Representation, Democracy, and the Ecological Age

Abstract

: We live in the age of ecology ― the Ecocene. And if we start from the messy ecological relations that are pushing radical changes in human societies, new problems and new questions arise. This research note is concerned with how the ecological age is shifting the meaning of political representation, especially in relation to non-humans. Taking cues from ontological pluralism and specific situations it proposes that representation can no longer be uniquely thought as the practice of making present that which is absent. Instead, it becomes the creation of hybrid voices based on an ever-expanding array of beings that come to matter.