WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:00:00.800 --> 00:00:05.900 in the last few weeks you've read a lot about what we might think of as all the horrors of the 00:00:05.900 --> 00:00:16.100 Contemporary world. Wildfires, radiation, toxicity, simplification of landscapes, disasters, epidemics 00:00:16.100 --> 00:00:21.500 We1ve talked about all the injustices and the equal distribution of harm that underlies all of 00:00:21.500 --> 00:00:29.400 these things as well and just last week we touched on you know how the anthropocene is now even 00:00:29.400 --> 00:00:30.600 Within us within our NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:41.600 blood stream and but many of those that you read also find some sources of hope and from our 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:48.600 readings we can sort of make two categories of hopefulness I think and one is to see hope in the 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:58.550 possibility of thinking differently, and the other is hope in the way the world works itself. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:00:58.550 --> 00:01:06.600 The first hope and thinking differently can come in different versions we might se hope in 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:16.200 subversion for instance in working against universalising logics as Davidson and Todd says or 00:01:16.200 --> 00:01:24.300 in working against modernity's progressive understanding of time as in Dawdy's article and we 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:28.950 might find hope in the turning point of the crisis in a sense hope NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:01:28.950 --> 00:01:37.200 in ruptures that allow us to think otherwise and in events that kind of yank us out of our 00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:45.600 ingrained patterns of thought and here we can think of Chen about exposure to toxins and about 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:58.400 toxins creativity how toxins have this possibility or this power to allow us to think 00:01:58.400 --> 00:01:58.850 differently NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:01:58.850 --> 00:02:05.600 about our own bodies or thinking about Peytrina who says that the wildfires or 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:15.600 disasters more generally can make us think differently about certainty and knowledge itself. So 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:22.500 this version of hope the version of hope as thinking differently is also something that comes 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:27.350 through in the article by Deborah Bird Rose that you're reading NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:02:27.350 --> 00:02:36.200 so for Rose there's hope in the possibility of what she calls more inclusive cosmopolitics it's possible 00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:43.300 to practice other less destructive ways of being together with other species the question is and it 00:02:43.300 --> 00:02:48.750 seems kind of banal when you put it this way back then but this sort of the question is how can we 00:02:48.750 --> 00:02:57.500 live together with other humans in better ways and in less murderous ways as Rose NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:02:57.500 --> 00:03:04.300 Says but this is you know this is the real challenge as we all know and Rose tries to indicate 00:03:04.300 --> 00:03:10.800 something about how humans may rise to the challenge of living together in 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:12.899 less murderous ways NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:03:12.899 --> 00:03:21.000 so how may we create this kind of more inclusive cosmopolitics for one thing it lies in a different 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:27.700 way of thinking about difference and sameness and specifically to what extent we see ourselves as 00:03:27.700 --> 00:03:34.400 humans to be different from other species to see sameness or to see differences is a matter of 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:41.200 perspectives says Rose we can look at one thing and from one's perspective we see difference but from 00:03:41.200 --> 00:03:43.100 Another we see sameness NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:49.700 so if we shift our perspective in such a way as such way as to look at animals from a point of view 00:03:49.700 --> 00:03:58.800 of sameness we can avoid assuming that animals are sort of essentially other and as Heidegger 00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:05.300 famously put it poor in the world and and so this is a classic assumption that I think probably a 00:04:05.300 --> 00:04:13.000 lot of people in our society share the notion that different species different creatures all NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:22.000 have access to an experienced different sliver of reality so different range of colors different 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:28.900 wavelengths of sound and different things we were able to feel and sense and so on but that 00:04:28.900 --> 00:04:37.700 essentially humans have richer access to the world than other species and that is the sort of the 00:04:37.700 --> 00:04:43.299 the common assumption I think in our society at least and what often goes along with that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:04:43.299 --> 00:04:52.800 is the thinking which animals are assumed to be something like automatons like kind of machine 00:04:52.800 --> 00:05:02.400 that simply act out their natural instils where humans are conscious subjects in a different way. