Environmental commemoration

Guiding principles and real-world cases

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8094797
AutoresMihaela Mihai (0000-0002-7576-4561, University of Edinburgh, autor correspondente), Mathias Thaler (0000-0001-7045-6159, University of Edinburgh)
Ano2023
Volume17
Fascículo6
Páginas1378-1395
Data de publicação2023-05-25
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506980231176037
OpenAlexW4378220313
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas76

Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more-than-human life, this paper asks whether and in what ways environmental losses should be publicly commemorated. Our answer is two-pronged. First, we hold that a politics of environmental commemoration would enfranchise those who are already grieving, by lending legitimacy to their experiences. Moreover, commemorative practices might prompt much-needed norm change by nurturing a recognition of our species’ entanglement with the more-than-human world. Second, we programmatically introduce five principles that should guide environmental commemoration, ethically and pragmatically: multispecies justice, responsibility, pluralism, dynamism, and anticlosure. A critical examination of two real-world examples – the memorialization of the passenger pigeon’s extinction and the annual ritual of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species – substantiates our theoretical argument. Finally, the paper engages with several potential criticisms

Argument (complex analysis · Dynamism · Environmental ethics · Environmental justice · Epistemology · Human rights · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Posthuman · Posthumanism · Rhetoric · Sociology · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics