Category: texts + books

A manifesto is a public declaration of the purpose, principles, or plan of action of a group or individual.

…derived from the Italian word manifesto, itself derived from the Latin manifestum, meaning clear or conspicuous. Its first recorded use in English is from 1620, in Nathaniel Brent‘s translation of Paolo Sarpi‘s History of the Council of Trent: “To this citation he made answer by a Manifesto” (p. 102). Similarly, “They were so farre surprised with his Manifesto, that they would never suffer it to be published”

Distinct permutations: the political promise, political party platform, the movement manifesto (including political and art manifestos, the personal manifesto (ugh).

Extensive collection of links to historical manifestos: http://www.manifestos.net/titles/

I am looking for sample language to compose #MSU demands. What is the formal rhetorical style? What is the format? Is it like this?

Unions for All means doing four things:

1. Bring employers, workers and government together at industry-wide bargaining tables to negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions.
2. Establish the National Labor Relations Act as the floor rather than the ceiling for laws governing worker organizing, allowing states and cities to empower workers to join together in a union beyond the limits of federal law.
3. Ensure that every public dollar is used to create good, union jobs and that every federal worker and contractor makes at least $15 an hour and has the opportunity to join a union.
4. Put good union jobs at the center of any major economic proposal, such as Healthcare for All or the Green New Deal.

Just transition language:

(Just Transition Center report): At its heart just transition requires us to leave no one behind.
– For coal and oil communities, community renewal with investment in new energy, new industries and new jobs is vital.
– For cities, investment in low and zero emissions transport, clean energy and circular economy are the way forward.
– For industry, switching to renewable energy must be supplemented with clean industrial processes.
– For workers, collective bargaining ensures that essential support is there for reskilling and redeployment.
– And, for governments and their leaders, just transition offers the opportunity to solve three key challenges at once: Climate change, growing inequality and social inclusion.

It would also be great to create our own map like this one:

Brian Michael Murphy shared this article by Natasha Myers, How to grow liveable worlds: Ten (not-so-easy) steps for life in the Planthroposcene, and I’ve been thinking about how to work with it in unexpected ways (expected ways might include the usual, impossible-to-achieve and privileged individual or atomized family going off grid, a jaunt with ayahuasca hosted by a Daniel Pinchbeck accolade or if you’re really flush an eco-trip trip to Peru to do it on location).
I’m thinking small: helicopter parenting your seedlings, which is a long term relationship many times a day; talking to the trees in your neighborhood; trying to get the aggressive species to play nice in your yard (not ripping them out as that is hopeless anyway without destroying everybody else’s day); not being so pro-forma with your houseplants – that is, it’s not just your weekly obligation but an attention to their needs, which can be tweaked: you are their legs after all, and so on.

In an enlarged space of sociality,
– developing a dis-econocentric set of values and practices is always good.
– fiddling with or overhauling your relationship to time, by slowing down, canceling things, being idle, napping, listening for longer than you think possible, doing less, fading back, leaning back, looking around (not forward or back).

Related links:

Future bibliography:

A politic that is not human-centric?
Facing Gaia, Bruno Latour
1st, 7th, 8th lectures

Readings at intersection of feminism, multispecies, labor, care:

Ecofeminism: an overview, science direct
mary mellor, ariel salleh, giovannah di chiro, vandana shiva,

Alyssa Battistoni:
– Material World (on Latour)

Rights and personhood

Systems-centric early ecofeminism

Technoecologies of Borders: Thinking with Borders as Multispecies Matters of Care. Barla, Josef; Hubatschke, Christoph. Australian Feminist Studies , Dec2017, Vol. 32 Issue 94, p395-410
Reading Félix Guattari’s concept of ecology through feminist accounts of care and solidarity, and vice versa, in this article, we propose the concept of feminist technoecology as a speculative mode of thinking with borders. Rather than considering borders as lines on maps or primarily as physical arrangements, we argue that feminist technoecology allows for an understanding of borders as multispecies matters of care where cuts that matter are enacted, and precisely therefore calls for transversal solidarity and care that goes beyond the human. Turning to two stories revolving around the naturalisation of borders, bodies, and territories, we demonstrate that a technoecological take on borders not only fundamentally questions an a-priori distinction between technology, ecology, geology, politics, bodies, and a more-than-human world, but also foregrounds different modes of attentiveness with regard to questions of care, nativity, and mattering.

