Multispecies Encounters on the Edge of the Capitalist World, (English-عربي).

“Multispecies Encounters on the Edge of the Capitalist World”

“One value of keeping precarity in mind is that it makes us remember that changing with circumstances is the stuff of survival.” Anna Tsing.

When Jana (my partner) and I changed our lifestyle during the pandemic to mobile dwelling in a motorhome, the idea was to look for a fresh breeze away from the crowded centre. We left our previous position in the city of Montevideo, replaced it with a trans-local one, and started a journey with our dog, Connie. It was not an escape attempt to detach us from the sedentary world and to abandon our sense of responsibility, nor to give up our plans for the future and to move to the margin of the nation-state paradigm. Rather, it was more to break the monotony affections of everyday life and to experience connecting to the world differently. The flexible lifestyle we got, exposed us to combined strategies of being connected and disconnected to the modern world, its technologies, and society. At the same time, we could proceed with our established activities such as pursuing my master’s degree in anthropology, and Jana could continue as an English teacher remotely. While travelling, we realised that our consumption should be reduced to follow the rhythm of this lifestyle. On the one hand, the limited space in our home wouldn’t allow any kind of unnecessary accumulations. On the other hand, the surplus time, the cultural interactions, and the frequent change of landscapes we have gained by this rhythm have only been possible along with accepting the risk of precarious economic conditions. The edge of the capitalist world has become challenge and ecstasy at the same time. After two years of living this way, we realized that the potential of the flexibility to move, change, and adapt allowed us to transform our fix roots to portable ones which travel with us along our migratory path. We are more confident to improvise than to lean on regular patterns, and we have developed a sense of adaptation to anywhere and everywhere in the world regardless of the political and national borders and limitations. Moreover, we realised that the impact of this lifestyle has transcended the human category, and Connie has accommodated to the change too.

May 18, 2022. Rio Gallegos, Argentina. We went back to spend the night near the river. We let Connie out for some time as we always do. She just freely runs around and plays with other dogs and then we call her back. However, this night, she was nowhere to be found. It was getting late and very cold. I had done many walks around, calling her, looking for her with a torch but she was nowhere. After a few hours, we found her walking on the street about 2km from the spot we had parked. I was angry with her for not staying close by and not listening when we were calling her but at the same time, I was relieved that we found her unharmed. When we lived in the city, we often used the leash and Connie used to stick to the rules. While travelling, our controlling logic towards Connie has been influenced by the new reality and the fact of spending more time in nature and small towns. Consequently, the use of the leash has been less required, and she gradually started to fill up the gap caused by the absence of the patterns of the past, and to expand her comfort zone. During the first few months, she would go for a quick walk by herself, and then she would lie down next to the motorhome’s door. Over time, this scenery started to change. Her walks started to last for longer periods. Ultimately, she would disappear and a few hours later, she would come back. We realised how independent she was becoming. We had no choice but to respect her space and spontaneity and wait for her to continue our journey. She is an energetic dog; however, she had not enjoyed spending time with other dogs when we lived in the city. Much less with cats, she got very territorial and would chase them. We were never sure if she chased them for fun or to expel them. However, we were sure that cats put themselves in a defensive position and would run away. After changing our lifestyle, this attitude started to change, gradually. She began to behave a bit differently with other animals, she became calmer meeting bigger animals such as a horse. While with dogs she would play for a short time, and then go her own way. As well, her relationship with cats is quite different now, she does not chase them anymore. We realised that she avoids them or at least she respects their space as far as they respect her space too. For the first time in her life, she cohabited in the same space with a cat while we were visiting some friends in Ushuaia. All of this made me realize how the mobile lifestyle has affected the hierarchal order of needs in our relationship with Connie, and how this change has allowed her to establish more equal relations with other species and to become more independent and relaxed.

By observing the change in Connie’s behaviour, I could make sense of Anna Tsing’s concept of “transformation through encounters”. The comparison I made between Connie’s attitude and adaptative modes while living in the city and lately in the mobile lifestyle allows us to follow the possibilities of new interspecies collaborations and the rise of unknown assemblages on the edge of the capitalist world. The connotations of this change reveal how the modern rhythm is not only affecting us as humans but is even transmitted by us to non-human through human-dominated interspecies relations. At the same time, Connie’s change reflects back to the human category by showing how the personal impression upon the surroundings is constituted by the surroundings' impression upon the personal. I tried to show how Connie’s adaptation modes have been influenced, to a certain degree, by the order we enforce upon her while in the city or on the move, and how this order changed after changing our perception of our surroundings. In our case, the mobile lifestyle has allowed us to encounter alternatives to capitalistically constituted relationships by allowing more improvisation and less control in our relations with other people and with other species that we keep establishing along the journey. In line with Anna Tsing’s concept, we realized how shifting our attention, expectations and preoccupations in life have reflected on our networks, and consequently, modified the shape of our entanglements. It might be odd to think that human control of other species will stop one day, however, by shifting our attention in life, we might refigure our understanding of survival as a collaborative project.

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Sami, Jana and Connie