Please join us over zoom on September 15 at 4pm pacific, 7pm eastern (Sep 16 at 9am in Australian eastern time) for SPAM’s first distinguished lecture of 2021. Beck Pearse and Dinesh Wadiwel will be speaking about “Multi-species production: Economic justice beyond the human,” over zoom (please email rcollard[at]sfu[dot]ca for the link.)
Abstract: As we move further into the Anthropocene, questions about how to intervene in the environment have progressed with new purpose and ambition. It’s no longer possible to deny the change afoot and even more urgent that we refuse and replace the ideology of scarcity. In the ongoing discussions about strategies for multi-species flourishing, Collard et al (2015) made a welcome call for a politics of abundance that deals with historical violence of settler-capitalism, creating pluriversal solidarities and recognising animal autonomy. The process of creating the political grounds from which we can develop such strategy requires that we think through the political economy of anthropocentric capitalism. In this paper we seek to chart out potential strategy and goals that make abundance possible. Our approach is to elaborate a multi-species production politics in key sites of extraction and violence. Of capitalist food and energy, we ask: what is the surplus composed of, who controls is and how it is distributed? How might we differently organise production in order to enable life to flourish? We argue that by recognising that all production is multi-species in nature, we can begin to develop answers to these questions. We explore possible strategic goals that flow from a multi-species production politics, focussing in on ending exploitative and coercive labour and property relations.
The event is co-hosted by the Colonial, Racial, Indigenous Ecologies (CRIE) working group at Concordia University.
Please email Rosemary Collard (rcollard[at]sfu[dot]ca) for the zoom link if you’re interested in attending!
Society, Politics, Animals & Materiality 