Critical contemporary discourses on extinction, climate change and planetary boundaries are needed to counter and reject our current ways of living on this planet. But they often end badly. Therefore, we also need to tell the stories that create openings and generate more desirable alternatives. This paper contributes to the effort of resituating design as less anthropocentric and much more of a multispecies affair. Following scholars such as Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton, Anna Tsing and John Law, this text does so by unpacking the notion of ‘multispecies worlding’ for speculative design practices that involve other living entities. By carrying multiplicities into design processes and rethinking how other species can become a more deliberate part of our (re)worlding efforts, this text articulates the importance of advancing decolonial design aims to generate interspecies harmonies rather than reinforcing oppressive relations. The annotated illustrations and examples of multispecies design projects that appear in this paper involve an additional effort in identifying ‘big-enough’ stories and already existing multispecies design speculations. As such, this work offers merely one collection of enactments that can allow further worlding and further design work. Such a repertoire of speculative multispecies design work can thereby knot together different realities, from different actors, that can propose and embody other kinds of worlding relations between species. They thereby slowly but steadily break down existing grand narratives that seem all-explanatory to speculate about different ways in which humans and other species already make worlds together.

Purpose This paper articulates a counter-concept to the notion of speciesism with the aim to encourage thinking beyond critique, towards imagining what non-speciesist worlds can actually look like. Design/methodology/approach By using the concept of "multi-species-isms" (or "multispecies", as a simpler adjective), and linking it to feminist and relational ethics of "care", the paper seeks to unite perspectives from both Critical Animal Studies as well as feminist, posthumanist theories. Already existing traces of multi-species-isms that exemplify different forms of multispecies care are visualised through annotated illustrations that accompany the text. These traces offer a cue for negotiating multispecies worlds without attempting to define their content in all too definite forms. Findings Rather than focusing on critiquing oppressive structures, the paper contributes narratives of multispecies worlds that inspire further imagination towards the positive ingredients of such worlds and show more concretely how multispecies care is practised in everyday life. Social implications These insights frame a starting point for a repertoire that shows the numerous ways in which multispecies relationships between humans and other animals are already given form. Originality/value By articulating the actual ingredients of multi-species-isms, rather than focusing on what they are not, the paper seeks to advance a move towards adding multispecies possibilities that can be especially helpful for those researchers, designers and activists concerned with imagining alternative futures.

Collaborative Future-Making is a research platform at the Faculty of Culture and Society at Malmö University that is concerned with how to envision, elaborate and prototype multiple, inclusive, and sustainable futures. The platform gathers around 20 researchers that share a methodological interest in how critical perspectives from the humanities and social sciences can be combined with the constructive and collaborative aspects of making and prototyping in design research.

The research centers around two major themes:

• Critical imagination​, which focuses on how basic assumptions, norms and structures can be challenged to widen the perspectives on what can constitute socially, culturally, ecologically and economically sustainable and resilient futures.
• Collaborative engagements​, which focuses on how we can set up more inclusive collaborations to prototype and discuss alternative futures, engaging not only professionals and policy makers but also citizens and civil society.

During 2019 the research group set out to make a shared glossary for collaborative future-making. The glossary is multiple in purpose and exists in several versions. Hopefully there will be more to come. At first, the making and articulation of the glossary was used within the research group as an exercise to share concepts that we found central to collaborative future-making, coming from different disciplines. This published version of the glossary was assembled to be used during a workshop called ​Imagining Collaborative Future-Making,​ which gathered a group of international researchers from different disciplines.

The collection of concepts reflects the heterogeneous and diverse character of the research group and a strong belief in that plurality regarding ontologies and epistemologies will be crucial to be able to handle the multiple uncertainties and complex challenges we have to face in the future. Some of the concepts are already well established within different research communities, but gain a specific meaning in relation to the research area. Others are more preliminary attempts to advance our understanding or probe into new potential practices within collaborative future-making. In that sense the concepts in the glossary are well situated and grounded in past and ongoing research within this research group, at the same time as they are meant to suggest, propose and point towards practices and approaches yet to come.

The concepts in this glossary are not only meant to be descriptive but also performative. In that sense, assembling and circulating this glossary is part of collaborative future-making. As pointed out by Michelle Westerlaken in her articulation of “Doing Concepts” (see page 15), “...without proposing, critiquing, or working towards a common or uncommon understanding of certain concepts, it becomes impossible to ‘make futures’ in any deliberate fashion.”

