Abstract

Short Paper, Theme: Interspecies  Sub theme: Symbiotic Organizations

The multispecies studies have so far embraced the diversity of mineral species only in a minimal capacity. Although biocentrism still predominates, change seems inevitable. There is a growing recognition that biocentrism “is often no longer viewed as an important corrective to previously anthropocentric approaches but rather as itself an unjustifiable bias” (van Dooren, Kirksey, Münster 2016, 4). Bethonico’s project recognises not only this bias but also the conditions of its operation, namely the shortage of concepts, stories and habits to embrace mineral species. The title of the developed book is self-explanatory in its ambition: Missing Words for Considering Stones, Rocks, Pebbles and Mountains: A Vocabulary of Proximity; it is this very proximity of life and minerals which is deeply rooted but overshadowed by life and hence habitually overlooked. Rocks, stones and pebbles, being solid aggregates of minerals or mineraloids, change and diversify when they come into contact with life and vice versa. With the current paradigm shift in mineralogy, which has brought forward the concept of co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere (Hazen et al. 2008), we have started asking what biological species (nonhuman and human) do to and with mineral species. What is biomineral ecology, and how has it changed in evolutionary processes? Since Darwin, we have known that the environment is essential for the evolution of biological species. Still, only now, with the theory of mineral evolution, are we becoming aware of the influence life has on the diversification of mineral species.

• Monika Bakke is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She writes about contemporary art and aesthetics with a particular interest in posthumanist, transgender and gender perspectives. She is the author of Bio-transgurations: Art and aesthetics of posthumanism (2010, in Polish) and Open Body (2000, in Polish), co-author of Pleroma: Art in Search of Wholeness (1998), and Editor of Australian Aboriginal Aesthetics (2004, in Polish), Going Aerial: Air, Art, Architecture (2006) and The Life of air: habitation, communication, manipulation (2011). From 2001 to 2017, she was editor-in-chief of a Polish cultural journal, Czas Kultury (Time of Culture). [Translated from French by Google Translate]