How do we understand the lives of nonhuman animals and our relationship with and responsibilities to them? What are the artifacts or things that help configure such perceived responsibility? And what does it mean to practice conservation in the Anthropocene? Amy D. Propen seeks to answer these questions in Visualizing Posthuman Conservation in the Age of the Anthropocene, which brings a visual-material rhetorical approach into conversation with material feminisms and environmental humanities to describe how technologies, environments, bodies, and matter work together to shape and reshape how we coexist with our nonhuman kin.
Through case studies in which visual technologies and science play a prominent role in arguments to protect threatened marine species-from photographs showing the impact of ocean plastics on vulnerable sea birds, to debates about seismic testing and its impact on marine species, to maps created from GPS tracking projects-Propen advances a notion of posthuman environmental conservation that decenters the human enough to consider ideas about the material world from the vantage point of the nonhuman animal. In so bringing together work in environmental humanities, animal studies, human geography, and visual-material rhetoric, Propen further shows how interdisciplinary ways of knowing can further shape and illuminate our various lived and embodied experiences.
Author(s): Amy D. Propen
Series: New Directions in Rhetoric and Materiality
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 210
City: Columbus
Visualizing Posthuman Conservation in the Age of the Anthropocene by Amy D. Propen
HALF TITLE PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
Contents
Acknowledgments
PREFACE: The Scrub Jay and the Peanut
CHAPTER 1: Agential Entanglements and the Paradoxes of Anthropocene Technoscience
What's So Important About How We Think About Agency?
Trajectories in Rhetoric and Materiality: Or, Visual-Material Rhetorics and/Informed by New Materialisms
Early Conceptions of Material Rhetoric
New Materialisms and Its Intersections with Visual-Material Rhetorics
Compassionate Conservation, Embodied Communication, and Visuality
Visibility, Vulnerability, and Advocacy
The Precarious Paradox of Visualization
Toward a Posthuman Conservation Ethic
Chapter Summaries
CHAPTER 2: Material Rhetoric in the Midway
On Data Collection and Analysis
The Naturalcultural Matter of Vulnerable, Embodied Bodies
An Historically Vulnerable Body
The Vulnerable, Embodied Albatross
The Matter of Vulnerable Bodies, Reflected and Diffracted
On the Problematics of Representation: Reflections and Diffractions
The Photo as Embodied, Visual-Material Rhetoric: Reflections and Diffractions
Paradoxical Reflections
Trans-Corporeal Diffractions
Visual-Material, Embodied, Nontoxic Practices that Share Toxic, Elemental Space
Affective Inscriptions as Part of Material Discursive Practice
Affectual, Material Discursive Practice: The Work of the Photos
Paradox: In Shimmer, Love
Gathering into Sentiment(s)
In Material Discursive Practice, Mourning and World-Making
Mourning as Ethical Obligation and Necessary for Becoming With
Conclusion
CHAPTER 3: Seismic Risks and Vulnerable Bodies
On Data Collection and Analysis
Risk and Discourse in Technoscience
Weighing the Risk-Benefit Ratio
Mitigating Risk in a Risk Society
The “Seismic Survey Safety” Infographic
The Track Line Map
The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) Advisory Council Memo
Surfrider’s Opposition Letter
The Initial and Larger Rhetorical Implications of the MBNMS’s and Surfrider’s Maps
Risk as Perpetuated and Sustained through Discourse
Arguments and Attitudes About Valuing Marine Species in the Context of Seismic Testing
Utilitarian and Extrinsic Rationales as Also Qualified with Ecologistic Concerns
Ecologistic Concerns as Considered Part of Larger Concerns of “Do No Harm”
The Principle of “Do No Harm” as Aligned with Compassionate Conservation
Compassionate Conservation Meets Posthuman Technoscience
Compassionate Conservation in an Age of Technoscience: The California Sea Otter
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4: Tracking to Sea (in the Anthropo-scene
The Atlas as Visual-Material Rhetoric
On Data Collection and Analysis
The Rhetorical Work of Maps and Photos in the "Species" Section
Remote Tracking Technology, Visual-Material Environmental Rhetorics, and the Conservation of Marine Species: Toward a Posthuman, Compassionate Conservation
Wildlife Tracking and Compassionate Conservation as Embodied Practice
Agency and Posthuman Knowledge-Making in the Atlas
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: Conclusion
Notes
Notes to the Preface
Notes to Chapter 1
Notes to Chapter 2
Notes to Chapter 3
Notes to Chapter 4
Notes to Chapter 5
Works Cited
Index
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