Together-in-Time

Abstract

AbstractThe Anthropocene offers an opportunity to (re)imagine and enact futures that care for the geological and ecological times and temporal rhythms of kin, and to expand beyond human politics of time. This article engages posthumanism to disrupt anthropocentrism and attune to times as embedded within relations of being together-with nonhumans. In this methodological article, I consider what it might look like to be together-in-time(s) with nonhuman kin and offer some possible practices for attuning to nonhuman times and the co-created times of leisure. From these temporal attunements emerge creative and affectively disruptive (re)presentations of being together-in-times with rocks, chipmunks, a shaggy mane mushroom, and a log in two protected areas in Ontario, Canada. (Re)imagining leisure in the Anthropocene as an ethic of togetherness, this article seeks to care for affective, relational, and embodied practices of being-with, knowing-with, and writing-with kin and kin times, and for flourishing more-than-human futures.Keywords: Nature-based leisurenonhuman kinposthumanismtime AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank the special issue editors Bryan S. R. Grimwood, Emily Höckert, and Outi Rantala and the anonymous reviewers for their generosity and care in shared comments and feedback. I would also like to acknowledge the many humans and nonhumans of Silent Lake and Lake Superior Provincial Parks who, while not featured here, made engagements with rock, chipmunk, shaggy mane mushroom, and log kin, and their respective times, possible.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Figure 1. A Vignette with rocks (Source: Chris E. Hurst).Display full sizeFigure 2. Attuning to chipmunk temporal rhythms (Source: Chris E. Hurst).Display full sizeFigure 3. – Author fieldnotes (Source: Chris E. Hurst).Display full sizeFigure 4. Attuning to the lifetimes of a shaggy mane mushroom (Source Chris E. Hurst).Display full sizeFigure 5. A felled log (Source: Chris E. Hurst).Display full sizeNotes1 The writing-with and knowing-with kin from these encounters continues even today, far beyond my encounters “in the field”.