This symposium is dedicated to assessing the historical genesis of the interactions of “conquest” and “compost” and their related forms of kin-making – expressed, for example, in the antagonism of blood logics of inheritance v. elective affinities between humans, more than human lifeforms, and the soil itself. It seeks to connect the colonial logic of rightful genealogical (dis)possession with the decolonial epistemology of cosmic relatedness. It confronts “eugenicist” theories of population control with “ecological” philosophies, and the abstractions of property law with the lived experience of global, trans-species connectedness. It invites you to investigate anti-colonial countercurrents within the colonial episteme (e.g. the Humboldtian “cosmic” paradigm); to theorize and historicize enclosure, extraction, waste, soil, seeds, and agriculture; to connect the history of colonial dispossession and slavery with the contemporary phenomena of climate change and biodiversity decline; to reflect on the ideological significance of current discussions about the “deep” history of climate change and food production in connection with contemporary political struggles over access to existential resources. A focus on “kin” and “compost” also means to reflect on alternative socioeconomic and ecological “assemblages” that were discursively erased yet continue to exist in the margins of the dominant order.

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