Towards multispecies justice: non-anthropocentric ecocritical methods and practices

Tsionki, Marianna ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7770-2076 (2024) Towards multispecies justice: non-anthropocentric ecocritical methods and practices. HOLOTIPUS. ISSN 2704-7547 (In Press)

Abstract

This article examines contemporary artistic practices that challenge entrenched Western binaries such as nature/culture and human/animal, proposing new frameworks for perceiving and engaging with the more-than-human world in the context of the Anthropocene. Through four case studies—The Embassy of the North Sea, Gustafsson & Haapoja’s Museum of Nonhumanity, Ursula Biemann’s Forest Mind, and Kyriaki Goni’s Data Garden—the article explores how interdisciplinary, research-based art practices reconfigures human-nonhuman relations, critiques extractivist logics and present alternative ways of engaging with ecological crises. Drawing on frameworks from eco-criticism, aesthetic theory, and Indigenous cosmologies, the article introduces the concepts of non-anthropocentric institutionalism and plant-human entanglement as theoretical tools to rethink environmental agency, legal representation, and techno-ecological coexistence. Haraway’s notion of natureculture helps articulate entangled ontologies, while Rancière’s distribution of the sensible and T.J. Demos’s ecocritical aesthetics frame artistic practices as political acts of ontological intervention that challenge what is seen, heard, and valued. These works do not merely represent environmental crises — they intervene in political structures by advocating for the rights of nonhuman entities, envisioning speculative futures, and fostering multi-species justice. Biemann integrates shamanic knowledge and Indigenous epistemologies; Goni speculates on symbiotic data systems between plants and machines. The Embassy of the North Sea pioneers sensory-based advocacy for marine legal personhood, while the Museum of Nonhumanity deconstructs species hierarchies rooted in colonial scientific taxonomies. Through their aesthetic strategies, these practices create spaces for critical reflection and action, particularly concerning ecological justice and the environmental impacts of human activities.

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