Endling, the Power of the Last in an Extinction-Prone World

Abstract

In April 1996, two men working at a convalescent center wrote a letter to the journal Nature proposing that a new word be adopted to designate a person who is the last in the lineage: endling. This had come up because of patients who were dying and thought of themselves as the last of their family line. The word was not picked up in medical circles. But, in 2001, when the National Museum of Australia (NMA) opened its doors, it featured a gallery called Tangled Destinies and endling reappeared. On the wall above a case with a thylacine specimen was written: Endling (n.) The last surviving individual of a species of animal or plant. Since that appearance, the word endling has slowly seeped into popular culture, appearing in symphonic music, performance art, science fiction stories, comics, and other art works. This paper examines the cultural power of the concept of endling as the last of a species and the history of its mobilization in a world facing extinction around every corner.

‘As dead as a dodo’: Extinction narratives and multispecies justice in the museum

“…The gallery's emphasis on individuals, particularly with the only photographed quagga and with a discussion of Martha (the last passenger pigeon), resonates with the idea of the power of the 'endling' (Jørgensen, 2017b), in which an individual animal's story operates at both personal and collective scales. Similarly to Heise's (2016) discussion of the emotional impact of singular, elegiac narratives of last individuals of a species, Jørgensen (2017b) specifically examines the emergence of the term 'endling'. Jørgensen (2017b: 136) argues that the concept, which entered public consciousness through a museum exhibition, can 'make the narrative personal while retaining the universality of extinction'.…”

“…These productions are not only immaterial or representative of the ghosts of extinguished individuals and their species, but also may include the material remains -and even material returns -of such beings. Conversations about extinction, storytelling and ethics have also produced the concept of 'extinction narratives' (see, for example, Jørgensen, 2017aJørgensen, , 2017bRose et al, 2017;Turner, 2007). In the context of narratives of absence and presence of species on the brink of extinction, Jørgensen (2017a: 56) argues that 'extinction events become real to us through the stories we tell'.…”

Slowing Time in the Museum in a Period of Rapid Extinction

“…Acknowledging grief is the first part of managing it, of living with loss. The idea of the 'endling', the last animal of its species, is particularly elegiac (Jørgensen 2017). It provides a focus for mourning that can work as a proxy for grieving a whole species (Barnett 2019).…”

“…This demonstrates the need for spaces for conversations that are open to all interpretations of major changes on society and individuals, as well as the way human behaviours affect natural systems. An emotional or passionate response to biodiversity loss, including sadness and grief, may motivate action more than a financial or scientific reason for some (Jørgensen 2019). Where systems are at a breaking point, acknowledgement of this is needed.…”

Critical heritage and the posthumanities: problems and prospects

“…To do this means attending to forces, agencies, processes and experiences that may exceed or subvert human command, but it also means engaging with the already non-anthropocentric worldviews of diverse marginalised peoples in a humble, ethical and sustainable manner. This framework is very much challengeoriented, only now the issues to be addressed by heritage research stretch beyond conservation and development to encompass e-waste (Gabrys 2013), forest management (Ricketts et al 2010), geoengineering (Buck 2019), biodiversity loss (Jørgensen 2017) and economic degrowth (Hickel 2019). If critical heritage is to contribute to these urgent ongoing debatesand many more besidesthen it will need to embrace a more varied and potentially unwieldy set of theoretical and empirical concerns.…”