Since completing my dissertation I’ve been letting the learning stew and roil and coalesce into a course I’m developing. Kincentric Ecology, Justice and Art. Kincentric Ecology converses with the ideas of fish philosopher Zoe Todd and Anja Kanngieser on “kin study,” who really called me in to attunement and deep listening to places; as well as Enrique Salmón’s essay, “Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship,” Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (2000): 1327-32. I’ve been working at the nexus of art and jurisprudence since writing Phoenix in the HolyLand, which wove together South Africa’s genocide against Israel brought before the International Court of Justice with poetry. With this course, I’m shifting the attention to the Rights of Nature and Indigenous global struggles for Land and Water Justice (from Standing Rock to Palestine). I’m coming out as a practice-led researcher, a fancy way of saying art-making is a method of research.
I think I’ve been dancing around this idea of kincentricity since I initiated “1000 Gifts of Decolonial Love,” a print version of which has recently been published in Dark Matter: Women Witnessing: Dreams Before Extinction. And then I made this videopoem called “Limulus Love” (password is n0tCr@b)
This course will dive into the legislative and litigational strategies of the Land Justice, Landback and Water Protectors movements. Stay tuned as this short blog post expands into a website of its own.