Extinction Companion Species as a Figuration of Loss and Recovery of “Being of the World”. On Ethics in Dis/Appearing Worlds
摘要
In this chapter, I offer the concept of extinction companion species as an ethical concept for the times of loss that trouble the world today and the world as “we” know it. I understand the times of loss as mostly related to the 6th mass extinction with an eye, however, to losses that affect human/non-human communities, languages, and cultures. Contemporary biology and philosophyphilosophy underline the collaborative and symbiotic aspects of evolutionevolution. These do not replace the competitive drives of nature’sNature dynamics but rather add to the more nuanced picture of how lifelife forms and ways of being emerge. Against this backdrop, as extinction studies scholars point out, species extinction becomes an eventevent stretched in time: one that does not start nor end with the death of the last representative of the given species. As the existenceexistence of different forms of lifelife is mutually co-constituted and entangled, the disappearance of one “thread” disturbs much more than “just” this “thread” and causes the unraveling of the “web of lifeweb of life” beyond the scope of one species. In this context, I turn to feminist philosophyphilosophy to ask for remedies and perspectives of recovery or regeneration. I read together insights from Joanna Żylińska and Claire Colebrook’sColebrook, Claire work as the two are invested in the criticalcritique (critical) investigation of how philosophyphilosophy and popular culture envision recovery and what are the ethico-political costs of those save-the-world narratives. This context uncovers violenceviolence inherent in the very concept of world and human recovery. I suggest staying with this violenceviolence—with the human trouble—and I ask how to be responsible for the legacy of humanism without maintaining the exclusionary gestures. The (always) partial answer comes with extinction companion species as a notion that underlines anthropo-de-centeringanthropo-de-centering, partiality, and plurality of worlds, relations, ways of being, and peripheral position of the human. Extinction companion species is a “kin claim”; it encourages kinship with unbecoming of the world as “we” know it and of the human, and it encourages accepting the human decay to look for ways of becoming otherwise.