Politics of recognition

You have encountered a “Great White Beast”- a fleeting, shapeshifting figure that performs the world as indeterminate. The possibilities of encountering a Great White Beast, is a reminder that there are no right decisions to be made, but that we are nevertheless to hold ourselves accountable to our own choices. When the world is ‘remade’ in each meeting, it means that there is an imperative to take responsibility for the intra-active relations we build and the future relations our actions make possible or foreclose (Barad, 2007 p.x; see also Rosiek & Adkins-Cartee, 2023 p.160). It’s a constant gesture to ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway, 2016). In this case such trouble refers to the “politics of recognition” (see Coulthard, 2007; 2014).

The Gjoa Haven HTA seeks recognition for the impacts that their community has suffered from the impacts of polar bear harvest quota reductions. Sharing the testimonies that were recorded during the 2019 workshops in academic publications were indicated by the HTA-board to play a desirable part for such recognition.

Nevertheless, describing the personal experiences around such a sensitive topic as polar bear quota reductions from my (then still) disconnected positionality as a new member to the Bearwatch team –struck me as unethical, let alone impossible. It proved impossible for me to separate the research-practices of a project like BearWatch- which are directly focussed on the methodologies of polar bear monitoring- from the subject of harvest quota. Harvest quotas are set, at least partially, based on the insights derived from such monitoring efforts.

What does it mean for scientists to engage with efforts to generate “recognition”, if we are, ourselves, part of the hegemonic institutes that are enabled to bestow, or withhold, such recognition? Coulthard, referring to such contradictions, thus critiques ‘recognition’ as a promise ‘to reproduce the very configurations of colonial power that Indigenous demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend’ (Coulthard, 2007, p. 437). This critique, however, does not dissolve Gjoa Haven’s desires to have their “Voices of Thunder echo everywhere”.

Aware of these tensions that are connected to the expressed desires of Gjoa Haven’s HTA for recognition, while also seeking to be responsive towards Gjoa Haven’s needs, I have not tried to seek and resolve this trouble. We, three of the BearWatch Principle investigators and I, have rather leaned into such tensions, by (re)negotiating our positions as implicated subjects, and find responsive approaches to “share” Gjoa Haven’s experiences.

So what can you do?

To prepare for such conversations with the HTA on appropriate ways to engage with their testimonies, you should take a detour to another cut, and have better look at what happened during the Workshops conducted in Summer, 2019, if you haven’t done so yet. Alternatively, you could check out a nearby Wrecksite: Science based conservation to find out more about the larger apparatus that our actions challenge, or tend towards.