Xenomathematics as a planetary practice: imagining more-than-human mathematical worlds

Abstract Xeno means strange, alien, guest, or outsider. The term xenomathematics references non-human or more-than-human mathematics, be it alien or earthbound. By using xenomathematics to frame mathematical activity writ large, we can push back at the human exceptionalism that continues to inform much of the work done in the name of ethnomathematics and critical mathematics research. Xenomathematics invites us to speculate about radically different mathematical behaviors, asking: How can we attend to mathematics as not simply that which alienates us but also that which makes us alien in new ways? This is an effort to trouble the usual assumption that mathematical ability belongs only to the human. I discuss the work of five mathematicians who have written about possible alien mathematics. All five mathematicians discuss the difference between continuous and discrete mathematics, as a key contested factor in characterizing human mathematics. I then discuss queering mathematical methods, as a way of troubling conventional mathematical concepts and opening onto more-than-human mathematical imaginaries. I also discuss the xenomathematics envisioned in the short science fiction story Luminous (1998) by Hugo-award winning science fiction author Greg Egan. My aim is to draw attention to the possible ways that xenomathematics might rigorously cultivate students’ mathematical imaginations.