Beyond Small Talk: Why the world needs more feminist practices of weathering
From pineapple express events to heat domes, flash flooding to wildfire evacuations, extreme weather patterns increasingly reveal how a dramatically changing climate is as much personal as it is political. The weather is not simply archived numbers that record temperature. In How to Weather Together: Feminist Practice for Climate Change, authors Astrida Naimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton discuss practices of weathering together and explain how weather is not just something “out there”; it is part of us and our embodied, messy, stirring and visceral lived experiences. These feminist researchers inspire us to not just think about but feel the weather together. Their book is both a feminist call to action and a practical, poetic and playful guide. It is the kind of survival guide that one should include in their grab-and-go bag when faced with an imminent evacuation. They encourage readers to evacuate from colonial, capitalist and extractivist relations, and instead centre care, connection and community through collective acts of weathering. Beyond a study of climate data, science and statistics, feminist practices of weathering attend to creative forms of storytelling, lived experiences and sensory attunement to weather events.
Weather events arouse sensory feelings or sentiments – frustration (an unexpected storm), relaxation (a bright and sunny day for a picnic), urgency (the need to relocate for safer shelter). The weather may be part of everyday pleasantries as we chat with our neighbours, but these conversations carry profound meaning. This was certainly my lived reality of raising a newborn during the 2021 B.C. Heat Dome, an event which was so uncomfortable it compelled me to write Hot Mess: Mothering through a Code Red Climate Emergency, which documents the pain of extreme dehydration and joy of bringing a new life into the world. By sharing our stories about our struggles and triumphs in the face of extreme weather, we co-create new meanings and build a collective sense of community. Doing so has the power to connect us to each other and our environments, and to shift perspectives.
In a Critical Exchange conversation for the journal Contemporary Political Theory, contributors note: “Climate change is a feminist issue” (p. 85). Networks of affinity, care and community offer an antidote to the climate disaster events all around us. There is much alignment with the calls to action presented by Neimanis and Hamilton and the Feminist Environmental Research Network (FERN), which several of the Critical Exchange contributors are part of, including myself.
Feminist practices of weathering are expansive and embodied. They include practices, tools, theories, concepts, frameworks and artworks oriented to action. Their starting point is the body. Contemporary and critical ecofeminist political theorists often accentuate the myriad ways in which sweaty, messy bodies are political. Through centering weathering as a feminist practice, these authors bring climate change to the scale of the body, where it is lived, felt, interpreted and reimagined.
With an emphasis on feelings, efforts to address climate change must extend beyond facts and figures. Detached scientific objectivity is not the most desirable pathway for climate action. Instead, by underscoring that how we feel about everyday experiences of weather can change minds, behaviours and ultimately climates. As a researcher who focuses on vulnerabilities in relation to extreme heat, I’ve witnessed the impact that sharing personal stories can have on the listener. Shared storytelling can open up something deeply affective and moving while unlocking the steely demeanor of the most rigid climate skeptic to cultivate empathy.
Humbly listening and learning is a critical practice of feminist weathering. Through the shared efforts of breathing, dreaming, desiring and scheming together along with creative modes of expression, feminist thinkers inspire pathways to envision and enact alternative possible futures. This is not an abstract or lofty aspiration but includes actions such as convening workshops and artworks. How to Weather Together read alongside the collective efforts of the FERN collaborative and others cited here offer a feminist praxis of forecasting. Scenarios can be drawn, discussed, enacted and reimagined through sensory, immersive and artistic practices. These might include composting, zine-making, poetry, science fiction, photography, musical performances, dance, theatre or visual illustrations to engage the senses, touch hearts and shift the reader or participant’s mindset.
The time is ripe to reconsider what weather means and how it feels. It is so much more than a mere temperature check. Indeed, climate change is often messy, emotional and intimately personal. As we consider together the uneven distribution of access to safe shelter when faced with extreme weather, along with uneven patterns of exposure, we see how questions about how the weather extends beyond small talk. This reveals deeper considerations about social and ecological justice for human and more-than-human relations. Weather is so much more than a meteorological report. Weather is storied, unevenly felt and a signal for what other more radical worlds and caring infrastructures might be possible.
Dr. Sarah Marie Wiebe is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, co-founder of the Feminist Environmental Research Network, author of Hot Mess: Mothering through a Code Red Climate Emergency and co-editor of Mothers, Mothering and Climate Change. For more about her research, teaching and publications, see: www.sarahmariewiebe.com
