Date of Award
2025
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (School of Arts and Sciences)
Schools and Centres
Arts & Sciences
Abstract
This study proposes the central concepts of belonging and vocabulary to critically analyse and recompose current approaches to more-than-human relationship that are inadequate and counterproductive. Contemporary vocabularies of belonging are inadequate because they fail to account for the practicalities of an expansive human and more-than-human ‘we’, and they are underpinned by extractivist or idealist logics. They are counterproductive because they carry embedded dualisms that often directly counter intended messages of inherent relationality. A largely theoretical work, the thesis is informed by a field philosophy approach in the Environmental Humanities, working alongside the Martuwarra (Fitzroy) River, in North-Western Australia, and its peoples. Findings from field philosophy are integrated with the development of a new materialist, pragmatic conceptual framework for more-than-human relationship that engages our fundamental motivation for belonging to support response-ability at the scale of our interdependence and thus demonstrates how the proposed vocabularies of belonging model helps us to participate effectively in processes of affective transformation. The outcome of the thesis is a call for scholars in the Environmental Humanities (and anyone using words) concerned with the existential threat of the climate crisis to adopt a vocabulary that undoes false dualisms and normatively recomposes an expanded notion of belonging in their work, and thus the world.
Publication Details
Stredwick, L. (2025). A public for the problem: vocabularies of belonging at the climate precipice [Doctor of Philosophy (School of Arts and Sciences)]. The University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/490