EXTINCTION AFFECT AND THE CASE OF THE POLAR BEAR

Abstract

The paper connects affect studies with Indigenous Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and the emergent field called extinction studies or climate change studies. Claire Colebrook’s two 2014 Deleuzean books on extinction argue for a “theory beyond theory,” where affect would have no place: theory would think beyond human extinction. The paper examines two important categories of discourse around the polar bear, that poster creature for climate change, those of Inuit hunters and elders and those of scientists. The Inuit freely express emotions, the scientists do not. The Inuit see themselves and the polar bear as kin; the scientists’ concern for the bears is not articulated. Nonetheless, for both of them, the bears are what the science and technology studies scholar, Bruno Latour, calls a “matter of concern.” Non-Inuit artistic responses to the possible extinction of the polar bear reveal a strong affective response, unlike the scientific accounts. Perhaps Latour’s suggestion for a “parliament of things” where non-human entities that have become “matter of concern” are represented might help connect these disparate discourses. Although Latour may be too optimistic, Colebrook’s stance seems require an impossible denial of human affect. Even the rational scientific accounts evidence concern based on affect, however buried. One approach that seems useful is that of Theo van Dooren, who looks at how threatened species and humans are connected in an account that examines affect as part of a study that also draws on science.