Ecological perceptions: new growth from the soil of environmental knowledges in Oceania

• In Event: COMPOSTING Feminisms and Environmental Humanities 1: Decolonising Naturecultures

Abstract

Over the past five decades, the ‘ecological’ has transformed itself within Anglophone settler colonies from a scientific concept to a widespread imaginary anticipating human-beyond-human relations in a (hopefully) more just world. The naïve optimism surrounding early feminist attempts to engage with the ecological has long since given way to a critical post-humanism embracing partiality, troubled affect and the becoming of incompleteness. But where do scientific models of ecology fit with this post-humanist materiality? Must we wholly reject the emphasis on management, planning, testing, counting and statistical knowledge as effacing affect and reproducing colonial and masculinist dominance? How can we talk affect and statistics in polyphonic sympathy? And how can decolonizing knowledges further trouble our current settlements of knowledge of human-environment, nature-culture? Drawing on observations, reflections and knowledges from Australia and the Pacific, this paper will attempt to traverse meaning, affect and possibility in ‘ecology’ as a modest step towards growing new practices from the fertile soil of recomposed ecological sciences, decolonising Pacific knowledges and anti-colonial feminisms.

Author

• Rachel Morgain, Fenner School of Environment and Society: Australian National University