Alterity and kinship: co-writing posthumanist speculative nonfiction with AI

Abstract

As a response to the climate crisis, scholarly literature has introduced new theoretical perspectives, such as posthumanism, which seek to reimagine the relationships between humans and nonhuman others, including environments, animals, and plants. Reimagining these relationships depends in large part on our ability to engage nonhumans in their otherness, or alterity, but doing so is challenging. Responding to calls throughout posthuman literature for experimental new modes of imaginative encounter with nonhumans, and inspired by speculative traditions from literature to design, we devise a methodology involving “creative experiments” aimed at disrupting, decentering, and disorienting the human-centered thinking that interferes with humans’ ability to perceive and engage with nonhumans as kin. Simultaneously deploying a number of disruptive tactics—including co-writing with generative AI; working within non-fiction genres that do not exist; to imaginatively express, rather than represent, organisms that can not speak; concerning their experiences of a non-verbal form (music)—we contribute a methodology of speculative writing with AI in pursuit of the secret life of plants.