Ethics & the Environment

In Political Solidarity I argued that political solidarity requires a decisionmaking model that acknowledges differences in social and epistemological privilege while also seeking to understand the situation of oppression or injustice and grant “multiple, overlapping, and at times contradictory knowledge claims.” Such an argument raises questions about the possibilities for participation of the more-than-human world in political solidarity. My human-centered account in the book argues that we cannot join in political solidarity with the more-than-human world, but that may not be the end of the story. In this paper, I address two environmental-philosophy-based challenges to my account—coming from the work of Shelley Wilcox and Chaone Mallory. I respond to their astute criticism and offer a third alternative for solidarity with the more-than-human world. This alternative attends to the needs for a radical rethinking of the solidaristic relation between humans and the more-than-human world, while also trying to carve out space for a political solidarity on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves in the political arena (rather than with) without assuming social and epistemological privilege on the part of humans.