Call for Contributors: Uplifting Non-Human Histories During the Anthropocene

The Activist History Review invites proposals for our March 2020 issue “Uplifting Non-Human Histories During the Anthropocene.”

Informed by posthumanism, critical animal studies, environmental humanities, and queer ecologies this issue attempts to disrupt normative understandings of what history is and why it matters in order to, quite literally, save our world.

This issue confronts one the most imperative contemporary issues: the ever-reaching, overwhelming sixth mass extinction.[1] In order to even conceive of a future that extends past the Anthropocene, the ecological crisis we are experiencing necessitates decentering the human in our cultural histories in the now.

Anthropocene: The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change

Capitalocene: a distinct geological epoch in which the capitalist formula of “accumulation for accumulation’s sake” has penetrated into every nook and cranny of the planet’s biophysical environment, to the point where the survival of the capitalist system has come to constitute an existential threat to the survival of humanity as a whole.

Chthulucene: The revolutionary concept that (non)/humans who survive the Anthropocene will create a community that doesn’t center the human, the capitalist, the degrading.

Inspired by the work of Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Sylvia Wynter, Myra Hird, Stacy Alaimo, Deborah Bird Rose, and Anna Tsing we ask what more-than-human histories and cultures exist, what non-human voices could educate us about, and what actors have played a role in human and post-human experiences.[2]

At the heart of this conversation is an active turn away from anthropocentrism towards embracing the more-than-human, including the more-than-animal, world (which vastly outnumbers ours).

Creative writing will be considered—fiction, sci-fi, etc.—but activist scholarship will be prioritized.

Potential topics include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Why decentering the human/anthropomorphic is imperative in our current climate.
• What this decentering looks like when viewed through Indigenous philosophy.
• Decolonial investigations of the Anthropocene.
• Contemporary more-than-human communities affected by capitalism/climate change (i.e. plants and animals, etc.).
• The real-world impact is of post-humanist study, critical animal studies, queer ecologies, environmental humanities, etc.
• Recovering the histories of more-than-human communities.
• Exploring the absence of more-than-human histories, cultural studies, etc. in human scholarship.
• Studies of more-than-human actant’s influence on human choices, ideology, culture, etc.
• The relationship between human animals and nonhuman life from a more-than-human perspective.

Please send an abstract and a short bio to mcneill_zoie@alumni.ceu.edu by February 28th, 2020. We will be offering a small stipend to contributors who are queer and/or trans Black Brown Indigenous People of Color (QTBBIPOC). Please indicate if you identify as such in your email.

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[1] Caused by the Global North, fueled by capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism. Header Photo via Wikimedia.

[2] As well as, Zoe Todd, Astrida Neimanis, Winona LaDuke, Thom van Dooren, Kath Weston, Kathryn Yusoff, Joanna Zylinska, and Mel Y. Chen.