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The practice of multispecies relations in urban space and its potentialities for new legal imaginaries

Dillon, Teresa

Authors

Teresa Dillon Teresa.Dillon@uwe.ac.uk
Professor in Design Innovation



Abstract

This article explores what it means to enact multispecies relations in urban space. This exploration is rooted in contemporary art practices that create living frameworks through which encounters with non-human animal cultures, histories, rituals and justice are manifested. Such works play with the legalities and categorizations of ‘animal’ and ‘nature’ by exposing the nested reasonings and protocols that continue to propagate hierarchical species logics. Consequentially such work, alongside scholarship on earth-bound legalities, looks to how law can foster more just multispecies orderings, which aspire to create more equitable conditions for all. To scaffold such transitions the article makes the case for how a constant, public, educational and social rehearsal that unknots histories of liberal individualism is required in order to shift the ontological position of the human species. This rehearsal is set against the backdrop of climate emergencies and the call for a more expansive notion of the urban commons. The closing reflections point to how the Earth’s inviolability must necessarily be placed at the centre of an approach to urban making that is complemented by an intersectional set of innovative cosmologies, actions, manners and ways.

Citation

Dillon, T. (2021). The practice of multispecies relations in urban space and its potentialities for new legal imaginaries. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 12(Special Issue), 148-161. https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2021.00.07

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 1, 2021
Online Publication Date Dec 1, 2021
Publication Date Dec 1, 2021
Deposit Date May 4, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of Human Rights and the Environment
Print ISSN 1759-7188
Electronic ISSN 1759-7196
Publisher Edward Elgar Publishing
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 12
Issue Special Issue
Pages 148-161
DOI https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2021.00.07
Keywords Law; Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law; Sociology and Political Science
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9451340