A manifesto for shadow places: Re-imagining and co-producing connections for justice in an era of climate change

Abstract

In this article, on behalf of The Shadow Places Network, we outline a working manifesto of politics and practice. We mobilise the format of the manifesto to speak to an uncertain and damaged future, to begin to imagine other possible worlds. For feminist philosopher Val Plumwood, whose thinking inspires this network, shadow places are the underside of the capitalist fantasy, ‘the multiple disregarded places of economic and ecological support’. In turning towards shadow places, and the unjust and unsustainable processes that produce them, we call for an environmental humanities that reaches beyond abstraction, fosters new responsibilities, considers the uncomfortable, and generates reparative possibilities and alternative futures. We aim to continue to trace out a world of shadow places. We acknowledge that these shadow places cannot be known in full, but through a willingness to engage in careful conversation with the beings and places harmed by (or strategically shielded from) processes of the Anthropocene, we can learn how to relate to each other and these places in more just ways. Recognising that shadow places are impermanent and contingent, this working manifesto does not look to predetermine or prescribe but rather invites conversation, encounter and exchange. In so doing we choose to contribute to making different worlds possible by pursuing new collaborations, new methods and new politics.

Geographers declare (a climate emergency)?

“…However, we do believe that, for each of us, there may be a set of broad principles or commitments to which we can, in our own ways, aspire to, which allow for a relational understanding of responsibility tethered to place and relations of accountability, reciprocity and care (Bawaka Country et al 2016;Lawson 2007;Raghuram, Madge, and Noxolo 2009). We take inspiration from the working manifesto of the Shadow Places Network (Potter et al 2020) and the 'living protocols' of the Creatures Collective (Theriault et al 2019) which compel us to think about a declaration as an ongoing project that can, in part, be open-ended, and provides not rules but guiding principles or learnings that invite ongoing (un)making.…”

Walking journeys into everyday climatic-affective atmospheres: The emotional labour of balancing grief and hope

“…This demographic admittedly embodied the perspectives of what Plumwood (2008) has critiqued as individualist and proximate places and imaginaries at the expense of the other places, beings, and relations that sustain them (‘shadow places’), particularly in settler-colonial contexts. However, as Potter et al (2022) argue in their Manifesto for Shadow Places , we cannot shy away from ‘interrogat[ing] western white privilege from the inside’ (p. 11) to expand from this vantage point and grapple with the relationality of place and the webs of connectedness that define daily existences. Such grappling includes us, the authors, and our positionalities as non-Indigenous, middle-class academics navigating our lived experiences as Australian and non-Australian white settlers, epistemological tensions of affectively knowing landscapes in WA, and our different scholarly struggles with inclusion and disenfranchisement along the lines of gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, race, class, and age, in Australia and global South contexts.…”

Editorial

“…We seek contributions from early career scholars (including students) as well as established ones, and from activist scholars, teacher-scholars and others who may not be recognised as an ‘expert’ but have a unique perspective to offer on ‘progress in environmental geography’ (Jazeel 2016). We seek cross-disciplinary contributions, and – recognising the power of multiple perspectives – we seek collaborative work, too, including work written by collectives, even more-than-human ones (Bawaka Country et al 2019; Gay’wu Group of Women 2019; Hernández et al 2020; Potter et al 2021; Yen-Kohl and the Newtown Florist Club Writing Collective 2016) and other forms of collaborative scholarship. We do this not just to create a big tent but to recognise and start to change the power dynamics and practices of knowledge production.…”