BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES

On October 26th, I opened my mailbox to see an invitation to participate in a roundtable: Queer Ecologies Symposium.

Hosted by the British Society for Literature and Science and the University of Oxford, the annual one-day online symposium, held December 1st, 2023, was geared towards Post Graduate and Early Career Research participants, but open to all.

Co-organised by Drs Laura E. Ludtke (she/her), Joshua Phillips (he/him), and Martina Astrid Rodda (they/them), the symposium sought to foster conversations about a wide range of topics relevant to queer ecology, across the field of literature and science, medicine, and technology. Participants were invited to reconsider ‘nature as nature’ and to imagine ways of relating to, engaging with, knowing, and representing the environment that do not reproduce the established anthropocentric, technocapitalist, petrocultural, heteronormative, cisgender, ableist, colonial models.

The interdisciplinary roundtable on anticolonialism and queer ecology included Dr Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford), Dr Lara Choksey (University College London) and myself.

In the past symposium themes included topics like: Environments of Literature and Science, Extinctions and Rebellions, Decolonising Literature and Science and The Subterranean Anthropocene.

“We would be delighted if you would consider contributing to the roundtable,” the email read, “because of the way your work intersects with and speaks to these topics.”

I didn’t know any of these people personally and had no idea how they even came to know I existed. I have to tell you that when I read the email I wasn’t very clear on the ways in which my work intersected with this topic. I had to go back to my work and I had to research the terminology as well.

Among other things, “queer ecology” challenges traditional ideas regarding which organisms, individuals, memories, species, visions, objects, etc. have value. It challenges the idea that humans have more value than any other lifeforms.

This definition gave me some clarity on why I was selected for the roundtable.

As an example, in August 2022, I was commissioned by Bocas Lit Fest to compose a piece on Banwari wo/man, 3400 BCE: the earliest known inhabitant of the Antilles, whose remains were found at Banwari Trace in South Trinidad. The remains had been known as Banwari Man, though more recent research suggests it could also have been a woman.

The commission came about as Trinidad and Tobago readied our 60th Independence celebrations.

I am the root.

she/he

I have never been suited to your classifications.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm-meaning,

You have tried to measure my story with limited instruments.

Zoology. Anthropology. Archaeology. Geography. Cartography.

Understanding evades you still.

You made your discovery, uncovered me, just west of the Coora River

where my footsteps ended.

Shell, stone and bone, midden upturned by your industry, you did not see, you walked where I tread.

When the world was young and endless we knew nothing. Content to witness all the wonder of the universe unfolding, as we are, learning.

Ooooooooohhhh—--wwwwweeeeee

When the world was young we flowed over the land like water, spoke the languages of birds, sought the kinship of rocks and travelled through and to the stars with the ease of breathing.

Every hunter travelled with seeds.

We could never take without giving.

Soil is living.

— Excerpt from “Unearthed”

I spoke to my parents about the roundtable and my father suggested I approach the date with confidence. “Don’t go trying to remake yourself into something you are not,” he advised. “They have come to you for work you have already done. Speak about what you know.”

The event was sold out and many of you have been asking how things went. I will share a couple of the roundtable questions and my responses here…

Q: In her chapter ‘Queer Ecologies and Queer Environmentalisms’ in The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies, Nicole Seymour returns to the affinities Greta Gaard earlier traced between ‘queers’ and ‘nature’ as subjects of exploitation, to suggest that ‘the marriage between queer theory and ecocriticism’ is often disconnected in its treatment of the former as urban and the latter as rural, and to remind us of queer ecology’s ‘roots in antiracism, decolonialism, and environmental justice’. With that in mind, how do you see queer ecology as speaking to your work (research, teaching, public engagement)? Or, how does your work speak to queer ecology?

A: Like many other indigenous peoples I believe we are a part of nature, not apart from nature.

All of nature is vital to its survival. All life is connected and interrelated. Therefore, all tribes are important. We live in a world where human beings see themselves at the top of the hierarchy. It is as though, only human life is valuable. The indigenous way of life is to respect all life.

In my writing I talk about this concept of being part of nature and strengthening our connection to nature. I believe we were much closer to nature than we are now, I believe we had a much deeper understanding about our relationship to nature and to the land than we acknowledge or remember now.

Somewhere along the way human beings started to act as though the land was simply capital which could be owned, which could be bought and sold. I believe this commodification played a role in the disruption of our relationship with nature. This desire to own and control also fed colonialism and the growth of capitalism and the illusion of scarcity.

Our fixation on control and categorization and standardisation outside of this context - that we are part of nature - I think can sometimes get in the way of us uncovering deeper understandings about ourselves.

We are also continually judging things through this human lens, judging the importance of matters on the scale of what may be important to the human being. And even then it seems that some human beings matter more than others.

Q. How can the theories and praxis of literature and science studies help to extend queer ecology beyond the biological relationships implied by ‘ecology’? Not all of you are directly scholars of literature and science, which is precisely why we are asking this question: are these framings helpful to you? What else/other can be done?

A: I saw something online which said that: Queer ecologists strive toward a world in which human and nonhuman beings are less divided and more entangled and dependent on one another than ever.

Indigenous people all over the world understand the importance of developing relationships with all our relations: the grasses, the trees, the frogs and insects, the rocks and the river - everything has its purpose.

In the Caribbean people sometimes say: If dog and cat can live together, why can’t we? People don’t usually expect an answer to the question but it challenges the theories we may have developed based on “what we know” of the behaviours of cats and dogs and what might happen when they are left alone together. This challenge makes room for us to think of that relationship unfolding in another way. So we can ask ourselves if we are meant to restrict ourselves based on what we have been told to expect of ourselves. What if another way was possible? What if we allowed ourselves to believe that another way was possible?

I think also an awareness of the language used by academia to describe things. I understand the evolution of academic language and the way it facilitates understanding and standardisation but you must be aware that as much as it improves access it also limits access. It has created a contrived hierarchy, much like the dominant use of English Language has.

If you go into the field to interview an indigenous midwife and ask her to describe the way her postcolonial work disrupts capitalism, she may take a minute to respond because you are using a language that is unfamiliar to her. She may not have anything to say at all. It may not be because she cannot add value to the conversation but you have restricted her access to the dialogue but choosing to frame the conversation in a tone that is mostly convenient for you. You cannot hear other languages if you insist on yours being the loudest.

We should be expressing gratitude to the other forms of life that support our existence, and recognise that we cannot exist without each other.

Make room for collective thriving.

Q. What implications might thinking in terms of ‘queer ecologies’ have for interdisciplinary work that is shaped by anticolonial, queer, trans, and crip studies?

A: Our fixation on control and categorization and standardisation outside of this context - that we are part of nature - I think can sometimes get in the way of us uncovering deeper understandings about ourselves.

Our environment impacts our way of life and yet we rarely include indigenous voices, wildlife and land rights in our reasonings.

We can try to dam the river and it will hold until the day there is “record breaking” rain. The river reclaims its space. Perhaps if we think beyond attempting to dam the river to control its flow we can imagine another way of water delivery.

If we leave more room for imagination perhaps we leave room for opportunities for a more inclusive and sustainable relationship with the natural world.

We need to see nature not as an “other” but as kin. Being part of a bioregion comes with a responsibility. We don’t treat the earth like we are tourists, just here for the photos and the experience, without care for sustainability or what happens when we leave. We exist with the consciousness of caretakers. We are not so obsessed with leaving for another planet that we don’t really care what happens to this one.