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:08.200 We shouldn't have that as our starting point I think Rose would say 00:05:08.200 --> 00:05:14.900 we shouldn't think of ourselves as different in essence from other species we 00:05:14.900 --> 00:05:22.800 Should start instead she indicates with sameness and by assuming that their world are also rich not 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:27.800 poor they are also rich worlds just in different ways NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:34.400 so she writes about flying foxes which I'm gonna put up a picture here on the slide slide and there are 00:05:34.400 --> 00:05:40.600 species of bat as you can see and one of the things she emphasises is that flying foxes have 00:05:40.600 --> 00:05:48.700 pleasurable sex and they enjoy things they play with each other they have social lives they're 00:05:48.700 --> 00:05:56.600 surely not poor in the world then we should avoid measuring other creatures against humans and perhaps 00:05:56.600 --> 00:05:57.799 especially we should avoid NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:05:57.799 --> 00:06:05.700 using the human hand to measure others against. For Heidegger the hand was especially 00:06:05.700 --> 00:06:14.800 important and if we measure other species using the hand as the measured yardstick then 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:20.900 inevitably they will turn out to be poor in the world to not have the same capabilities as we do we 00:06:20.900 --> 00:06:27.750 might say that in Western thought we have taken the hand as the default interface between NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:06:27.750 --> 00:06:37.100 ourselves and world or the hand and the eye perhaps also a bit Heidegger emphasizes the hand and 00:06:37.100 --> 00:06:45.200 so the hand and the eye that's how we thought about our encounter with the world and thinking with 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:53.400 the hand that's sort of the default interface between ourselves and reality and it's something 00:06:53.400 --> 00:06:57.850 that allows us to sort of in our minds keep the world as a distance NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:06:57.850 --> 00:07:04.100 if we think through the hand as the interface with the world and then the world or the 00:07:04.100 --> 00:07:09.700 environment or nature become something we in grasp it's something out there that we can reach out 00:07:09.700 --> 00:07:17.000 and grasp and we also imagine that the hand is universal that they're in there's nothing that 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.300 cannot be grasped by the hand NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:07:20.500 --> 00:07:30.700 flying foxes in contrast meet the world through wings and tongues and thinking through the relation 00:07:30.700 --> 00:07:35.900 between the creature and the environment with the interface of the tongue is a very different thing 00:07:35.900 --> 00:07:42.600 than the hand it highlights an attachment to the world that is characterized by a simultaneous giving 00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:50.400 and taking according to Rose and she has this example with a kiss you know it involves the tongue and 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:50.850 and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:07:50.850 --> 00:07:58.600 with the kiss it's hard to say which part is giving in which part is taking in this distinction 00:07:58.600 --> 00:08:08.900 between the giver and taker is sort of not always relevant or meaningful when it comes to exchanges 00:08:08.900 --> 00:08:16.300 through the tongue right and also another thing that characterises the meeting between a 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:20.049 creature and their tongue and the world is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:08:20.049 --> 00:08:28.100 Specific adaptation rather than the universal hand and the tongue isn't Universal like we imagined the hand to be 00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:36.299 the tongue is made for another Rose writes the exact shape of a flying fox tongue is adapted species 00:08:36.299 --> 00:08:41.900 by species to the food in which each particular species depends she says NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:08:42.100 --> 00:08:49.700 so if the hand points to dominance and distance the tongue points to symbiotic mutualism and 00:08:49.700 --> 00:08:58.800 intimate involvement and we humans have these kinds of attachments to the world also but they have 00:08:58.800 --> 00:09:05.000 just been overshadowed by an imagination based on the hand NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:11.600 and there's a nice quote on page 109 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:09:16.200 --> 00:09:22.900 that highlights this Mutual relation between flying foxes and Eucalyptus tree and I'm going to quote 00:09:22.900 --> 00:09:30.700 it at some length here so she writes treets put out their delectable and