For multispecies liberatory futures: Three principles toward “progress” in anti-anthropocentric environmental geography

Abstract

This review draws on the work of critical animal geographers to elicit the notion of environmental anthropocentrism through critiques of progress as human development that adversely incorporates or displaces animal bodies in the service of (green) capitalism and sustainability. It reflects on how ideas of “progress” in environmental geography become reshaped through a critical animal geographic approach that politicizes animal–nature relations in all their diversity, and centers the experiences of animals as individuals and species in development-induced ecological crises. To this end, it advances three principles for an anti-anthropocentric analytic of progress as multispecies liberatory futures: animating humans toward a shared (but not universal) animality; differentiating species for nonhierarchy beyond capitalism; and instituting anti-anthropocentrism in addressing difficult ethics and incommensurability in liberatory futures.