From the human to the planetary

Abstract

This is largely a theoretical, speculative essay that takes on the question of what 'care' looks like at a moment when climate change is increasingly taking center stage in public and political discussions. Starting with two new practices, namely, humanitarian care for nonhumans and One Health collaborations, I seek to determine what forms of political care can incorporate the well-being of future generations and future iterations of the earth. After an exploration of One Health as an approach to planetary care, I ask what its parts enable us to think, despite its limitations; I focus on the new human-nonhuman assemblages connected through different biosocial models, such as neuroscience or immunology, to see how these scientific theories might enable new possibilities. I argue that a focus on biological ecologies at different scales-as opposed to ethicomoral categories like humanity-can open the way to a larger imaginary of human and nonhuman flourishing and a space for nonmoralistic politics.

The Global Psyche: Experiments in the Ethics and Politics of Mental Life

“…Global political and economic crises fuse with crises of institutional and epistemic authority and present the opportunity for emergent critics and political constellations—not only the Global South but all manner of social movements adopting the idioms of mental health—for which the global is a stage of challenge and contestation. The dynamism and plasticity of the nervous system and the epigenome and the radical uncertainty of climate crisis destabilize the global as a heuristic or set of institutions while also suggesting the need for other forms of ethical obligation at a planetary scale—to the interconnectedness of life and threats to collective existence (Ticktin 2019).…”

Military Dogs and Their Soldier Companions: The More‐than‐human Biopolitics of Leishmaniasis in Conflict‐torn Colombia

“…Reflecting on recent humanitarian and health frameworks that do not focus primarily on the well‐being of humans, but on that of nonhuman animals, the environment, and the planet more generally, Ticktin asks: “Whose health matters, how do we conceive of its boundaries—by way of affective ties, political connections, or biological measurements—and how do these criteria get combined?” ( 2019 : 135). Drawing inspiration from these words, in this article I have shown that war, its violence, the affects it exploits, and the biopolitical logics it employs play a crucial role in how canine binomials of the Colombian army are crafted, how intra‐ and interspecies hierarchies emerge and shift, and how the health of military humans and dogs—as well as that of civilian humans and dogs—is or is not cared for.…”

“…In that sense, documenting, recognizing, and repairing the consequences of war also means understanding health afflictions as inherent to the armed conflict, and the human as part of a heterogeneous group of beings who have suffered it. In other words, the experiences of dogs and humans with leishmaniasis in (post‐)conflict Colombia invite us to conceive and implement new and nonviolent practices of care that, drawing on feminist thinking, “can be retooled to address persistent forms of exclusion and domination” that arise from war and have continued despite the signing of a peace agreement (Ticktin 2019 : 136; see also Pinto‐García 2019 ).…”

“…Is it possible that posthuman proclivities for care may lead to unwelcome consequences that deepen suffering when, for example, they are appropriated by a state at war? Drawing inspiration from the work of Ticktin, I am interested here in “forms of noninnocent care, which acknowledge the ways that care partakes in valuations of life” ( 2019 : 137) and generates shifting, at times even animal‐centered, but still perilous distinctions and stratifications between humans and nonhumans.…”

‘Every Person Counts’

“…Th e problem of not being able to rescue everyone is not unique to everyday or 'amateur' forms, but concerns all humanitarian intervention, no matter how comprehensive (Ticktin 2015(Ticktin , 2019. My argument here engages with scale-making in everyday humanitarianism.…”