MORE-THAN-HUMAN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES TOWARDS CO-DWELLING ON EARTH

The resumption of debates about climate change and ecological transitions has arousedAnglophone Cultural Geographers' interest in socio-environmental problems at the dawn of thetwenty-first century. Their studies aim to transcend the "new cultural geography" of the 1980s byaddressing themes on the existential multiplicity of terrestrial life (GREENHOUGH, 2014). Whatmore(2006) argues that this recent turn towards the phenomena and spatial arrangements of more-than-humanentities has caused a significant thematic and conceptual restructuring in the discipline.

The eco-phenomenologist Abram (1996) was responsible for popularizing the concept of amore-than-human world and expressing everything that encompasses terrestrial "nature" in its broadestinterpretations. According to the author (ABRAM, 1996), the expression refers to a world that includesand exceeds human societies, thereby associating them with the complex webs of interdependenciesbetween the countless beings that share the terrestrial dwelling. This approach aims to overcome theprevalent modern dichotomy between nature and culture.

Although it started in eco-phenomenology, the concept of more-than-human has been adopted byseveral theoretical perspectives, particularly post-phenomenologies (ASH; SIMPSON, 2018),non-representational theories (THRIFT, 2008), eco-feminisms (BELLACASA, 2017; TSING, 2015),and post-humanisms (HARAWAY, 2008; 2016). These currents of thought have been fundamental ininspiring geographers who intend to immerse themselves in the existential conditions and emergence ofthe space-time situations of more-than-human entities. We concur with Almeida (2013) that this varietyof theoretical trends is a positive development, opening Cultural Geography to different ways ofdeciphering sensitive cosmoses.

The present essay intends to contribute to the conceptions, concerns, procedures, and aspects ofmore-than-human Cultural Geographies, focusing on the scope of the Anglophone bibliography. Thus, itis a state of the art and systematic analysis of research and production in the area, emphasizing the lasttwo decades. The first part of the text discusses the more-than-human worlds and their insertion inCultural Geographies. Subsequently, the main research topics in the field are identified.

The recent recognition of the Anthropocene as the geological era marked by the impacts ofindustrial action demonstrates the depth of the contemporary environmental crisis (POVINELLI, 2016).Disseminated by the chemist Crutzen (2002), it is deemed the epoch when certain human groups'transformative capitalist activity can be considered a relevant geological force. For Danowski and Castro (2017, p.48), "the Anthropocene, in presenting us with an 'end of the world' perspective in the mostempirical sense possible, that of a catastrophic change in the material conditions of the species'existence, causes an authentic metaphysical distress." This era expands a field of ontological andepistemic insecurity that requires us to create other ways of thinking about the relationships betweenworld and subject.

In our view, the possible futures present themselves as fractured horizons of climate change anddevastation. Davis and Turpin (2015) point out that the Anthropocene can be understood as the sensoryphenomenon of the experience of living in an increasingly toxic world. To decipher these presentchallenges, the human sciences must move away from the traditional Western Cartesian humanism thatfounded them in modernity towards the possibilities of a less dualistic action. Therefore, establishing abroad environmental awareness that allows the notion of a cultural-natural continuum (HARAWAY,2016) requires an alternative understanding of the countless cosmoses surrounding us.

As previously indicated, the concept of more-than-human seeks to overcome this dualism bycreating a broad notion of co-dwelling. Popularized by Abram's (1996) pioneering perspective, themore-than-human world is defined as the open spectrum of the interrelationships between the worlds ofliving and non-living beings and human societies. Thus, this view includes the different cycles ofanimals, plants, water, air masses, and rocks. In embracing such dimensions, Abram calls into questionthe human exceptionalism underlying the Anthropocene environmental crisis and expresses the multi-species arrangements of the planetary future.

According to Abram (2010), it is a matter of becoming an animal, rediscovering humans asentities involved in the primordial terrestrial soil. As he explains, "The ground and the horizon— aregranted to us only by the earth" (ABRAM, 1996, p.131, emphasis added). The fundamental assumptionof a shared involvement with the Earth reveals how the subtle intertwinings between the planet's beingsare manifest. With their specificity and corporeal variation, the different terrestrial beings are recognizedin their particular expression of sentience.

