Category: News

In 2021 Marco Amati published the book, The City and the Super-Organism: A History of Naturalism in Urban Planning. You can read about it online here.

Here is the blurb from the book’s back cover:

This book traces how naturalism—the idea of a common theory uniting natural social systems—has contributed to major shifts in urban planning. Beginning in the 17th century, when the human body began to emerge as an inspiration for urban planning, the book examines the work of medical analyses of city life. Responding to the 19th century industrial revolution and 20th century modernism, the Second World War and mass motorisation, Dr Marco Amati shows how vitalism, eugenics, evolutionary theories and medical treatments were applied to understand cities and propose new urban forms. While critically evaluating the uses of naturalism, Amati also observes a renewed interest in the application of sciences to analyse city life, arguing that this is essential to help resolve challenges of human-induced climate change.

Linda Williams published an academic article in Animal Studies Journal. You can visit it online here, and a PDF version can be free downloaded from there.

Here is its’ abstract:

While many writers have advocated the importance of narrative as a means of engaging with the problem of extinction, this paper considers what the qualities of visual aesthetics bring to this field. In addressing this question, the discussion turns to the problem of the ethical limits of art raised by Adorno and takes a theoretical turn away from posthumanism to consider how visual responses can redirect attention back to human agency. The focus of visual analysis is on five paintings by the contemporary Iranian artist Naeemah Naeemaei. Neither exclusively Western nor overtly internationalist in their approach, these artworks refer to the effects of both hunting and the erosion of trans-nationalist habitats as causes of extinction, yet they also show how human affective responses to extinction can extend across geo-political borders to a more global imaginary. As such, Naeemaei’s artworks are regarded as a form of immanent critique of anthropogenic forcing. Her works adapt older traditions in Persian humanism and art to show not only how the human dominion of nonhuman animals has led to extinction, but also how this leads to an almost incalculable sense of human loss. I argue that Naeemaei’s affective imagery of loss is not simply yet another example of how the lifeworld of animals can only be understood from an anthropocentric worldview, but instead points to our inability to yet fully register the immeasurable losses of extinction and what this yet unchartered grief might imply for potential human agency.

And here is the citation: Williams, L., (2021) “Visualising Anthropocene Extinctions: Mapping affect in the works of Naeemah Naeemaei”, Animal Studies Journal 10(2), 59-91. doi: https://doi.org/10.14453/asj.v10i2.4

Linda Williams co-authored an article for the academic journal Environmental Humanities called ‘Everyday Ecocide, Toxic Dwelling, and the Inability to Mourn: A Speculative Response to Geographies of Extinction’. You can visit it online here, and download the article from here.

Here is the abstract:

In responding to the spatiotemporally specific geographies of extinction charted in the articles in this special section, this article reflects on the sociocultural factors that inform the ways in which extinction is framed and impede recognition of the enormity of the anthropogenic extinction event in which we are all bound. This article argues that we are living in an era of ecocide, where the degradation of biodiversity and eradication of species go hand-in-hand with the degradation and eradication of nonmodern culture and identity, and it explores some possible reasons why modern society is failing to respond to impending crisis. Fine-grained stories of spatiotemporally specific geographies of extinction can help to counter the logic of colonization and bring everyday ecocide into view. For the particular multispecies communities they concern, they can also feed into the creation of ritual practices of penitential mourning in ways that enable a collective grieving process poised to activate an ecosocial transformation. The authors consider the implications of grief and mourning—and of not mourning—in what can be seen as not only a terrible time but also the end of (lived) time. They conclude with some reflections of local acts of resistance, witnessing, and narrative.

Rick De Vos published an article in the academic journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. It can be accessed online via this link, or downloaded direct, via this one.

Here is it’s citation: Rick De Vos (2020) ‘A Triumphal Entry, a Stifled Cry, a Hushed Retreat’, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 35:1, 261-271,

Donna Houston published an article called ‘Planning in the shadow of extinction: Carnaby’s Black cockatoos and urban development in Perth, Australia’ in the Journal of the Academy if Social Sciences.

You can find the article here, and download it from here.

Here is the abstract:

This paper explores the shifting ecological proximities of urban-human-animal relations in Perth via a story of Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos, urban planning and extinction. The story is framed around a challenge and a provocation. The challenge, calls for a deeper consideration of urban planning in the shadow of extinction. Such a consideration involves two entangled elements: a deepening ethical and practical engagement with diverse urban lifeforms and temporalities; and an exploration of the more-than-human communities that emerge, are threatened or made possible in extinction’s shadows. The provocation, involves asking questions about what kinds of responses to extinction in urban contexts are desirable, or even possible? The paper experiments with the concept of planning in and with ‘ethical time’ as one way of thinking about how commitments to urban nature and urban justice might be re-imagined in a time of mass extinction. With the help of Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos, I argue that planning multispecies cities requires re-setting coordinates for ethical decision-making, coordinates that are embedded in the rhythms, knots and relations of ecological time and in the responsibilities involved with living in more-than-human urban communities of difference.

And here is the citation:

Donna Houston, ‘Planning in the shadow of extinction: Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos and urban development in Perth, Australia‘, 2021, Contemporary Social Science: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences. 16, (1), p. 43-56