Reconstructing the ‘self’: representation tactics for multispecies empathy

Abstract

Humans have been accelerating biodiversity loss through spatial changes in land and sea use. Pursuing resource accumulation and exploitation, nation-states have relied on human-centric policy and development. Professionals shaping the built environment—architects, landscape architects, engineers, and urban planners—are uniquely positioned to help humans envision coinhabiting with the more-than-human world. This essay argues that fostering multispecies empathy—the cognitive and emotional capacity to feel as other beings—is essential for this vision. Drawing on Dr. Petra Tschakert’s heuristic framework for ‘encountering the Unknown Other’, Indigenous scholarship, landscape architecture, and other fields, this essay contends that humans must perceive themselves as extensions of their more-than-human counterparts to empathise with other beings. Using this conceptual orientation, designers can foster multispecies empathy through representation tactics, such as relational space-time, more-than-human agency, and co-labour = co-flourishing.