IN PERSON: The Jungle is a Living, Intelligent and Conscious Being

Please join us for The More-Than-Human Book Club’s monthly discussion group.

For November we will be reading a selection of chapters from the newly released More Than Human Rights: An Ecology of Law, Thought and Narrative for Earthly Flourishing book edited by César Rodríguez-Garavito.

The book is free to download and includes contributions from writers including Robert MacFarlane, Cosmo Sheldrake, David Abram and Catalina Vallejo Piedrahíta.

We will meet in person in the Barbican library from 2.15pm and the discussion will run from 2.30-3.30pm with an option of continuing more informal discussions over tea in the cafe afterwards.

On the day, after introductions, we will go around the group and each share our thoughts about the selected chapters, before engaging in a gently-guided group discussion.

Please don’t feel any pressure to finish the chapters before attending, and please know you’re very welcome to attend however little you’ve had a chance to read. We will email you which chapters to read upon booking.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

More About the Book:

Building on the invitation of Indigenous knowledge and ecological sciences to expand our sensorial and moral horizon and see ourselves again as part of Earth’s web of life, the provocation of this book is to locate rights in the more-than-human world. Among the questions guiding the book are: What theoretical and legal approaches can solidify the foundations of the rights of nature? How do findings from the natural sciences, Indigenous knowledge, and other fields shed new light on the idea of the rights of nature? What types of nonhuman entities should be protected? What types of rights should they be recognized as holding? What are the lessons from existing legislation, constitutional provisions, and lawsuits that embrace this notion? More broadly, how can we conceive of “human rights without human supremacism”?

Chapters include headings such as "Honoring the Wild Proliferation of Earthly Perspectives: A Conversation" (Merlin Sheldrake and David Abram) and “Recasting Interspecies Care and Solidarity as Emergent Anti-Capitalist Politics" (Danielle Celermajer & Anna Sturman).

More Than Human Rights includes contributions from leading lawyers, scientists, philosophers, and writers from around the world from the gathering of the More-Than-Human Rights (MOTH) project, emerging from NYU Law. The volume discusses the foundations of the MOTH framework as well as its implications for ideas and practices in fields such as law, human rights, ecology, politics, and storytelling.

More about The Book Club:

The More-Than-Human Book Club is a group that meets monthly both at The Barbican Library and elsewhere to talk about more-than-human experiences, wildness and nature writing in its broadest sense. Each month we choose a different book, film, artwork, poem or essay to discuss, including a mix of classic and contemporary works. We hope the space will provide a place of sanctuary, exploration and discovery, and be a place where community and connections are forged and inspiration is found. If you are interested in nature, literature, wildness, ecology, science, art and/or ideas, please do join us. We would love to have you there!

Its co-founders, hosts and curators are:

Olivia “Lilly” Edward. Lilly is a writer who specialises in nature and the environment. For the last few years she has been running nature writing events and panel discussions at the Royal Geographical Society, and she continues to review and write regularly for their magazine. She volunteers as a ranger in Richmond Park and is endlessly enthralled by the natural world and its web of ecological relationships.

Rhona Eve Clews. Rhona is an Artist, Healer and Ecologist. Rhona has a background in Psychology and Photography, holds an MFA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art and teaches independently and for Slade Summer School. Drawing upon her past of growing up a hippie she works across writing, photography, performance and filmmaking, aiming to expand them into somatic, eco-feminist practices and contribute to wider ecological ethics of care.

Any questions please email us at [email protected]

Host or Publisher Olivia Edward & Rhona Eve Clews