Nathaniel
Otjen
I’m committed to finding more just ways of cohabiting the world with the nonhumans who make our collective lives possible.
As author Nick Jans has observed, humans living during the twenty-first century find themselves “adrift in an increasingly empty world.” My research and teaching challenge the emptiness occurring in physical environments and in critical and cultural spaces.
A central goal of my work involves understanding how different structures and logics harm human and nonhuman communities. To address this, I develop modes of being premised upon reciprocity, interdependence, care and multispecies justice.
The following questions guide my endeavors:
- How are authors, artists, and activists imagining and creating worlds that actively support humans and nonhumans most disadvantaged by anthropocentrism, neoliberalism, colonialism, and legal and juridical systems?
- How has the figure of the liberal human been constructed and how does its continued and historic use marginalize peoples with alternative worldviews?
- How do frameworks of multispecies justice offer alternatives to liberal humanism?
- And how do multispecies approaches rearticulate the boundaries, goals, and subjects of justice?