Mourning as Posthuman Ethics: Interspecies Grief and Solidarity in Extinction Plays

Among the current calls for a redefinition of the Anthropocene as a non-anthropocentric concept (Davies 2016), cultural extinction studies offer ways of advancing posthuman ethics through more-than-human practices of mourning. Adapting Judith Butler’s notion of (un)grievability, extinction studies scholars promote cultural practices aimed at recognising the grievability of other-than-human lives. Arguably, one of the media enabling the enactment of interspecies mourning is theatre. Building on the theoretical framework proposed by cultural extinction studies, the article discusses a selection of contemporary plays grouped under the label of “extinction drama,” focusing on the themes of humans’ and other-than-humans’ shared vulnerability to extinction, humanimal temporalities of extinction, and interspecies mourning.