To recognize the more-than-human world is to understand that there are other "selves" withcorporally distinct centers of experience that take place in a vast intersubjective and inter-corporealhorizon. The multi-species cosmos of reciprocities and (dis) encounters between different entities is anacknowledgment of what Bellacasa (2017, p.145) describes as being "in a web of livingco-vulnerabilities." The interconnections inherent to the vulnerability of being on and from Earth drawtogether the varied more-than-human forms of existence.

The scientific philosopher Haraway (2016, p.55) states that "Human beings are with and of theearth, and the biotic and abiotic powers of this earth are the main story." Her post-humanist approachrecognizes that modernity has established a human exceptionalism that legitimizes contemporarycapitalist exploitation. Therefore it is essential to deconstruct the mechanistic perspective in whichanimals, plants, and other non-human entities act only on instinct (HARAWAY, 2008). These otherbeings with whom we share our places must be understood as subjects with their own horizons ofintentionality.

Abram (2010) brings together each mineral, vegetable, or animal entity on Earth as a telluricvariation of the texture and pulse of the same sensitive world and cosmos. When approaching a center ofreference that animates the warp and woof of existence, there are ways to subvert human isolationismregarding other beings that are part of the biosphere's dynamics. Like the animism of traditionalpopulations (DANOWSKI; CASTRO, 2017), it is feasible to contemplate an expansion in thoughtinvolving terrestrial sentience shared between the different beings on the planet.

Haraway (2008, p.106) explains that confronting human exceptionalism "requires working for themortal entanglements of human beings and other organisms in ways that one judges, without guarantees,to be good, that is, to deserve a future." Thinking-with processes involving non-human beingsnecessitate an understanding of arrangements and intertwinings. In the face of climate change andinvasive practices, the more-than-human relations of places are altered, causing existential mismatches.When considering the need for a thinking-with that ensures environmental justice, it is vital to decipherthe different interrelationships and how they can be repaired or reinvented in contemporary fracturedhorizons.

The eco-feminist Tsing (2015) problematizes that different forms of being's meetings andarrangements should be studied as complex and polyphonic sets to decipher more-than-human ways ofcohabiting places. Her study of the precarious arrangements and reinventions of the internationalmatsutake mushroom harvest and trade circuit demonstrates the possibility of life on this disturbedEarth. In the expansion of capitalism's ruins, forms of coexistence amid precariousness indicate survivalstrategies in the Anthropocene. Thus, immersion in these more-than-human contexts offers insights intothinking-with other beings and challenges the causal nexuses of such imbalanced situations and theirexistential, cultural, economic, and affective consequences.

The movements of the "new" Cultural Geography of the 1980s paid little attention toenvironmental issues; however, they focused on representational problems. Terrestrial life, a recurrenttopic in this subdiscipline's ancestral past, was subsumed by other research themes (WHATMORE,2006). However, the Anthropocene's latent problems, particularly in the last twenty years, have recentlyprovoked and instigated attention to this topic. Authors like Dardel (2011 [1952]) have been revisited aspioneers of approaches in this sphere.

As in other disciplines in the humanities, anglophone Cultural Geographies have been influencedby these debates. Lorimer (2010) argues that there is a growing set of cultural geographers interested in approaches to animal studies, bio-philosophy, and other more-than-human perspectives. They seek torethink landscapes and places through interactive notions between these spatialities' socio-cultural andnon-human elements. Non-human entities and forces addressed in these studies include, but are notlimited to: antidepressants (MCCORMACK, 2007), cigarettes (MARKOVIĆ, 2019), elephants (LORIMER, 2010; BARUA, 2013), reindeer herds (LORIMER, 2006), lakes (GIBBS, 2009), bicycles (SIMPSON, 2018), coral bleaching (GIBBS et al., 2019), trees (PHILLIPS; ATCHINSON, 2018), wildatmospheres (VANNINI; VANNINI, 2020b), and gardens (PITT, 2015).

