Short Abstract:

Public struggles with environmental degradation mobilize multiple media that we as anthropologists need to engage with. How can multimodal articulations contribute to these environmental struggles critically by engaging with the universal rights, the commons, and the undercommons frameworks?

Long Abstract:

Public struggles with environmental degradation mobilize multiple media that we as anthropologists need to engage with. How can multimodal articulations contribute to these environmental struggles by critically engaging with the universal rights, the commons, and the undercommons frameworks? Mbembe calls the “universal right to breathe” as a fundamental right to existence” (Mbembe 2021, S61). The commons of “natural” elements such as air, water, land, are conceived as the process of ethical, equitable sharing of resources (Ford 2015). Yet how can these resources be equitably and ethically shared when inequalities are produced by the same systems that distribute these resources (Górska and Selim, forthcoming)? The undercommons frame claims to radically “refuse to ask for recognition…to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that,..., limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls” (Halberstam 2013, 6). The properties of a natural cultural element like air may interpellate forms of public struggles with air pollution that radically differs from water, wildfire, or landslides. How do such differences and relatedness play a role in the ways environmental degradations are understood? How are they articulated across media and diverse contexts? How are they addressed in these public struggles? This workshop invites contributions that engage with these questions and/or raise new ones. Please submit an abstract with multimodal expressions such as creative non/fiction, sounds, images, visual art, films, performances, and installations centering on public struggles with environmental degradation.

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