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AlterlivabilitySpeculative Design Fiction and the Urban Good Life in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge

AlterlivabilitySpeculative Design Fiction and the Urban Good Life in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred... This article responds to two diverging notions of “livability”: the normative New Urbanist imaginary of livable cities, where the urban good life manifests in neoliberal consumer cultures, green gentrification, and inaccessible infrastructures, and the feminist and disability concept of livable worlds, such as those in which nonnormate life thrives. Whereas the former ought to broaden its notion of “lives worth living,” the latter would benefit from a more specific theory of design—the making and remaking of more livable worlds. In response, this article offers the concept of “alterlivability,” a design philosophy grounded in permaculture ethics. Drawing on two novels by ecofeminist writer Starhawk—The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994) and City of Refuge (2016)—the article explores the genre of speculative design fiction for its insights into prototyping more livable futures in the Anthropocene. Starhawk’s novels illustrate alterlivability as a set of political commitments, design methodologies, and spatial forms that place disabled, racialized, and poor people at the center of alterlivable worlds. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Environmental Humanities Duke University Press

AlterlivabilitySpeculative Design Fiction and the Urban Good Life in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge

Environmental Humanities , Volume 12 (2) – Nov 1, 2020

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References (36)

Copyright
© 2020 Aimi Hamraie
ISSN
2201-1919
eISSN
2201-1919
DOI
10.1215/22011919-8623197
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article responds to two diverging notions of “livability”: the normative New Urbanist imaginary of livable cities, where the urban good life manifests in neoliberal consumer cultures, green gentrification, and inaccessible infrastructures, and the feminist and disability concept of livable worlds, such as those in which nonnormate life thrives. Whereas the former ought to broaden its notion of “lives worth living,” the latter would benefit from a more specific theory of design—the making and remaking of more livable worlds. In response, this article offers the concept of “alterlivability,” a design philosophy grounded in permaculture ethics. Drawing on two novels by ecofeminist writer Starhawk—The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994) and City of Refuge (2016)—the article explores the genre of speculative design fiction for its insights into prototyping more livable futures in the Anthropocene. Starhawk’s novels illustrate alterlivability as a set of political commitments, design methodologies, and spatial forms that place disabled, racialized, and poor people at the center of alterlivable worlds.

Journal

Environmental HumanitiesDuke University Press

Published: Nov 1, 2020

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