As indicated, the current thematic change in direction is an academic renewal and results insuggested studies that could previously seem to contradict this disciplinary subfield's proposals.Greenhough (2014, p.115) states that the goal of more-than-human Cultural Geographies is to "offerparticular perspective (s) on human – non-human encounters and the worlds they co-produce, whilealways recognizing their contingent and fragile nature." When dimensioning ways of thinking-with anddeciphering corporeal polyphonic spellings of inhabiting the Earth, these studies provide opportunitiesfor confluences that challenge Cartesian dualisms. They articulate to enhance and expand theexplanatory capacities of geographical categories, particularly place and landscape, for non-humanentities.

More-than-human approaches in Cultural Geography are characterized by a particular interest inthe different forms and approaches of multi-species and corporeal arrangements. They adoptmethodologies and perspectives that try to overcome the trends of human exceptionalism, usuallythrough associations with post-humanist perspectives (PANELLI, 2010). It is also worth mentioningthese geographers' resistance to the reductionism of representations, a feature that is particularly evidentin their studies' focus on practical and affective non-representational transformations. Such attitudesreflect relational, inter and transdisciplinary, and immersive approaches in which the non-human entitiesunveiled are understood between their capacities and action centers (GREENHOUGH, 2014). Supportedby geographical categories of analysis, they mean comprehending that place, landscape, and daily lifemust be understood in the inseparability of the multi-species worlds that compose them.

The more-than-human Cultural Geographies aim to escape the representational limitations once inforce in the new Cultural Geography (LORIMER, 2006) to evoke different ways of being and living bynon-human entities. In pursuing alternatives in post-phenomenological (ASH; SIMPSON, 2018) and/ornon-representational perspectives (THRIFT, 2008), a new generation of cultural geographers intends torecommence bringing together the bio and geo components intrinsic to more-than-human worlds.

Non-representational approaches concern performative methodologies in which the participantshave equal rights to present themselves through relationships that are a reversal from representations andtexts (THRIFT, 2008). This active focus collaborates with the creation of dialogical practices andactions that are connected to the corporeal specificities of all involved. By transcending the formerreading of space as text, it is recognized as a multivoiced performance coming to pass.

Whatmore (2006) argues that Cultural Geography's inventiveness lies in its potential to gatherdiverse returns between the constant concerns about vital and existential processes ofbeing-in-the-world. She (WHATMORE, 2006) points out that the recent trends in more-than-humanCultural Geographies collaborate to construct geographical practices that aim to bring transcendence torepresentationalism. They are propitious as they offer insights into how to be affected and affectdifferent human and non-human arrangements within the specificity of their particular place. It is alsonoteworthy that the attention these perspectives give to the multiple ways of cohabiting and affectivelyco-fabricating worlds enlarges the procedural possibilities for approximations with other disciplines inthe Humanities.

To the extent that, as Tsing (2015, p.281) explains, "without meaning to, most of us learn toignore the multi-species worlds around us," it is essential to create other modes of sensitivity, listening,and observation. Although relevant, orthodox procedures or human-centered methodologies can limitthe researcher's viewpoint and immersion in more-than-human worlds. If modern sciences' dualisms are to be transcended, it is imperative to join forces to transform how geography is practiced to incorporatemulti-species polyphonic arrangements. Changes in this geographic approach entail openness to lesspragmatic practices and approaches to other forms of sensitivity and observation.

Therefore, there has been a shift in the interpretation of meanings towards the logic of affect.Whatmore (2006) ponders that this change occurs in the spectrum between the inter-corporate waysrelationships are established and the sensory dimensions affecting the world. Affections are forces ofvarying intensity that inter-corporeally and intersubjectively affect the subjects viscerally involved in theresearch processes.

In the horizon of non-representational theory, Thrift (2008, p.192) states that "affect is a differentkind of intelligence about the world." Affect involves direct or indirect ways of thinking and is thethought and practice of affecting and being affected. By transcending interpretations that reduce it to theirrational or sublime, within this theoretical field, affect is comprehended as a reciprocal form ofcorporeal interaction involving emotions, perceptions, and the imaginary.