It can be considered the most systemic, deadly, and all-encompassing form of institutional violence that currently exists: speciesism, the oppression and exploitation of other animals. For most people on our planet, speciesism is something completely normalized, justified, and encouraged through many facets of dominant cultures. The field of critical/political animal studies, and other fields that challenge anthropocentrism, have already thoroughly problematized, questioned, and analyzed speciesist practices, but one topic receives little academic attention: what can a counter-concept to speciesism contain, without saying what it is not?

This thesis is concerned with imagining ‘multispecies worldings’, with the goal to construct positive rather than negative aspects of a counter-concept to speciesism. Instead of offering a single answer, this work illustrates how additive knowledges regarding the possible meanings of ‘multispecies worlding’ make worlds richer. These knowledges emerge through a repertoire of world-making practices with other animals in which we recognize and engage with the ability to respond to each other.

Thereby, this thesis answers to – and builds on – various scholarly and activist discourses, including posthumanism, welfarism, animal liberationism, and is theoretically grounded in feminist epistemologies. With a focus on negotiating possibilities, this dissertation is also a work of interaction design. The design practice involves tracing and negotiating multispecies responses with other animals and expressing those narratives as a design research program. These responses are presented as a Multispecies Bestiary, in which ten protagonist animals guide the reader through a collection of big-enough multispecies stories. The thesis thereby illustrates how humans can – together with other animals – find possible meanings of ‘multispecies worlding’ not as a single (broken) solution, but as ever-expanding directions that can permanently unsettle and unmake the established speciesist order.

Humans are far from the only species who make worlds, and thus make futures; ‘Worlding’ entails an active ontological process that is enacted and embodied by all living beings. It is only when we fully recognise these practices as influential to ecological vulnerability and biodiversity that we can take a less anthropocentric approach to future-making.

The notion of “multispecies worlding” is coined by Donna Haraway as a practice of articulating the partial connections between all kinds of living entities; who relate, know, and tell stories with and through each other. Rather than telling multispecies worlds at all-encompassing scales, this paper argues (following Haraway) that multispecies futures are inscribed in more situated every-day ways in which living beings already negotiate futures with each other. The notion of ‘multispecies’ here is approached as a counter-concept to ‘speciesism’ and seeks to find traces of worlds that abandon animal oppression and explores the meaning of care in relation to living with other species.

This paper offers a collection of these traces through presenting annotated illustrations created by the author during a three-year project. These illustrations present a kind of technique for knowing that does not come from standing at a distance and representing something, but rather providing initial different entries into what multispecies worlds can entail. In this practice, we must recognise that other species have been speaking to us all along and that we learn about them in worlding practices that are partly told by them.

What could a post-speciesist world be like?

Critical Animal Studies activists and scholars have developed convincing counter-arguments to speciesism and animal oppression. These arguments are continuously developed and reshaped through contributions from fields like gender studies, postcolonialism, environmental humanities, and philosophy. This broad range of approaches makes for an diverse and growing body of knowledge on the systematic discrimination, exploitation, and oppression of nonhuman animals, not least regarding the treatment of animals today and in the past. We argue, however, that this knowledge production is significantly more sporadic when it comes to constructive proposals of less speciesist futures. Where are the snapshots from potential futures, and alternative presents, where human-animal relations are radically reconfigured?

We suggest that in working towards an anti-speciesist revolution we need to also be able to imagine what living in a post-speciesist society could be like; and explore creative tactics for bringing these material propositions into being.

These kinds of speculations and constructions of scenarios involve future-oriented contributions from fields such as the arts, design, literature, architecture, and speculative philosophy. In other words, domains that are engaged with envisioning, prototyping, and rehearsing potential futures and alternative presents. In this paper, we discuss a number of works that in different ways materialise reconfigured relations between humans and other species. Examples include utopian artworks by Hartmut Kievert, Ursula Le Guin’s ecofeminist stories, as well as our own design projects on sketching already existing post-speciesist animal-human encounters and redesigning recreational fishing practices. We discuss what tactics are employed by the creators and how their designerly approaches might help in generating new ideas about possible futures. We also introduce and reflect on tools and practices from the design disciplines, such as sketching, prototyping, and design fiction that can be of use for CAS scholar-activists.

