My dissertation – “Farfetchings: on and in the sf mode” – addresses two concerns

that are for me inextricably linked: science fiction (sf) as a way of thinking about the
world and radical ecological ethics. Inspired by the work of Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. –
among other sf scholars – I argue that sf is best considered not as a genre of literature or
film but as a mode of awareness available to many different media and social practices.
Indeed, while I am well-versed in the history and workings of the sf genre, in my work I
prefer to focus on sf as a form of worlding. “Farfetching”, a term coined by ecofeminist
sf writer Ursula K. Le Guin, refers to the skill of arriving at intuitive perceptions of moral
entireties. In other words, using metaphors rather than rational symbols, farfetching
offers a way to investigate and express new forms of ecological ethics and practices in
this world that is, alas, the case.
Many of the recent metaphors for thinking planetarity – e.g. Gaia, Spaceship
Earth, and the global village – not only forge links between ecology and globalization but
also clearly draw on sf iconography. Indeed, as exercises in science-fictional worlding,
both globalization and ecology remake time and space, implying in the process that all
humans on Earth be considered one deme, a local interbreeding population with a single
fate. Like modernization before it, globalization is itself an expression of the sf mode, an
ongoing project in which the hype about being global can never be distinguished from the
process of becoming global. We live, as many have suggested, in a science-fictional
world, one where the farfetched and unimaginable quickly become yesterday’s news.
Don’t believe the hype, it’s a changing same, etc., and yet – something has happened, is
happening, and will keep happening that is somehow “science fictional” in scope. The
rhetoric of globalization insists that we rethink the planet as a network comprised of
nodes and paths of circulation. The network metaphor simultaneously includes and
excludes, cutting across without going through the landscape it supposedly embraces.
Indeed, while globalization projects promise various forms of unification, it is more
interesting, I argue, to follow the sf practice of vividly imagining multiple and
contradictory futures, looking at the ways that globalization also creates multiple worlds,
multiple ways of being both global and local, ways whose overlaps and tensions create
erosion, torque, and what anthropologist Anna Tsing calls friction.
The project I call “The Ecology of Everyday Life” takes this as its starting point,
asking in particular how – from wherever we take our stand – we can adapt to and make a
difference in an increasingly science fictional globalizing situation, one in which global
warming, mass extinction, and a forever war on terror inform the texture and tenor of
day-to-day existence. Given the deep roots of anthropocentrism and human
exceptionalism in globalizing Euro-American societies, it will – I argue – take a lot more
than a few alternate energy sources to change our trajectory, to bring the human species
and much of the other life on Earth back from the brink of extinction. While an
important conceit of anthropocentric worlding is that the “human” remain an unmarked
category, recent work in what Cary Wolfe calls “posthumanist” theory has called
attention to the ways that the human is either defined through essential or primary
qualities (e.g. the Christian soul, the Cartesian cogito, Hegelian reason, etc.) or – and
perhaps more importantly – defined against its others, including not only “nature” and
other animals, but also those humans considered somehow less than human: the slave, the
woman, the person of color, the disabled, etc. Indeed, although the vague epithet
“nonhuman” may be useful and even necessary for scholars concerned with
anthropocentrism, it actually serves to reinforce rather than undermine the illusion of an
unmarked and unchanging human condition. To remedy this, I advocate turning away
from an indicative or imperative “human” and embracing instead a conditional one.
Unlike the indicative – which claims to represent reality – or the imperative – which aims
to make it so – the conditional is hypothetical, uncertain, and contingent, leaving very
much open what kind of critter the human is and, by extension, what kind of world it
inhabits.
