Collecting Stories
Articulating Worlds

When considering the ecological upheavals of our time, the question arises as to which works of art and theory manage to present visions for a better form of communal living between all species. Such indications can be found in the works of Vinciane Despret and Donna Haraway, who cultivate a speculative mode of storytelling, for example in the film “Camille & Ulysses”.

By Katharina Hoppe

It is not only the pandemic that has come to define the past months. The devastating consequences of global warming, declining biodiversity and extractivism are becoming ever more apparent, even in the global North. The most probable cause of the COVID-19 pandemic - zoonosis - is also proof of the fact that interrelations between different species, in their relative inaccessibility, can become dangerous to human life and that they will most likely become more and more so. Above all though, this confluence of concerns makes clear that, and the myriad ways in which, “we” involuntarily share this planet with others of both human and non-human nature. This insight is of course far older than the pandemic..

In Which Ways Can We Rethink Futures?

The pandemic experience has however underlined the interconnectedness with other people, with the saliva and breath of others, just as it has with other far-removed animals, markets, viruses, bacteria, human and non-humans. It has also become apparent that social behaviour by no means constitutes an exclusively human experience. Contacts, interactions and co-existence connect us voluntarily and involuntarily with a whole host of human and non-human others and can themselves be a source of danger. Inter-species relationships are by no means solely destructive but rather they enable, nourish and in their double – genuinely ambiguous – nature they are also a fundamental element of sociality. However, many ecological, inter-species relational structures are damaged to such an extent that some are now lost forever. Which works of art and theory are able to engage with these developments? Which ways of thinking may enable us to mourn yet also articulate still possible futures?

Two thinkers, who have made efforts in their own unique ways to analyse and understand the transformations of damaged, inter-species co-existence are the Belgian philosopher of science Vinciane Despret and the US-American biologist and feminist theorist Donna Haraway. Their work stands out due to a specific approach to the world. Knowledge about the world – both agree – is good knowledge if those, who recognise this, acknowledge their involvement with the world and in recognising this, consciously involve themselves with the world. Despret has described such an epistemological mode as follows:

Knowledge: A Process of Getting to Know the World

Both Despret’s and Haraway’s projects deal with an approach towards the complexity of sociality’s manifold interrelations between different species and, in doing so, the need to take articulations of the world seriously. What can become apparent with this approach is the fact that it is madness to believe the world is waiting to be decoded by “us”. Knowledge is far more a process of getting to know the world, which for its part never stands still. Such a process also requires passion – passionate, critical, involvedness – and reinforces the fact that it is not only humans, who articulate themselves in the world or come to articulate the world.

To face the world in ways that consider it more than a simple commodity requires an ethical positioning, in which genuine curiosity and a critical approach play a central role. Both of these aspects allow individuals and collective bodies to be understood in terms of their diverse enabling factors. Such approaches make a genuine attempt to engage with otherness and do not use it for one’s own mean. It is important to cultivate an ethos of curiosity, particularly in relation to non-human others, when aiming to imagine new forms of co-existence.

Just as the film Camille & Ulysses by Diana Toucedo, screened by the Goethe-Institut Brussels in association with La Loge, demonstrates, it is the power of storytelling, which can be of particular use when articulating other, still possible worlds. When attempting this form of articulation it is important to make things present or, to pick up on a formulation by Isabelle Stengers, articulation is a practice of engaging “in the presence of”. For example, artistic practices, which materialise in writing and films such as Camille & Ulysses can aid in creating such presents. This idea deals with involved presents, which exhibit and expound upon their own process of development, as well as displaying speculative qualities and outlining possible futures.

An Act of Collecting

Despret and Haraway make recurring references to the science-fiction author Ursula Le Guin when dealing with the question of storytelling. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction presents a feminist style of narration, which is anti-heroic. Instead of “his” story, the story of a hero, Le Guin considers the practice of storytelling not as the enactment of a great showdown or an apocalyptic tale, but rather as an act of collecting. The compiling of stories within a host body or receptacle describes practices with no end; it involves a narrative method that recognises the need for a “non-ending rather than a ‘happy end’”. Le Guin describes exactly this method as the specific realism of science fiction: “It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.” This strange reality must be told and, in doing so, the urge to draw finite conclusions must also be resisted, opening instead the realms of possibility. Speculative storytelling can explore these other, still possible worlds and we should aid in the articulation thereof. We will have to discover possible futures, in which we can continue to collect stories and explore inter-species constellations for liveable futures; or to put it differently: by articulating (other) worlds.