[-empyre-] Multispecies cultivation

[lucian o'connor]

Ciclón, thank you for suggesting that I think about Native rituals in
my everyday life and how they might resonate with the listserv’s
themes. You know how I’ve struggled with these issues in our phone
conversations over the years, and your feedback has been invaluable.

I have learned much from your and Cheto Castellano’s analyses of the
medicalization of your canine companion, Luk Kahlo. Most impactful
perhaps was the presentation you made to my seminar on symbiosis and
posthumanism in 2015, when you shared how those experiences with Luk
critically impacted your lives.

You’ve helped me to make important decisions and to be a better human
to my greyhound kin Phina, who is living with advanced heart failure
and is difficult to care for. The poetics and politics of your
contribution to the listserv on Monday, and what you’ve shared with me
over the years, are persistently thoughtful and important.

As I mentioned to Ciclón via phone last week, in late October I gave
two connected lectures in Claremont about Darwin and the messy stuff
of paradigm shifts, bringing him and Mendel into conversation with
Marcuse, Foucault, Margulis, Haraway, LaDuke, and others. These talks
were based on preliminary research for a book to be co-authored with
my partner, and they will be edited into an introductory discussion
for that. I am especially excited for a section that will put Donna
Haraway into conversation with Winona LaDuke around the topic of
relationality.

My partner Bradley is an Anishinaabe head and neck surgeon with a PhD
in microbiology from the Univ of Michigan. He specializes in cell
signaling, and is extensively researching a mushroom used in
traditional Anishinaabe medicine for anti-inflammation and anti-tumor
therapies. LaDuke is a household name for us. I recommend her talk,
“Seeds of Our Ancestors” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHNlel72eQc
)
and to possibly consider the more involved challenge of reading her
book /All Our Relations/ with Haraway’s /The Companion Species
Manifesto/.

Ciclón, I fondly recall how you performed for my students and me in
2015, reminding us to enjoy the humor and the love and the other
pleasures of multispecies consciousness.

Cheto, I admire your transmedia art produced individually and with Sin
Kabeza. I remain impressed by your visions of multispecies
architecture, and the prosthetics you have created for people to
expand/attune their bodies to different morphologies, produced in
collaboration with Ciclón.

I wonder if either of you would like to make further connections
between the projects and experiences mentioned here, or if you would
like to discuss other related items of interest from your worlds with
the Empyre community?