Study Center Index of Terms:

Becoming-With - The Environmental Humanities has been described by Kate Wright for the Duke University Press as an engaged, scholarly response to madness—an attempt to address the systemic pathology of a species disconnected from the conditions of its world. Becoming-with offers a metaphysics grounded in connection, challenging delusions of separation—the erroneous belief that it is somehow possible to exempt ourselves from Earth's ecological community.

Mycorrhizal Network – Mycorrhizal networks are underground networks created by mycorrhizal fungi that connect individual plants together and transfer water, carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients and minerals. Scientists have also found that trees and other plants in wild and sometimes cultivated spaces use these networks to communicate with one another through sophisticated chemical signals.

Holobiome - A holobiome is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form an ecological unit that in turn, connects to, and is a part of other ecological units and the larger ecology. All species are part of their own, interconnected holobiomes. For example in humans, our holobiome refers to the hundreds of trillions of “guest workers” such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, molds, and protozoa that live in and on and around each of our bodies. They exist to help our bodies function well and without them we’d have shorter lifespans and less good health. This is true for all species on earth.

Anthropocene - The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.

Corporeal - Having, consisting of, or relating to a physical material body. Much of Western philosophy mostly deals with our minds and the culture that our minds produce, ignoring the effect of our own embodiment, and the embodiment of other species in the world. Materialist philosophy, particularly New Materialism, seeks to consider what it means to be an embodied, corporeal mind.

Body-Territory – An idea inherited from the the Zapitistas, a feminist indigenous South American rebel group that is fighting the effects of capitalism and neoliberal policies that are harming their homeland and lifeways. Their position, which is shared by many First-Nations people, is that for all peoples, the land where our ancestors and family members are buried is an extension of our living bodies. By using a Christian cemetery as a site for research, the artist is considering the ways in which Western culture could benefit from thinking in this way about the dead and their connection to the living.

Patte Loper

Patte Loper