The Creatures Collective: Manifestings

Abstract

This piece explores the work and entanglements of our research collective, formed in 2016. First, we collectively articulate the ethos and the motivations that inform the ways in which we labor to engage with complex, plural, multi-vocal experiences of extinction, “the Anthropocene,” and earth violence as they are felt and known across the diverse communities we represent. Then, drawing on more than three years of work across relations that tie us to Australia, Canada, Malaysian Borneo, the Philippines, and the United States of America, we share reflections on some of the vital relationships, methods, and “creatures” that animate our collaboration. This collection of “manifestings” aims to show how we work, very consciously, to foster more-than-human capacities for confronting the multi-scalar, cross-cosmological forms of violence that drive extinction and other forms of ecological harm in the world today.