Introduction

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue “Multispecies Justice” traces various histories and genealogies of multispecies justice, illuminating the critical contributions of Indigenous philosophies and lifeways and more recent justice movements and intellectual developments in the West. It emphasizes how these intellectual traditions are rooted in social and political movements spurred by the relentless violence against the more-than-human and the inadequacy of existing conceptualizations or institutions of justice. The introduction explains the issue's engagement with the relationship between epistemological cultures and cultural ontologies on the one hand, and political institutions on the other, with a particular focus on different “species” of beings (human, nonhuman animal, plant, and so on). It also sets out the methodological and representational challenges involved in conceptualizing and achieving multispecies justice. The introduction introduces the articles to follow by thematizing them around four key topics: the relationship between agency and representation; situated knowledges and knowledge production; colonialism and capitalism; and the law and institutions understood as formal rule-systems and informal rules and norms. By engaging these themes, the special issue seeks to imagine how political institutions might be formed and transformed in ways that are responsive to cultural ontologies that disrupt existing grids of meaning and distributions of value.