Research Project Christine Daigle A Joyful Extinction: Opening up Posthumanist Futures

My project emerges amid the crisis conjunction in which we live: environmental, political, medical, ethical, and economic challenges are intertwined and exacerbate each other. The Anthropocene and the 6th extinction form the horizon against which our futures will emerge, bleak or not. I ask: can extinction be joyful? If so, how? I posit extinction as multivalent and generative and joyful extinction as that which sees us leave our humanist ways of living and conceptualizing ourselves behind to build futures on posthumanist principles. Indeed, such principles that revolve around a view of the human and nonhuman as radically enmeshed are at the core of an ethos of care and humility that counters the foreclosing of the futures our current worldviews represent. Whereas previous humanist imaginaries have failed us, which is a premise of this project, posthumanist imaginaries and a theory of joyful extinction are positioned to open the future. My project seeks to contribute to the elaboration of this theory and open pathways for building those futures.