Walking with a Ghost River: Unsettling Place in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The call to explore a different mode of being-human in what many have termed the Anthropocene, is an invitation to think about what it means to live in place in a more expansive and speculative way. It also asks that we take a different starting point for critical inquiry, and rather than pursue an explanatory end, the approach remains ‘curious, experimental, open, adaptive, imaginative, responsive and responsible’ ( Gibson et al. 2015: i–ii). This paper charts the messy, and often faltering methodologies we have developed as a means of thinking through urban landscapes of colonial violence, and engaging with the ghostly forms of past histories in present-day urban places through the multi-sensorial experience of walking. In attending to the many complex connections and relationships between socio-economic, techno-political, and the more-than-human world, we broadened our lens of inquiry to include the multitude of related and interconnected spatial and temporal relationships that came across our path, and sought to develop a mode of ethical relationing with a ghost river.