Reference: More-Than-Human Governance Experiments in Europe Hub: IMRC Canon
“elitist, niche or out of touch” (7)
Reminds me of the passage from Merton “Rain and the Rhinoceros” where he speaks positively of the rain (and more broadly the experience of nature outside of capital): “At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.” Whether intoned negatively or positively, its common to think of other species as gratuitous or meaningless (hence concern with their will or wellbeing is elitist and out of touch).. is this an incidental cultural mode or is it sourced from our ideological base structure? Is civil personhood dependent on the gratuitousness and meaninglessness of the more than human?
“‘Living’ documents,” “protocols,” “reciprocity and care” “the idea that relationships are not one-way and that rather than mere obligation or constraint, an approach that centres mutuality…”(12)
It’s noted that these were some of the terms that appeared in many different contexts, sometimes with no clear common basis. What is it about engagement with the more-than-human that points in the direction of mutualism - as well as protocols and “living documents”? My own work in the last year has been focused on open protocolization as a viable alternative to institutionalization - sometimes resorted to because a culture has a sense of epistemological openness and curiosity that doesn’t match institutionalization (90’s UK rave culture), and sometimes because access to institutions is simply unavailable (legal or cultural marginalization i.e. s&m, LSD)… nonetheless, in the latter case, open protocolization is by nature more pluralistic and thus more open. In short, if institutions are the site of an epistemic “discipline” that valorizes humans and splits the world into subjects and objects rather than entanglements and relationships, the reflexive response for a newly entangled world - open _protocolizatio_n, open reciprocity ..