Return to Relationality: Place and Beauty as Post-Capitalist Practice

Keywords: beauty, place, relationality, practice, post-capital practice
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 70

Abstract

The destructiveness of capitalism is due in part to its tendency to dis-integrate. In the pursuit of profitability, capitalism sunders the relationship between parts and wholes. Watersheds, neighborhoods, plants, animals, human beings, time itself — all are broken into ever smaller, more fungible, usable bits. Both ecosystems and societies are destroyed in the process. But another way is possible. In this paper, I proffer a (re)turn to relationality. Reflecting on my doctoral research amongst residents of Juneau, Alaska, on the emancipatory potentiality of beauty in more-than-human places, I make a case for both beauty and place as mutually reinforcing practices in post-capitalist relationality. I look at place as the gathering together of human subjects and more-than-human entities into meaning-full assemblages. Similarly, I theorize beauty not merely as aesthetic quality or sublime experience, but, akin to Buber's "I-Thou," as a mode of relating to (especially non-human) others out of self-gifting other-interest. I also make the case that beauty and place are often co-constituted: An experience of beauty transforms mere location into meaningful place. One’s commitment to a place causes one to see it as beautiful. This mutually reinforcing dance between beauty and place has the potential to reorient human subjects and societies toward post-capitalist relationalities. Ultimately, our late-capitalist, Anthropocene age calls for a reuniting of what capitalism has torn asunder. This talk commends beauty and place as two practices with the potential to do just that.