Do common worlding methods and pedagogies need more queering?

CommoningWorlding

Sep 10

AFFRICA TAYLOR, VERONICA PACINI-KETCHABAW AND MINDY BLAISE

Do common worlding methods and pedagogies need more queering? We recently attended a Sydney conference, where issues of waste and multispecies cohabitation in the Anthropocene were high on the agenda. At lunchtime, conference goers ate in the Darling Harbour tourist precinct, in the greedy presence of white ibis. These large scavenger birds – aka ‘bin chickens’ – are ubiquitous Sydney-dwellers. They’re also environmental refugees, who’ve abandoned their drying-up wetland habitats for the big cities, where they thrive on waste. The question of how future generations will cohabit with increasing populations of urban wildlife in the Anthropocene is one that we (Affrica and Veronica) address in our forthcoming book. Allatson’s and Connor’s ‘Rise of the ibis’ essay enlivens and enlightens similar serious questions. It surveys the groundswell of guerrilla artists and filmmakers capturing the parody of sharing space with ungainly ‘bin chickens’ and their unsightly dumpster-diving habits. These queer artworks not only humour us, but they also remind us that multispecies life in the Anthropocene is neither a harmonious Disney wonderland nor a tragedy devoid of irony. How can we capture more of this queerness in our common worlding methods and pedagogies?