beckoning flowers and flying 00:09:30.700 --> 00:09:37.100 foxes leave their home camp and come racing to the blossoming trees their responses include their 00:09:37.100 --> 00:09:43.200 long tongues that are well adapted to sucking up nectar and their body further picks up thousands of 00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:46.950 grains of pollen NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:53.200 distributes over 70 percent intact every night NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:09:53.200 --> 00:10:00.300 flying foxes carry eucalyptus Futures on their furry little bodies and across the patchy and 00:10:00.300 --> 00:10:07.300 increasingly fragmented landscape of contemporary Australia the renewal of woodland and forest life 00:10:07.300 --> 00:10:15.300 hinges on this mutualism. Forest futures are born on fur and tongue and on the wings that beat through 00:10:15.300 --> 00:10:21.300 the night flying fox futures are born in the showing and appealing blossoms. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:10:21.300 --> 00:10:29.700 so notice especially this point that I put on this slide here flying foxes embody the future of 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:39.700 other species and vice versa the future of the species it's being lies in the relation that they 00:10:39.700 --> 00:10:47.400 have to other species and so the point here is that encounters like these shows that others enable 00:10:47.400 --> 00:10:49.050 Our lives NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:10:49.050 --> 00:10:57.600 and this realisation can and should translate into an ethics and that is a way of acting and once 00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:05.300 we've seen the world from the flying foxes point of view or point of tongue you might say and through 00:11:05.300 --> 00:11:11.700 their social lives through their playfulness through their interactions with other species through 00:11:11.700 --> 00:11:18.100 their way of being once we've seen that these are creatures who have rich lives with complex 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:19.200 Entanglements NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:27.700 then Australian people's treatment of them seems quite horrid. Australian settlers have had both the 00:11:27.700 --> 00:11:34.600 very direct and and the more sort of indirect structural animosity towards these creatures almost 00:11:34.600 --> 00:11:43.000 like a war and Rolls then asks how can we create peace and the answer I believe is with an ethics 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:49.200 that starts with sameness and flows from appreciating how others enable our lives NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:55.849 Not starting with ourselves and how we can live but starting with how we enable others and how others 00:11:55.849 --> 00:12:04.500 enables our lives, it is an ethics that starts from asking what life do I enable and what others 00:12:04.500 --> 00:12:07.100 Enable my life NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:12:10.100 --> 00:12:17.100 the other source of hope that I mentioned in the beginning is hope in how the world works and I've 00:12:17.100 --> 00:12:23.400 illustrated that here with some grass that grows in pavement cracks and the idea is that you know no 00:12:23.400 --> 00:12:31.900 matter how much we try and cage in and pave over nature it will still stubbornly grow in the cracks 00:12:31.900 --> 00:12:38.500 and ends no matter how we think and no matter how destructively we act the 00:12:38.500 --> 00:12:40.000 grass is still going to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:41.800 grow NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:12:42.700 --> 00:12:50.599 and for this point I am going to focus on the article by Kristina Lyon decomposition as life 00:12:50.599 --> 00:12:58.700 politics so Lyon begins her article with the vignette that shows how she experiences several 00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:06.000 different kinds of decomposition and decay so she writes about the scent of rotting 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:13.450 fruit the sound of larvae chewing on leaves the feel of her boots NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:13:13.450 --> 00:13:17.850 As they crunch down on layers of decaying stalks NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:13:17.850 --> 00:13:26.100 and the point is that there's hope to be found in this processes of decomposition and decay so she 00:13:26.100 --> 00:13:33.150 writes about the kind of life that farmers are able to make flourish in between wars and the 00:13:33.150 --> 00:13:39.750 criminalised and poison ecology of coca plantations and their indication in the Colombian Amazon 00:13:39.750 --> 00:13:44.250 it's a situation where widespread fumigation with chemicals NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:13:44.250 --> 00:13:52.600 and the increase in extractive Industries like plantations and Mining has seemed to lead to a 00:13:52.600 --> 00:14:01.700 strangling of life from the inside out it's not just killing but that the conditions of life are taken 00:14:01.700 --> 00:14:02.900 away NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:12.700 and one of the farmers Lyons talks to uses the term agriculture of death to refer to these 00:14:12.700 --> 00:14:17.500 