In this introduction to the special issue on Multispecies Studies, Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, and Ursula Münster provide an overview of the emerging field of multispecies studies. Unsettling given notions of species, the article explores a broad terrain of possible modes of classifying, categorizing, and paying attention to the diverse ways of life that constitute worlds.
In the special section titled “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Section,” Simon Pooley reflects on the decisions and implications of conferring the status of “endangered species” on animals.
In the “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Section” of Environmental Humanities, Maan Barua reveals encounters as spatializing and “ecologizing” politics in ways that are vital for the environmental humanities’ efforts to redistribute powers to act and to flourish.
In this special issue on Multispecies Studies, Celia Lowe and Ursula Münster present three open-ended stories of elephant care in times of death and loss: at places of confinement and elephant suffering like the zoos in Seattle and Zürich as well as in the conflict-ridden landscapes of South India, where the country’s last free-ranging elephants live. They call attention to the Asian elephant, a species that is currently facing extinction through the elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus.
The comic The Great Transformation. Climate - Can We Beat the Heat? illustrates the 2011 report by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). In nine episodes, WBGU members take on the role of comic heroes to explain the Great Transformation towards a climate-friendly, sustainable society.
In looking back at Henri Bergson and Samuel Butler through contemporary art, Susan Ballard suggests that in the art gallery can provide an opportunity to locate ourselves in the place of others. She argues that sympathy read alongside machinic evolution can offer a new approach to the ecological disaster of species extinction.
Gordon M. Sayre explores the metaphor of a species as a book, represented in the Alexandrian library. He argues that this obscures the fact that the Alexandrian library consisted of manuscripts, not print books and that, in essence, species may be more like manuscripts than books after all.
These EXIT Times is the “vehement voice” of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT, pronounced “vehement”). The VHEMT slogan is “May we live long and die out.” This issue is a special “pre-2000” Earth First Journal edition.
This Earth First! tabloid describes negative impacts of the U.S. Forest Service on national forests. Topics include reform proposals for the USFS, the role of deep ecology, the destruction of eco-systems across the U.S., abuse of Native American cultural heritage, and a call for the protection of national forests.
This introductory guide to the Earth First! movement was produced by The Earth First! Journal as a service for Earth First! local groups. It includes the purpose and definition of Earth First!, their philosophy, gatherings, an EF! International section, and EF! projects. This edition focuses on extinction and prevention of wildlife destruction. It contains a guide to direct action by Edward Abbey and a guide for forming Earth First! groups.