Bellacasa (2017, p.221) points out that "Situations of care imply nonsymmetrical, multilateral,asubjective, obligations that are distributed across more than human materialities and existences."Likewise, affective circumstances between corporally different entities occur in the architecture of anexperiential fabric specific to each case. Lorimer (2006) demonstrates that place-making in reindeerherding involves interspecies care activities with sensory and affective geographies of reciprocity.

Contact with native telluric forms reactivates and energizes people's senses (ABRAM, 1996).Thus, the affective approaches used in more-than-human Cultural Geographies provide reciprocalimmersions in the cosmos of plants, animals, and atmospheres. The geographer guided by the primalforms of inter-corporeality experienced in these arrangements can identify ways to affect and be affectedby geographical situations in their specificities.

Lorimer (2012) argues that more-than-human approaches in Geography can assist environmentalplanning efforts in degraded areas by drawing attention to the interconnected significance of corporeal,affective, and non-human elements. Considering the agency of the interactive elements that affect andare affected in each geographic reality permits the conditions emerging from the inter-corporealarrangements of precariousness, cohabitation, and/or tension involved in place-making practices to beobserved.

According to Thrift (2008), there has been an upsurge in affective techniques and procedures inCultural Geography, aiming to carry out research to correlate the psychic and emotional intranscendence to the representative limitations interpreted by rationalist paradigms. Found in trans andinterdisciplinary contexts, these practices use immersive research modes that enable approximationswith affective atmospheres and forms of otherness. Thus, the research practice itself should become acreative context and generator of affective nexuses by combining relational activities with those linkedto artistic, poetic, and/or immersive action.

Transposing the languages and skills from the Arts to Cultural Geography's research practices is away to get closer to non-human worlds. The Arts enable the creation of a cosmos of reciprocity thatraises awareness of the Anthropocene's environmental conditions. If, as Haraway (2016) argues, this is atime marked by discontinuities, the challenge for the Arts and Humanities is to create ways of acting andthinking that shorten this period as much as possible and build forms of cohabitation that design refugesand alternatives. Davis and Turpin (2015) demonstrate the transformative virtuality of artistic practices.

More-than-human Cultural Geographies adopt a non-representational perspective in theirapproach to the Arts. Such an approach is a departure from observations about aesthetic issues ormeanings pre-defined by symbolic systems (GREENHOUGH, 2014). Conversely, they approachart-scientific contact as a form of inventive engagement with the world, where the senses are producedand recreated during the corporal interaction with the entities involved. This reciprocity is understood asan ecology of dynamic and intersubjective practices (GREENHOUGH, 2014; SMITH, 2007).

In agreement, Hawkins and Straughan (2015) state that cultural geographers have appreciated art'scapacity to engage researchers in experiences of more-than-human worlds. Through this approach,artistic, narrative, and creative geographical practices seek to create opportunities for immersion andexpression of shared worlds. Art is a way of unveiling and creating new spatialities where creativeencounters happen on the horizon of affective cosmoses, felt and experienced in the geographical reality(HAWKINS, 2014). For Haraway (2016), Earth's various beings relate, approach, and know each other,thinking stories through narratives, worlds, and knowledge that break with Cartesian categories orspecifications.

Offering opportunities for the emergence and reciprocity with these narratives, crossings, andweavings is one of the goals set by more-than-human Cultural Geographies. It is possible to find Earth'spolyphonic existential spatialities through imaginative, poetic, sensory, and empathic contact. Capturingthe shared affect between telluric corporal variations demands alternative forms of attention andexpression on the part of geographers. In seeking to highlight the relational weaving of places throughetho-ethnographic fables, studies such as those by Vannini and Vannini (2020a) show how such formsof sensitivity can be written in a geo-literary association.

