This pathway brings together a selection of materials that represent key conjunctures throughout time and temporality that have led humanity to this moment of the Anthropocene. “Slowness in an Anthropocene Hurry” encourages the rethinking or reimagining of frameworks of resolution, healing, and problem-solving through a lens and practice of rest or refusal. This focus leans into the work of the Nap Ministry,0.4.1 who since 2015 have continued to forefront within their practice the political significance of rest as a form of resistance to disrupt and push back on capitalism and white supremacy—a coupling that arguably lies at the center of the Anthropocene issue and problem.

In professor of philosophy Axelle Karera’s 2019 essay “Blackness and the Pitfalls of Anthropocene Ethics,”0.4.2 she states that “it is not merely the Anthropocene discourse’s reliance on ‘Anthropos’ but the ways in which both its brand of realism and its premature fantasies about post-apocalyptic futures have worked to obscure a deeply fragmented ethos unequipped to account for the suffering of racialized bodies.” In these ongoing, unprecedented times—amid a global pandemic and a worldwide reckoning and uprising against systemic racism, inequality, and state-sanctioned violence—we continue to encounter opportunities to relearn, reset, and reprogram from what came before and move forward in radically different ways. Or maybe not so radically different ways; maybe what is required is deep, collective listening and an interrogation of the past and the sacred ancestral practices that exist(ed) and ensure(d) survival of not just humanity but also the natural resources essential to sustaining life. How can these practices become foundational in curricula? How can the inherent value systems within curricula and pedagogical initiatives and institutions encompass approaches that sustain many lives?

This pathway encourages the reader to embody a practice of rest as a refusal and a commitment to finding routes to holistic solutions that truly consider the impact of the decisions made today and how they will play out in the future. To consider how education and research communities demonstrate, audit, and measure commitment to ethical research practices that value and do not obscure the reality of the past and present or place too much faith in speculated futures that often abstract the impact of research and pedagogical practices. Having in mind the relationship between rest (or lack of it) and digital consumption habits and dependence on digital tools, data usage is of interest here,0.4.3 as is the carbon footprint of various proposed research initiatives, practices, strategies, and solutions in response to the Anthropocene. As a research community, how do we create moments to pause and take space to reflect, witness, and document our current state and experiences? What have been the responses to the notion of rest in these challenging times, across geographies?0.4.4

Dimensions of rest and refusal trace through many of the works included in this pathway: tribal and community leaders committed to ecological sustainability for future generations, who are affected by the land loss crisis and institutional responses to it, offer experiences and initiatives from the region of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.0.4.5 Water protector Saundi McClain-Kloeckner discusses making prayers for water at the Mississippi River, through a sense of belonging, her connection to her Black and Indigenous ancestors, the integration of spirituality into a lived practice, and a tradition of sustaining a conscious relationship with water.0.4.6 A Field Note posted during the Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta0.4.7 in New Orleans highlights the ongoing impact of the absence of a disability justice discourse alongside ableist assumptions in collective work and spaces.0.4.8 Food systems planner Lynn Peemoeller’s work draws on scientific research into eastern North American agricultural heritage, seeking to revive lost crops and prompt reflection on the industrialized agricultural landscapes of today,0.4.9 while sociocultural anthropologist Tahani Nadim thinks through concerns of the embodied labor of data-making and the datafication of nature, along with its social and political ramifications, as seen through the lens of the maize plant.0.4.10

A photographic Field Note depicts a slave cabin in Wallace, Louisiana—an oxymoronic place of “rest” within the grounds of what is now the Whitney Plantation Museum, the only museum in Louisiana that puts the lives of enslaved people at the center of its work.0.4.11 Standing in refusal to this cabin, shouts ring out during the Slave Rebellion Re-enactment—“Liberté! LIBERTÉ! Liberté! LIBERTÉ! Ashé ASHÉ! Ashé Ashé! ASHÉ ASHÉ! Ashé ASHÉ! Ashé! Ashé! Freedom!!!!! FREEDOM!!!!!”0.4.12 First-person accounts of work undertaken by technology researcher Maya Indira Ganesh, videographer Sadie Luetmer, and activist and sociologist Shana M. griffin consider the conditions that shape research and the critical questions raised through process, as well as how decision-making impacts the equity and ethics present within their practices.0.4.13 The Hopium Economy project challenges us to reevaluate and seek freedom from cycles of addiction as a substantial mode of our existence, and to consider these cycles as being at the core of our relationship to the planet.0.4.14 The conveners of the seminar “Exhaustion and Imagination” explain their concern with restoring a sense of balance to and through their work by approaching multiple ways of imagining the (in)visible layers of exhaustion as a way to think through geological, colonial, and corporate temporalities.0.4.15

As you work through these materials, I encourage you to use meditation and to be mindful of your inhalations and exhalations, to have regular breaks away from the computer, to maintain hydration, and to Remember to Exhale (2019).0.4.16 What does it mean to be urgently slow in this undeniably urgent conjuncture? By approaching “Slowness in an Anthropocene Hurry” from a place of rest, we are able to bring our unconscious to the forefront and see what lies there when thinking about resources, sustainability, preservation, and conservation. Finally, the pathway’s accompanying key contribution, the sound work Slowness in Urgency, Urgently Slow (2021), gives listeners the opportunity to reflect on the contradictions of our current digital realities in relation to the Anthropocene. Accompanying this contribution is an interview with the AC team, in which I expand further upon how these considerations are shaping my own work and practice.0.4.17