Affordances in a Multispecies Entanglement

Abstract

As plastics circulate the oceans and animals lose their place in the world, the fragile and indeterminate aspects of the shared world become palpable. The concept of affordances, central to ecological psychology, means to capture the possibilities for action that the world offers. It suggests a pragmatic conceptualization of the world for human and non-human animals alike. As such it is perfectly positioned to foreground the fragility of a “multispecies entanglement,” a world shared with multiple species across generations. These indeterminate aspects of the world have so far however received little attention. By bringing together evolutionary thinking in ecological psychology and ethnographical work on animal extinction, this article explores one way for affordances to bring out the messy aspects of the shared world. On this view affordances help to achieve and maintain our shared world by inviting animals to participate in that world. Affordances are unfinished, perpetually in a process of co-becoming as world and animals take shape across multiple timescales. The article ends with two concrete examples that show the fragility that this view of affordances highlights, and the responsibility it requires of human life in a multispecies entanglement.

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