As Smith (2007) points out, expressing other beings' existence geographically means becomingopen to their affect and knowledge to find forms of speech through the Earth's voiceless spellings. Thisimplies being influenced by encounters so that they propitiate changes in the forms of otherness andcollaborate in the construction of shared world projects. It is about understanding how to be in-and-ofthe world in correlation to more-than-human contexts.

Associations in multi/transdisciplinary groups in collaborative projects can dimension specificitiesand dynamics of the geographical reality. At the same time, artistic and creative approaches are a way ofpublicizing and raising awareness of research results (HAWKINS, 2018). Seeking affect through theconstruction of songs (GIBBS et al., 2019) or video-photographic correlations (LORIMER, 2010) areways to reach vital spaces experienced and shared in more-than-human worlds.

Within more-than-human Cultural Geography, Vital Geography focuses on the place-making ofanimals and plants. This subfield is primarily concerned with how multi-species arrangements areformed in worlds of corporeal contact between different beings. They recognize the intersubjectivities,affect, and forms of sentience of the study subjects, to glimpse their autonomy in the composition oftheir spatialities of existence.

Hodgets and Lorimer (2015) argue that it is essential to consider the agencies, behaviors, andways of animals' place-making so that geographers can engage with hybridity and situations involvingmore-than-human entities. When addressing the contextual possibilities of geographical reality emergingfrom non-human spatial practices through a vitalist perspective, which considers the plant or animal'ssentience, it is possible to observe the sensitive and affective fabrics that shape specific spatialities totheir corporeal variations.

According to Vannini and Vannini (2020a) multi-species ethnogeographies deal with a diffuseand shared more-than-human corporeality, about a spatial ethos of reciprocity between human, animal,and plant worlds. The quest for vital geographies emphasizes the visceral experience of the existentialand embodied spaces of different entities. Although each has its variable dimension, identifying sharedstrands between more-than-human beings unveils multiple spatial dimensions. Therefore, the basicassumption considers the autonomous, vital, and sociable agency of the non-human entities involved.

An exciting study by Barua (2013) unveils the conditions in which sunai alcoholic beveragestransform affective relationships and spatial tensions between humans and elephants in the Indianvillage of Sundapur. The ethnogeographic research on more-than-human cohabitation showed themicropolitical, cultural, and biological conditions of the place. How the non-human animals look for thedrink and react aggressively under its influence reveal the biopolitics of place centered on relationalcontradictions stimulated by human artifacts.

Another example is the work of Philips and Atchinson (2018), who address how trees interact andshape more-than-human worlds in urban spaces in Australia. Based on biographical reports and poeticexpressions about these plants' sensitivity, the authors uncover the networks of imaginativeco-fabrication between human and non-human subjects and worlds. The analyzed narratives reveal reciprocities between plants and people, leading to collaboration to turn cities into places ofmulti-species coexistence. There is a sensitivity in observing the subtle relational correlations inherent incohabitation and shared sentience between the entities involved in the research.

As Pitt (2015) suggests in her research into human-plant reciprocity in the place-making ofgardens, there is an ethical imperative to recognize plants' agency. Thinking about plants based on theirautonomy transcends the Cartesian and dualistic vice of viewing them as passive and lacking sensitivity.This mechanistic thought structure is part of a link that legitimizes present-day ecological damage. Byadopting a vitalist stance, geographers can collaborate to build anti-hegemonic perceptions ofrelationships with plants and animals.

Vital Geographies are multiple (HODGETS; LORIMER, 2015) and collaborate in unveilingarrangements of tension, precariousness, discontinuity, reciprocity, or sharing in the Anthropocene. Theendeavor to observe and share with beings whose corporeality differs from that of humans requires acareful examination of particular variations on multiple scales, according to the specificities of thedifferent more-than-human worlds. They encompass ways of being-in-the-world that differ corporeallyfrom one another, addressing topologies and geographical realities that are not necessarily familiar tohuman geography. In this way, they collaborate in the architecture of modes of otherness that do nothave speciesism in their approach.