While I applaud and support the efforts of planetary humanism – a practical
philosophy that seeks to extend rights or respect to all humans, no matter creed, color,
ability, sex, sexual orientation or gender – my own path lies in embracing instead this
“human conditional”, a perspective that requires us to think beyond humanism and
articulate new ways of relating not only with other plants, animals, and microbes, but also
with those material things that are the basis of all life and those mutable ideas that are the
basis of all thought. While intelligence and tool-use may provide humanity with an
adaptive trump card in the short term, as futurist Ervin László has suggested, they may
not actually correspond to a longer-term survival advantage. In other words, if we
humans are to not only survive but thrive on this planet we call our home, we must
foreground the process of making first contact with and learning from the planet and the
other ways of being it embraces. Giving up over and over again the ideologies of both
ecological doom and ecological salvation, in “The Ecology of Everyday Life” I insist that
from moment to moment we can choose the futures, presents, and pasts that we create.
The global challenge we are facing today requires not so much a technical solution – for
we already have the technologies required to modernize and industrialize otherwise – as a
theoretical and philosophical one, an orientation that can be translated into a large-scale
shift in human consciousness. Yes, human ecological adaptation is a global issue – but
new ways of relating with nonhuman beings not only can but must begin in the local, in
making first contact here and now rather than out there somewhere – in, say, “the
rainforest” – or at some vaguely defined point in the futures.
In short, “The Ecology of Everyday Life” is animated by the following question:
How might environmental awareness and activism best be rooted in our everyday
experience and actions? Drawing on methods and concepts from science studies, animal
studies, and science fiction studies, this project involves tracing networks that hook
things, humans, other animals and ideas together in often surprising ways, encouraging
the investigation of vast webs of hidden connections, much like those often invisible
connections that allow ecologies to function. Combined with what people in the sf
community call “sense of wonder” – the affective engagement that sf is said to create –
this kind of attention might serve to remind us that ecology is an everyday, personal affair
with both local and global implications. Faced with environmental issues and problems
that seem far beyond our control, I argue that working to create and experience sense of
wonder in everyday things is one of the best ways for students and people at large to get
in touch with ecological issues. Indeed, while “Farfetchings” is primarily a work of
ecological theory, in “The Ecology of Everyday Life” I am particularly interested in
exploring and practicing the role of the “public intellectual”, a role that has been very
important in the formation of the environmental movement.
Like all of my work, “The Ecology of Everyday Life” is an interdisciplinary
project that puts me into conversation with scholars from many different fields. In
thinking about the planet and about space in general I turn, for example, to
anthropologists and social scientists like Marilyn Strathern, Tim Ingold, Anna Tsing,
James Clifford and Nigel Clark. For deep engagements with alien, other-than-human
ways of being, I engage with the work of philosophers, historians, and anthropologists of
science like Bruno Latour, Graham Harman and Karen Barad on the one hand and animal
studies scholars like Donna Haraway, Myra Hird, and Vinciane Despret on the other. As
for thinking ecological ethics, I am interested in engaging not only the traditions of
ecocriticism, deep ecology, and ecofeminism in general, but also and especially the
innovative work being done by scholars like David Abram and Timothy Morton. For
ways of thinking about how life on earth works, I also refer to scientists like James
Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, E. O. Wilson, and Richard Leakey. But the field which has
perhaps the longest tradition of engaging with both the presents and the futures of
planetarity is most certainly sf scholarship: sf theorist-practitioners like Gwyneth Jones,
Ken Macleod, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Samuel R. Delany are my guides here.
Given its longstanding tradition of promoting innovative work in
the Humanities, I can think of no better place than the Humanities Center
at Carnegie Mellon University to undertake my current project. If awarded the Junior
Fellowship, I will give innovative conference presentations, publish in peer-reviewed
journals, and look for ways to collaborate with the Humanities faculty at both Carnegie
Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. Attuned to this year’s theme, the course I would
like to teach – “The Ecology of Everyday Life” – would bring students out of the
classroom and into the here and now of globality by making first contact with the critters,
widgets, and other humans that make up their environment. Given the global challenges
we face, this is truly an excellent moment to explore new ways of
imagining planetarity, to open up new possibilities so that we humans
can not only survive but also thrive on this planet we call home.