Life Out Of Place: Revisiting Species Invasions. Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This introduction begins at the Bruges 2018 Triennial Liquid City, where the research and design collective Rotor, the Ghent Centre for Global Studies, and Anna L. Tsing organised an interdisciplinary workshop on the trajectories of displaced species. Looking back to the collaborative reflection that emerged during the workshop, and the pandemic since, this special issue recalls invasive species from within the broader field of multispecies research. It proposes a relational, entangled approach to expose and examine the contradictions and instabilities that shape the more-than-human entanglements through which humans recasts certain non-humans as ‘invasives’. Interweaving the journeys of crabs, moles, rabbits, and fungi in and out of human-designed worlds, this article formulates three sets of guiding questions for the special issue. Our questions inquire into the conceptual and scientific frameworks, the material infrastructures, and the repertoires of human reactions to disturbances, exposing how species invasion initiates relations of correspondence that exceed categories of ‘invasiveness’.