Atmospheric Geography is another field with distinct repercussions among more-than-humanGeographies, which focuses on the multiple conditions by which human and non-human entitiesinterrelate in certain places. Adams-Hutcheson (2017) argues that the concept of atmosphere used inthese studies is related to the word's two meanings. Both the atmosphere as an affective-aural fieldemanating from beings and things and manifestations of the troposphere.

Trigg (2020, p.4) explains that "The indeterminate nature of an atmosphere, as something that isboth subjectlike and objectlike, means that it can function as a common ground between individuals."This inherent shared characteristic embodies the more-than-human modes of reciprocity that emerge inhow different entities participate and create atmospheres. Atmospheres can be wild (VANNINI;VANNINI, 2020b) and explain convergences of a primal feeling of vitalist forces inherent in the Earth.Therefore, the atmospheric porosity and dynamic flow generated by feelings, bodies, and objectsindicate a non-representative way of manifesting the variable relationships between presences sharing agiven place.

Insofar as "there are as many atmospheres as there are ways of feeling or moods"(ADAMS-HUTCHESON, 2017, p.6), they can be pleasant or challenging, sublime or exciting,comfortable or oppressive. In his research in New Zealand, Adams-Hutcheson indicates how thetroposphere's seasonal rhythms influence small farmers' sense and bonds of place, involving theintertwining of animals, plants, agricultural machinery, rainfall, and mudflats. He states that immersionin atmospheres can demonstrate discreet and dynamic connections that involve the corporeality of themost diverse beings.

According to Trigg (2020), an atmosphere can be defined by the adhesions it exerts on the bodieswith which it interacts. Simpson (2018) takes this approach when studying the ambiguities of cyclists'relationships with inopportune winds on the British coast. Alongside the production of atmospheresrelated to bicycling activities, a counter-atmosphere is produced by the troposphere that hinders therider's path. The interaction of these elements generates a particular affective atmosphere that reinforcesa more-than-human reciprocity negotiated in places.

As Ash and Simpson (2018) underscore, atmospheric studies can focus on the webs of meanings,styles, and affectivity generated by particular objects. Such research tends to involve amalgams ofmore-than-human components that unfold into situational and circumstantial spatialities. McCormack (2007), for example, addresses how antidepressants and their chemical processes cause changes in themore-than-human affective dynamics of places. The author's ontological reflection demonstrates howgeography can engage in biotechnological themes through molecular affect. Based on this complexcomposition of atmospherically shared affections, he synthesizes that the space-molecular experience is altered when antidepressants modify chemical processes. The corporeal places produced in thesesituations become hybrid compositions between the biochemical elements and the entities involved.

In the fractured horizons of desolate geographies that seem to be continually expanding in theAnthropocene, the possibility of confrontation permeates the formation of other ways of thinking.Recognizing the intersubjectivities, intertwinings, and dependencies between different terrestrial beings,as the more-than-human Cultural Geographies have done, is a way of transcending the Cartesiandualisms that legitimize the current environmental crisis.

Transcending the limitations of representational geographies towards the transformativepossibilities of recognizing the links between human and non-human beings linked to the Earth entailsbuilding an empathic relationship with the conditions of shared existence on the planet. Exploringdifferent entities' existential spatialities results in identifying experiences of places' co-vulnerability,reciprocity, precariousness, and affectivity.

The current variety of procedural and theoretical experiments reveal Cultural Geography'screative potential to propose ways of seeing, feeling, and affecting multi-species geographical realities.Its observations about the agency of objects, atmospheres, plants, and non-human animals indicateperspectives of corporeal variations that enhance ways of cohabiting the Earth. Its links to the categoriesof place and landscape enhance the scope of folds and interrelationships explored by geographicknowledge.

To immerse oneself in the co-vulnerabilities of the places experienced by different terrestrialentities results from understanding the reciprocities and contradictions of the contemporary geographicsituations in tension. Geographical knowledge open to understanding these sentient arrangements allowsus to decipher spellings of the Earth that overcome human exceptionalism towards the possibilities oflife in more-than-human inhabited horizons. The offerings from Anglophone Geography can make avaluable contribution to the continuous expansion and critical reflection of Cultural Geography inBrazil.