large-scale market-oriented monoculture Plantation based practices NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:14:17.500 --> 00:14:25.600 but even here even with all these destructive things the life potential of these 00:14:25.600 --> 00:14:34.500 local amazonians ecologists lies in two things and they are first that 00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:40.800 they lie in the local practices that strive to learn from their local landscape and 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:46.700 nurture those landscapes for the future and the second is that they lie in decay and 00:14:46.700 --> 00:14:47.900 decomposition NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:14:47.900 --> 00:14:49.950 itself NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 67% (MEDIUM) 00:14:49.950 --> 00:14:57.600 so the farmers promote local farming practices they're learning from the local landscape 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:03.300 and for one of the farming families Lyons describes them having a partnership with the 00:15:03.300 --> 00:15:11.100 soil she says that what they are doing is creating conditions rather than imposing conditions and in 00:15:11.100 --> 00:15:20.600 industrial plantations would be the perfect example of imposing conditions right NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:15:20.600 --> 00:15:28.100 and so these local farmers create conditions and they do so among other things by composting and by 00:15:28.100 --> 00:15:35.200 nurturing the soil and also by planting plants that are good for other plants such as plants that 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:43.200 give cover to others and plants and bring with them microbes that nurture the roots so this is kind of 00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:50.650 farming that has as its aim to produce conditions for further farming to be possible NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 69% (MEDIUM) 00:15:50.650 --> 00:15:58.300 you know producing food is important sure but what might be even more important in this kind of 00:15:58.300 --> 00:16:06.550 farming is that you're able to produce the conditions for further farming to be possible There's 00:16:06.550 --> 00:16:13.500 Hope in decomposition and because this is a part of what creates these conditions what enables 00:16:13.500 --> 00:16:20.700 future farming to it was for but this is also hopeful because there's life potential inherent NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:16:20.700 --> 00:16:25.650 and in decaying leaves and the decomposition itself NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:16:25.650 --> 00:16:34.100 and for these farmes there's hope in the way that the Amazonian soils themselves work so Amazonian 00:16:34.100 --> 00:16:40.500 soils cannot be taken over by intensive agricultural practices they argue they can only be 00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:49.500 destroyed and abandoned Amazonian soils cannot sustain intensive agriculture for long because they 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:55.950 become depleted it's after intensive use the soil themselves NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 58% (MEDIUM) 00:16:55.950 --> 00:17:01.900 refuse to continue working and just become dead in a way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:17:01.900 --> 00:17:09.599 but they're only apparently dead they're only seemingly dead and there is always the 00:17:09.599 --> 00:17:16.599 possibility according to the Amazonian Farmers that one can revitalise such destroyed soils if you 00:17:16.599 --> 00:17:25.400 if you practice right kind of slow decomposing and decomposition composting and 00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:28.300 decomposition practices NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:29.700 --> 00:17:38.300 the more generally with if we think through decay and decomposition then life and death are not 00:17:38.300 --> 00:17:46.900 oppositional says Lyons decomposition is a kind of regenerative dying and so we might say that 00:17:46.900 --> 00:17:53.000 there are two kinds of death here in Lyons case one is the kind of death that plantations and 00:17:53.000 --> 00:18:00.050 fumigation bring this is a death that strangles the conditions for life this is anthropocene death NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:18:00.050 --> 00:18:07.600 the other is the death of decomposition it is the way that the decaying old leaves die death that 00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:17.600 decomposes into new forms of life that that is part of creating conditions but composting and 00:18:17.600 --> 00:18:25.250 decomposition may also be an alternative to the classic western story of death and new Life as I've 00:18:25.250 --> 00:18:30.050 Touched on in the previous videos with decomposition NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:18:30.050 --> 00:18:37.800 composting we get in the sense the opposite of putting the past behind us and starting in a new right 00:18:37.800 --> 00:18:45.500 instead of putting the old behind us recycle the old back in the old is what creates the new the old 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:51.900 creates the conditions for something to continue without the old being cycled in there is no new 00:18:51.900 --> 00:18:53.500 life