br>
<br>Session organisers: Aurora Fredriksen (University of Manchester) and Charlotte
<br>Wrigley (Queen Mary, University of London)
<br>
<br>Along with eroding coastlines (Matless 2017) and the blasted ruins of
<br>capitalist development (Tsing 2017), nonhuman beings are key signals of the
<br>Anthropocene in landscapes. Changing migration patterns, novel colonisations,
<br>extinctions, adaptive mutations and hybridisations make legible the material
<br>transformation of landscapes through melting ice, warming seas,
<br>desertification, toxification. The current or threatened absence of once
<br>present species fold in remembered, forgotten and imagined pasts and
<br>alternately apocalyptic and redemptive futures into a present of haunted,
<br>spectral landscapes (e.g., Whale and Ginn 2017; Gan et al 2017: G1). This is
<br>evident in popular imaginaries of the Anthropocene as human induced
<br>environmental catastrophe  in visions of a silent spring (Carson 1962),
<br>insectageddon (Monbiot 2017), and coral reef graveyards and ghost towns
<br> that foreground the absence of once present nonhuman beings in beloved
<br>landscapes. It is also evident in projections for a so-called good
<br>Anthropocene that envision a near future in which technoscientific progress
<br>and human ingenuity are able to turn back time and/or alter the future by
<br>returning long absent nonhuman species to landscapes through restoration,
<br>rewilding or de-extinction initiatives. As the Anthropocene invites a
<br>reassessment of humanitys place in the geologic timescale, nonhumans become
<br>intricately entangled in these shifting temporalities: cryobanks stash
<br>endangered species DNA as a future safeguard against extinctions (Chrulew
<br>2017) whilst melting ice reveals prehistoric carcasses and thousands of years
<br>of fossilised climate data.
<br>
<br>Beyond total absence or abundant presence, there are smaller, sometimes
<br>stranger ways that nonhuman beings make the Anthropocene legible in
<br>landscapes: old trees calling out in flower for symbiont animal pollinators
<br>that are now absent, signalling a loss of synchronous time and cascading
<br>transformations of place (Rose 2012); hybrid polar-grizzly bears wandering the
<br>edge of exposed shores once covered in ice extending out to sea; a type of
<br>bacteria found only in the rectums of geese digesting toxic waste from mines
<br>(Hird and Yusoff 2018); and long dormant microbiotic pathogens from the deep
<br>past re-emerging as permafrost melts in arctic landscapes. In these and many
<br>other possible examples, carefully attending to the signs writ into landscapes
<br>by nonhuman beings can unsettle anthropocentric narratives of the Anthropocene
<br>centred on the history of Modern (western) humanity and its future dissolution
<br>or redemption, calling forth more ambivalent, multivocal narratives of
<br>multispecies worldings in flux (DeLoughrey 2015).
<br>
<br>This session invites contributions that engage with the ways in which nonhuman
<br>beings signal the Anthropocene in landscapes. Potential themes include (but
<br>are not limited to):
<br>
<br> Changing and novel nonhuman agencies in response to the material
<br>transformation of landscapes
<br> Absence/presence of nonhumans and folded temporalities in haunted/spectral
<br>landscapes
<br> Landscapes as multispecies worldings
<br> More-than-human affects in landscape encounters
<br> Speculative futures for more-than-human landscapes
<br> Transmogrification and monstrous landscapes
<br>
<br>We especially encourage contributions that unsettle anthropocentric and/or
<br>occidental readings of the Anthropocene in landscapes.
<br>
<br>Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to
<br>aurora.fredriksen@manchester.ac.uk and c.a.wrigley@qmul.ac.uk by 5 February
<br>2018.
<br>
<br>References:
<br>Carson, R. (1962) Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
<br>
<br>Chrulew, M. (2017) Freezing the Ark: The Cryopolitics of Endangered Species
<br>Preservation in J. Radin and E. Kowal (eds.) Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a
<br>Melting World, 283305. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
<br>
<br>DeLoughrey, E. (2015) Ordinary futures: interspecies worldings in the
<br>Anthropocene in Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities:
<br>Postcolonial Approaches, edited by E. DeLoughrey, J. Didur, A. Carrigan.
<br>London: Routledge.
<br>
<br>Hird, M. and Yusoff, K. (2018) [forthcoming] Traversing Plateaus in
<br>Microbial-Mineral Relation. The American Association of Geographers: Annual
<br>Meeting, April 10-14, New Orleans.
<br>
<br>Gan, E., Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Bubandt, N. (2017) Haunted landscapes of the
<br>Anthropocene in A. Tsing, H, Swanson, E Gan and N. Bubandt (eds) Arts of
<br>Living on a Damaged Planet. Minneapolis: Minnesota.
<br>
<br>Whale, H. and Ginn, F. (2017) In the Absence of Sparrows. In A. Cunsolo and
<br>K. Landman (eds) Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and
<br>Grief, 92116. London: Routledge.
<br>
<br>Matless, D. (2017) The Anthroposcenic. Transactions of the Institute of
<br>British Geographers 42(3): 36376.
<br>
<br>Monbiot, G. (2017) Insectageddon: Farming Is More Catastrophic than Climate
<br>Breakdown. The Guardian, October 20. URL:
<br>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-ca
<br>tastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations.
<br>
<br>Rose, D. B. (2012) Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time. Environmental
<br>Philosophy, Special Issue Temporal Environments: Rethinking Time and
<br>Ecology9 (1):12740.
<br>
<br>Tsing, A. (2017) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of
<br>Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
<br>
<br>___________________________________
<br>
<br>Dr Aurora Fredriksen
<br>Lecturer in Human Geography
<br>The University of Manchester
<br>Email: aurora.fredriksen@manchester.ac.uk
<br>https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/aurora.fredriksen.html
<br>
<br>Fredriksen, A. (2017, in press) Valuing species: the continuities between
<br>non-market and market valuations in biodiversity conservation Valuation
<br>Studies 5(1).
<br>
<br>Fredriksen, A. (2016) Of wildcats and wild cats: troubling species-based
<br>conservation in the Anthropocene Environment and Planning D: Society and
<br>Space, 34(4): 689-705
<br>_______________________________________________
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