Importantly, an affirmative approach of imagining post-speciesist futures does not come without risk. It can be argued that constructive, at times hopeful, projects distract from militating against the currently dim situation that billions of animals face daily. It can also be argued that we are nowhere near attaining a world that can be considered hopeful for most animals on our planet. Shouldn’t we focus on bringing about the revolution before speculating on its aftermath?

We argue that research and activism against speciesism ought to be complemented by constructive scenarios for post-speciesist futures. We seek to contribute to the field of Critical Animal Studies by calling for and articulating a stronger speculative and imaginative strand of CAS, without blunting the urgency and critical edge of the field.

What will a world that rejects speciesism (oppression and exploitation on the grounds of belonging to a certain species (Singer, 2009/1975)) be like? How will we understand ourselves in relation to other animals in this world? How will we engage with one another in such a society? What kind of animal encounters can still take place? These are fundamental questions to thinkwith in the attempt to imagine a world that does not regard other animals as lesser beings. However, in our current frameworks for thinking about speciesism, we mainly know what we do not want. It remains challenging to envision what the alternatives actually look like or how they can be described. The language we have, to articulate our thoughts about oppression in general, is often focused on the systems we wish to counter or reject: words like non-speciesism, postcolonialism, post-humanism, or post-capitalism. It is important to give problems a name in order to recognize them as problems (Ahmed, 2017). However, this is also where we encounter the limits of our thinking-with these kinds of words. We come up against something we cannot resolve, because we do not use a framework for thinking beyond the problems we encounter. Following a feminist design theory perspective, in this talk I will use the term ‘multispeciesism’ to articulate a ‘worldview’ (Redström, 2017) (or a ‘concept’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994/1991)) that we can philosophize with and appropriate to actively design alternative less-speciesist futures. I attempt to articulate this ‘multispeciesist worldview’ further by curating stories of our engagements and encounters with animals that are just big enough to inspire alternative ways of thinking but do not attempt to explain or define our relationships with other beings once and for all. They consist of stories of surprises, joy, play, and unexpected responses we get from interacting with other animals (Haraway, 2016), they involve intense moments of caring for other species (Puig de La Bellacasa, 2017), they consist of deliberate practices of self-fashioning and restructuring our lives (Foucault, 1988; Gibson-Graham, 2008), and they encompass constructions of hopeful or possible utopian narratives (Le Guin, 2016; Zylinska, 2014). Ideas of alternative futures do not arise out of nowhere: they are inscribed in the present (Berardi, 2017). I suggest that by collecting and curating a collection of less-speciesist instances that we share with other animals we can actively construct the raw material that can inspire alternative futures.

