ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I aim to demonstrate that cultural memory studies can contribute to postcolonial environmental humanities by introducing concepts, approaches, and texts that bring histories of the decline and resilience of human and animal populations into an expanded commemorative frame. Remembering these intertwined histories may, I argue, enable us to think more fruitfully about connections between animal suffering and human suffering, and between extinction and genocide today. Building on Michael Rothberg’s (2009) concept of “multidirectional memory,” I introduce the concept of “multidirectional eco-memory,” which has particular relevance in an era of extinction. He proposes multidirectional memory as an alternative to competitive conceptions of memory in which, for instance, commemorating the Holocaust is seen as obscuring memories of other atrocities such as slavery (3). Memory need not be viewed as competitive in a zero-sum game, he argues; rather, “[w]hen the productive, intercultural dynamic of multidirectional memory is explicitly claimed … it has the potential to create new forms of solidarity and new visions of justice” (5). Rothberg is concerned with how social groups articulate histories of victimization, and the dynamic transfers between public memories in a multicultural, transnational world (2). Multidirectional eco-memory, as I conceive it, would link human and nonhuman animals and their histories of harm, suffering, and vulnerability in an expanded multispecies frame of remembrance.
