Staying Together: NatureCulture in a Changing World (Environment and Society)

Staying Together: Natureculture in a Changing World is about staying together, living together, and the dynamics and poetics of togetherness. It demonstrates, through a strong investment in nature studies, nonhuman studies, and nature culture and cohabitative readings, a commitment to interconnectedness. The contributors speak of co-habitation, a kind of co-presence that happens for the good of all and has been happening before we realized its prevalence. They argue co-beingness is deeply founded in difference, differentiation, and dispersion. They explore and investigate this fraught and profound “weness” at a variety of levels, and look at forms of biocentrism and bioegalitarianism where there are opportunities for the affirmation of difference as much as declaration of complexities in co-specicism, co-occurrence, and co-being. The book answers the following questions: How can the complexity of sustainability and survivality lead us to re-planetize the planet? Are we unworlding an Earth where the meaning and ethos “being together” demand reinvention and rearticulation? Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Chapter 1: Staying Together References Chapter 2: Dwelling in the Liminal: Intimacy, Enfolding, and Openness in More-than-Human Entanglements For an Ecological Thought of the Liminal A More-than-Human Intimacy Creative Enfoldings, Sympoietic Wanderings Tending the Openness References Chapter 3: Natureculture, Lifedeath References Chapter 4: Visualizing Staying Together: Multispecies Kinship, Caretaking, Justice, and Rebellion Multispecies Rebellion Multispecies Kinship Multispecies Caretaking Multispecies Justice Conclusion Notes References Chapter 5: Imagining Species: Humanity and the Senses in Contemporary Literature Writing the Animal A Multispecies Sensorium Notes References Chapter 6: Making Kin with Plants: Poetry in the Phytosphere Phytopoetics: The Poetry and Poiesis of Plant Life Particularizing Plants: Poetry in the Phytosphere “Buried in the Dark Earth”: Rhizospheric Poetics “Unfurling a Gesture”: Phyllospheric Poetics “Chasmic Spaces Between”: Endospheric Poetics Conclusion: Making Kin with Plants References Chapter 7: Beyond Civilization: How Far Are We Prepared to Go in Parochializing “Progress”? Dispelling Illusions of Remedies Civilization as the Wrong Turn The Mystification of Enlightenment How Did We Get Stuck in Civilization? Conclusions Notes References Chapter 8: Ecoliteracies: Epistemic Habits and Critical Knowledge between Arts and Science Research Tacit Sproutings, Epistemic Textures Knowing Fruits, Literate Roots Literary Literacy Acknowledgments Notes References Chapter 9: Our Classroom: Reflections on Teaching Global Environmental Justice Art in the Venice Lagoon References Index About the Contributors