The term ‘speciesism’ first appeared in 1970 on a printed pamphlet made by psychologist Richard Ryder for a protest against animal experimentation [1] and refers to discrimination on the grounds of belonging to a certain species. Thus, speciesism includes the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals based solely on their species membership. Continuing the analogy to discriminatory practices like racism, sexism, classism, and others, the term was further popularised by philosopher Peter Singer in his 1975 book Animal Liberation [2]. Since then, the term ‘speciesism’ has been usually appropriated with regard to practices of human domination over animals and the exclusion of all nonhuman animals from the rights and freedoms that are granted to humans. In thinking about ideologies that aim to abandon speciesism, we are facing questions about what such a world would look like. What are the ethical and political consequences of a non-speciesist society? How would it affect human consumption and daily life? How would animal encounters between different species be structured differently? Within the academic discourse of critical posthumanism, the discussions that emerge from reflections on human/animal relationships are grounded in different theoretical frameworks and have different orientations and agendas [3]. For example, on the one hand, discussions that stem from critical animal studies (CAS) focus on the relationships between human and nonhuman animals and the notion of speciesism. These CAS discussions are usually firmly grounded in theories of intersectionality, thus politically and structurally situating the oppression of animals in relation to the oppression of other humans [4]. This means that reflections on animal exploitation and oppression are discussed and analysed in their relation to critical theory about other forms of oppression (such as sexism, classism, and racism) with the aim to revolutionize current societal and political norms. Extending this intersectional focus, the field of posthumanism, from a more general perspective, can be understood as aiming more broadly at deconstructing the category ‘human’ as something unique, distinct, and at the centre of the world [5]. This field focuses on the symbolic, discursive, institutional, and material arrangements that produce anthropocentrism and involves scholarly engagement from areas such as Science and Technology Studies (STS), material feminism, cultural studies, continental philosophy, geography, animal studies, and more [6]. This entry provides an introduction to discussions of (non-)speciesism, specifically within the fields of (critical) posthumanism and CAS. Following the work of CAS scholar Helena Pedersen, the goal of this text is to highlight the importance of a joined approach towards discussions surrounding the notion of speciesism, where critical attention is given to the treatment of animals in our society while at the same time remaining open to embracing the complexity that arises when human and nonhuman animals meet. As posthumanist theorist Cary Wolfe argued: “debates in the humanities and social sciences between well-intentioned critics … almost always remain locked within an unexamined framework of speciesism” [7]. Even though scholarly attention has been focused on animals with the aim of abandoning humanism, Wolfe writes that even if it is our aim to expose how animals have been misunderstood and exploited, we are continuing to reframe our relationships with other beings through anthropocentric frameworks [8]. Wolfe proposes that a posthumanist bioethics should focus on the vulnerability and finitude that both human and nonhuman animals share [9]. Extending this view, feminist/posthumanist scholar Manuela Rossini states that it is in fact quite sobering that “the most radical metaposthumanists (and the humanities more broadly) do not quite manage to make an epistemological break with liberal humanism, insofar as their writing is also marked by an unquestioned ‘speciesism’” [10]. Rossini then argues that an anti-speciesist strand of posthumanist thinking should involve a focus on two aspects: zoontology (drawing from Wolfe: meaning a broadening of ontological focus on animals that investigates both sameness and difference outside of humanist parameters); and companion speciesism (drawing from feminist STS scholar Donna Haraway: embracing the positive configurations of the unavoidably close encounters between humans, animals, machines, and hybrids in an attempt to establish responsive and responsible relationships with ‘companion species’) [11]. While emphasizing a general concern towards animal oppression, these broader theoretical approaches aim to reframe the conversation away from our accustomed political stratifications, towards the more complex systemic phenomena that compose a living planet [12]. However, with regards to the notion of speciesism itself, CAS scholars have in turn questioned and criticised these theoretical approaches towards the oppression of animals. In general, they argue that rather than conceptually romanticising our relationships with other beings and theorizing the beauty of our shared encounters, we should focus on real animals and their actual life situations: more than 150 billion animals get slaughtered every year and this number is still rising [13]. In other words, CAS scholars propose to, first and foremost, reject the welfare position (or green ideology) in which exploitation of animals under proper conditions is justified or encouraged. Critics describe it as just another way to routinely sustain speciesist hegemony [14], while posthumanists argue that violence towards both human and nonhuman animals should be part of our investigations into shared entanglements [15]. What both lines of thinking with nonhumans seem to have in common is that we should emphasize that any tendency towards subject boundary dissolution and shared engagements between human and nonhuman animals are never symmetrical and therefore cannot be innocent [16]. This is perhaps where common ground can be found between the two discourses in relation to the notion of speciesism. With the aim to further this compatibility, Pedersen proposes that the edges between posthumanism and CAS could do the productive work of knowledge development in symbiotic relationship with each other. For example, the field of posthumanism could influence CAS with some healthy impurity, indeterminacy, and openness towards different political perspectives on speciesism [17]. Whereas posthumanism could be more rooted in some (un)firm political soil with consistent and committed critical attention towards oppression of human and nonhuman animals [18]. In arguing for finding compatibility between different fields that concern themselves with the lives of nonhuman animals, further discussions that are centred around the notion and meaning of (non-)speciesism play a central role in maintaining a focus on the politics that are involved in critical posthumanism. Renewed attention towards finding common grounds and productive dialogue between CAS and (critical) posthumanism can offer a space for relevant discussions on this topic.

‘Philosophical dialogue’ indicates both a form of philosophical inquiry and its corresponding literary genre. In its written form, it typically features two or more characters who engage in a discussion concerning morals, knowledge, as well as a variety of topics that can be widely labelled as ‘philosophical’. Our philosophical dialogue takes place in Krakow, Poland. It is a rainy morning and two strangers are waiting at a tram stop. One of them is dressed neatly, and cannot stop fidgeting with his closed umbrella. The other was caught unprepared by the morning downpour and water is dripping from his worn, soaked jacket.