Prof. Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University) “Not the sky, not the water, but the land is that which binds us, what creates solidarity” took place on January 30, 2025 at the Gdańsk University Library on the occasion of the launch of MORE-THAN-HUMAN STUDIES LAB at the University of Gdańsk.
In his speech entitled “Not the Sky, Not the Water, But the Land is What Binds Us, What Creates Solidarity,” Prof. Rick Dolphijn drew attention to the need to re-appreciate the role of the land as an element shaping our identity and community.
Monika Szuba, PhD, DSc, professor at the University of Gdańsk, Head of the Department of English Literature at the Institute of English and American Studies, Faculty of Philology, prepared a response to Prof. Rick Dolphijn’s lecture:
Opening with a double negative, the title of Rick Dolphijn’s talk – “Not the Sky, not the Water, but the Land is that which Binds us, what Creates Solidarity” – leads us away from the sky and water towards the land. The verb “to bind” reminds us that we are earthbound and encourages care for what Gary Snyder calls our “earth house hold”, thus reaching for the roots of the term “ecology”, its first part derived from the Greek “oikos”, signifying a house or household.
The etymology of the word “solidarity” explored in the talk reminds us of the links between the concept and its origin in the Paris Commune and further, in the idea of community. The need to extend the notion of solidarity beyond the human world – into a community of all beings – was indicated by Dolphijn, who thus urges us to imagine a more equitable community of humans and nonhumans: an expansion into interspecies’ communities. The word “intermixture”, reiterated in the talk in turn guides us towards the idea of interdependent togetherness. It is togetherness which comes to form a community. The hope of coming together resides in the preposition “with”, which has become a key preposition in relational philosophy, recurring in such phrases as thinking with and living with other beings. Or else, living with the land. Dolphijn writes that we have “forgotten the Earth”. Soil and water are the sensuous fundaments for life, our senses binding us to our earthliness, they ground us. This includes the sense of smell. Luce Irigaray reminds us in her admonishment of Martin Heidegger’s “forgetting of air” (as Irigaray puts it), it is breath that binds us with the world. Our forgetting, which, according to Michel Serres, has caused our olfactory and gustatory alienation extends to the other senses, which underpin embodiment. The human coming-together with the world is also haptic, aural and, last but not least, visual.
At the end of his talk, Dolphijn posed a question that resonated throughout the discussion: “How must we change our lives?” It is this simple, direct question that is particularly urgent now that we, who are involved in other-than-human thinking, pose daily as we witness the tragedy of the commons. We need a renewed praxis for an extended community development, which is yet-to-come.
MORE-THAN-HUMAN STUDIES LAB is a program of open, transnational cooperation between academia, artistic organizations and NGOs, which examines how we can create new, different scenarios of life on our planet in the turbulent times of the 21st century. The program coordinator is Dr. Irena Chawrilska.