A Feminist Posthumanist Multispecies Ethnography for Educational Studies. Lloro-Bidart, Teresa. Educational Studies , May/Jun2018, Vol. 54 Issue 3
The “animal” or “more-than-human” turn in the humanities and social sciences has challenged nature/culture binaries in the fields of environmental education and early childhood studies, yet the field of educational studies has yet to confront its humanist roots. In this article, I sketch a nascent conceptual framework that outlines how multispecies ethnography, as a methodology informed by critical strands of feminist posthumanism, can begin to address and redress both social and species injustices in educational studies. To do this, I first provide a brief overview of educational humanism to situate the article within the “animal” and “more-than-human” turns in education. I then define multispecies ethnography and briefly review educational multispecies ethnographic research. Next, I sketch the conceptual framework, which is guided by feminist posthumanist theories of performativity and intersectionality, providing ethnographic examples from my own research projects and the research literature. I conclude by drawing out the implications for educational studies, with a consideration of how animal performativity and intersectionality open up new lines of inquiry to explore animal concerns, as well as social ones.

Traces “we” leave behind : toward the feminist practice of stig(e)merging. Rogowska Stangret, Monika. In: Ecozon@ [Ecozona]: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment. 2020 11:178-186
As Serpil Oppermann has stated “the Anthropocene has come to signify a discourse embedded in the global scale vision of the sedimentary traces of the anthropos” (“The Scale of the Anthropocene” 2). In the following article we wish to revisit the practice of leaving traces through thinking with wastes as traces human beings leave behind and lands of waste that co-compose today’s naturecultures (Haraway, Companion Species). Situating our research in the context of Polish ecocriticism, we would like to think-with an art project by Diana Lelonek entitled Center for the Living Things, in which the artist gathers and exhibits waste that “have become the natural environment for many living organisms” (Lelonek). Following the ambivalent and chaotic traces of wastes, we offer a concept of stig(e)merging to rethink the “unruly edges” (Tsing 141-54) of capitalist wastelands. We fathom stig(e)merging as a feminist methodology that relies on reacting to changes and alterations in the milieu, as well as the actions and needs of others, and on participating in the common work of reshaping the un/wasted world together with them. 

More-than-human emotions: Multispecies emotional labour in the tourism industry. Dashper, Katherine. GENDER WORK AND ORGANIZATION; JAN 2020; 27; 1; p24-p40
The concept of emotional labour has been subject to critique, evaluation, development and extension over the last 35 years, but it remains firmly anthropocentric. This article begins to address this shortcoming by illustrating some of the productive potential of extending the concept of emotional labour to include more‐than‐human and multispecies perspectives. Organizations are not solely human phenomena, but research usually fails to consider the role of non‐humans in work in contemporary capitalism. Using the example of trail horses in tourism, I argue that some non‐human animals should be considered workers, and that they do perform emotional labour in service to commercial organizations. More‐than‐human and multispecies perspectives capture some of the complexities of everyday organizational practices, and can inform feminist research attuned to the experiences of marginalized others, human and non‐human.

what’s the latest on just transition?

Salient notes from this Feb 2021 article, regarding California’s plan to phase out oil production:

80 organizations sent a letter today to the EPA, NRDC, Office of Planning and Research, Labor and Workforce development) asking them to conduct a robust public process for each report, and produce documents that genuinely incorporate emerging community concerns.

The letter makes five specific recommendations regarding the substance of the reports, pertinent to the needs of all communities but refinery communities in particular:

• Wage and benefit support for workers.  The letter points out the need for the Roadmap to focus on how to replace lost wages and benefits, such as health insurance, for not only the refinery workers who lose their jobs, but all the indirectly employed workers who will suffer as well – like the guy at the local deli who makes the sandwiches where the workers have lunch, and the maid at the hotel where visiting contractors and company officials stay, that sort of thing.  It is not enough to just talk about retraining workers, or eventually developing other industries for them to work in – they will need help right away.
• Focus on community needs.  Although the Roadmap is being drawn up at the state level, it must recognize that a solid transition on the scale necessary for a refinery community needs to be fully community-based – grounded in ideas that arise organically in the community, directed by community leaders, and reflecting the community’s diverse needs and interests.  A top-down just transition strategy will not work.
• Focus on site cleanup needs.  It is hard to talk about transition and revitalization for a community that’s saddled with an enormous contaminated site in its midst. While the issue of abandoned infrastructure is most relevant to the action plan report, the Roadmap report needs to also consider the need to clean up contaminated refinery (and other) industry sites as part of helping communities find their new economic direction.
• Close scrutiny of crude to biofuels transitions.  It is important that the action plan report ask the right questions about the announced plans (and others that may emerge) to turn crude oil refineries into biofuel refineries.  A poorly executed biofuels project is not a just transition solution – it risks perpetuating some of the same problems that attend crude refining, and creating new ones.  Our recent comments submitted in the Contra Costa County environmental review process highlights some of the possible unintended consequences that CalEPA and the Natural Resources Agency need to take a good close look at.
• Ensuring financial support for transition from industry.  In the end, ensuring a just transition means having the funds to pay for it.  And certainly in the case of refinery community transitions, those funds should come substantially from the industry itself, which has for decades burdened vulnerable communities with its presence there.