Paper short abstract:

I present a brief case for keeping RRI fluid, shaken up, and weird by taking a multispecies approach to social needs, response-ability, and personhood, using the motto “Keep RRI Weird” as a topoi to address the serious business of doing ridiculous things.

Paper long abstract:

I present a brief case for keeping RRI fluid, shaken up, and weird by taking a multispecies approach to social needs, response-ability, and personhood. In one sense, multispecies RRI is a wholly serious proposal. For RRI and other modes of science governance to account for the potential shapes of livable futures, more-than-human interdependencies must be recognized. Society must be defined to include all creatures whose needs and interests matter—to flourishing futures, and to care-full presents. Principles that are well-developed in multispecies studies, including relationality, kin, and care, productively contribute to the kinds of conversations that social scientists often aim to convene through RRI. At the same time, the idea of multispecies RRI tends to scamper in playful, experimental, unsure, weird directions. It becomes necessary to address sincere questions—questions with well-crafted answers in multispecies studies—that still sometimes meander into schoolyard or stoner territory, such as: what does becoming able to respond to a rose bush entail? A raven? A rock? Using the motto “Keep RRI Weird” as a topoi to address the serious business of doing ridiculous things, I argue that multispecies approaches can and should contribute to sedate policy discussions, and that play, irony, and even silliness may be essential in asking earnest questions about whose abilities to respond matter.