Responding as composing: towards a post-anthropocentric, feminist ethics for the Anthropocene

Problems posed by the 'Anthropocene' have caused many feminists to rethink a feminist ethics in a post-anthropocentric vein. In this context, a reconceptualization of the notion of responsibility as response-ability or ability to respond has gained crucial relevance. This article reads ethics of response as feminist takes on problems posed by the Anthropocene, but also as attempts to conceptualize a non-normativist ethics working with and beyond post-structuralism. The theoretical challenge faced by a feminist post-anthropocentric ethics, the article argues, was posed by feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti as a confrontation of 'affirmation versus vulnerability'. In revisiting this debate, the article situates the notion of response-ability and outlines the theoretical questions which must be dealt with by an ethics of response: an integration of affirmation and negativity on one hand, and the question of the ethical and political implications of thinking from constitutive relationality on the other hand. By drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers, the article maps out one possible conceptualization of an ethics of response-ability in more detail. It introduces the etho-ecological practice of responding as composing with otherness, which enables us to conceptualize the notion of response-ability as a concept underpinning a post-anthropocentric, feminist ethics for the Anthropocene.