Entangled and Empowered: Agency in Multispecies Communities

'Entangled and Empowered: Agency in Multispecies Communities' is a collection that approaches the inevitable reality of entanglement between humans and other beings from a perspective of action and wonder. It argues that actors as diverse as bacteria, snakes, butterflies, ducks, and cacao trees can help us enact joy in fields as different as art, cinema, literature, and anthropology. While acknowledging the imminent reality of climate change, the sixth extinction, and other overwhelming threats to the Earth, this book argues that humans continue to live, and so do the beings whose lives are entwined with ours, for whom we can acknowledge and work to improve their existence. The nine essays in this volume trace that acknowledgment and work through three sections centered on visual media, queer and feminist readings of empowerment, and movements beyond the boundaries enacted by anthropocen... tric Western society. Drawing on theories such as new materialism, posthumanism, and ecofeminism, and with an international perspective from authors working at American, South Asian, and East Asian universities, 'Entangled and Empowered' finds hope in the shadow of despair. It engages with work by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing on entanglement, Donna Haraway on kin-making and multispecies communities, and Karen Barad on intra-actions, among others, while also showing how critiques of these ideas can make the world both more promising and more endangered. This collection will be useful for scholars working in all subfields of environmental humanities, especially those intersecting with the theories described above and as an archive of examples analyzing practical aspects of agency in diverse multispecies communities. Scholars studying texts as well-known as 'The Handmaid’s Tale' and as obscure as the codices of the Mopan Maya will find value in having both under one cover.  Show more

List of Figures
Introduction
Keri Stevenson
University of New Mexico-Gallup

PART ONE: VIEW(INGS) OF ENTANGLEMENT: MULTISPECIES COMMUNITIES IN ART
Chapter One
Symbiotic Cultures: The Microbial Ecologies of Contemporary Art
Rory O’Dea
The New School
Chapter Two
Making Peace with the Ground: Extraction and Ecofeminism in the Paintings of Hannah Yata
Kayla Kruse West
Texas Woman’s University

PART TWO: CONSIDER HER/THEIR WAYS: (ECO)FEM... INIST EMPOWERMENTS
Chapter Three
Entangled Empowerment: The Divine Dynamics of the Snake Woman in India
Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh
MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada
Chapter Four
Cannibalism as Deconstructing the Human/Nonhuman Dichotomy?: A Reading of the Scandalous Novella “Life Ceremony” by Japanese Writer Murata Sayaka
Morita Keitaro
Rikkyo University, Tokyo
Chapter Five
Women as State Machinery: A Posthuman Reading of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Kumar Sawan
University of Lucknow
Chapter Six
Entangled Vitality and Female Resilience in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer and Flight Behavior
Chak-kwan Ng
Hong Kong Metropolitan University

PART THREE: BEYOND THE HUMAN: ENTANGLEMENTS BEYOND BORDERS
Chapter Seven
A Carceral State: Incarceration’s Reach in Ecosystems Within and Beyond the Prison
Sarah Snyder
University of Minnesota
Will Anderson
Writer
Chapter Eight
Multispecies Communities in J. K. Rowling’s Potterworld: A Critical Appraisal
Mayank Kejriwal
University of Southern California
Chapter Nine
Cacao, the Cheil, and the Erosion of Spiritual Agency: Protestantism and Capitalism’s Impact on Maya Environmental Relations
Erik Stanley
Eastern New Mexico University, Portales

Index  Show more

Keri Stevenson is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New Mexico-Gallup. She has published multiple book chapters and journal articles on the entanglement of humans with other species in Victorian literature, popular culture, and creative nonfiction, with a specific focus on birds. Her most recent article is “Across So Wide a Sea: Humans, Seabirds, and the Kinship of Mortality” in the 2022 collection 'Avian Aesthetics in Literature and Culture: Birds and Humans in the Popular Imagination', published by Lexington Books. She is currently the Area Chair for Eco-Criticism and th... e Environment at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association and is researching a book on the concept and ramifications of scientific heroism in creative nonfiction.  Show more

symbiosis, bioart, extraction, Anthropocene, animality, femininity, transformation, Naga myth, cannibalism, the human/nonhuman dichotomy, Murata Sayaka, spirituality, multispecies assemblages, Margaret Atwood, cannibalism, cyborgs, Barbara Kingsolver, climate change, the sixth extinction, prison abolitionism, anthropocentrism, Potter studies, othering, Mopan Maya