Solastalgia: Documenting disaster through interactive documentaryMain MenuHomeFire SeriesWater Series(Meta)reflectionsNavigation:A snapshot of the content of this project that can be used to navigate in a non-linear fashionBibliographyAbout the authorsThanksmonique tschofen TMUa6f08a24bf34f58cae1b84d81d2df391582b801fJolene Armstrong8d77d69c06e0564ab85f8d6d9cb65116c99ff272 Monique Tschofen and Jolene Armstrong
Agentic capacity
12025-05-11T18:12:13+00:00monique tschofen TMUa6f08a24bf34f58cae1b84d81d2df391582b801f151plain2025-05-11T18:12:13+00:00monique tschofen TMUa6f08a24bf34f58cae1b84d81d2df391582b801f"Posthumanist material feminism also posits the expansion and deflation of the concept of agency. It is an expansion in that it attributes agency beyond the human. One talks of agentic capacity, which is sometimes much more powerful in the nonhuman than in the human, like the agentic capacity of a virus or a forest fire. Further, this agentic capacity is “intentless”.[6] It does not follow a plan or attempt to enact intended outcomes. It simply unfolds and simultaneously deflates human agency, which is no longer understood as special, but as intertwined with myriad agentic capacities and therefore not autonomous. Conceiving of humans as transjective beings entails a reconception of agency in terms of collective material agentic capacity. This necessitates a shift from humanistic hubris to posthumanist humility."
They say that mastery over fire, that critical harnessing of fire’s power is the thing that distinguishes humans from animals, that when early human ancestors figured out how to make fire, contain fire and use it to cook and heat their dwellings, that it was a critical moment in early humanity’s evolution, sometime around two million years ago. But do we really understand it? We know that it is a chemical reaction, one that requires oxygen, and fuel, and heat, as well as a catalyst, usually in the form of friction. We know that certain materials burn well, and that deprivation of oxygen can douse a fire. But recently, everything we thought we knew about fire, has been challenged as a result of two massive wildfires in Alberta—one in 2011 (Slave Lake) and another in 2016 (Fort McMurray). Both offered fire behaviour that had never been observed—or at least clearly witnessed—before.
There are harrowing accounts of what has been termed “fire weather”- wildfires so large, so hot, and so charged with combustive energy that they can create their own lightning and tornadoes. It is the stuff of Hollywood disaster movie hyperbole, except that it is real. One firefighter who was on the frontline of battling the Fort McMurray fire told John Vaillant in his 2023 book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, “five minutes per house: You’d say ‘How long is it going to take? How many houses do I need to get ahead of it, to give myself twenty minutes to set up and stop it?’ So that ended up being our benchmark for time[…] we would sacrifice four houses to stop the fire from progressing” (156).
As a resident of Alberta, I have borne witness to the devastating effects of not only the fires themselves as they have burned unimaginable hectares of forest, but also the human toll in terms of loss of homes, land, livestock, and the constant, daily threat from March through October or later of having to flee at a moment’s notice, of having to think about what we would take with us, and what would we leave behind, of hearing the emergency alert shatter the airwaves, sometimes multiple times per day. Additionally, our summers are hotter and dryer than they’ve ever been, and while checking the daily forecast, we have to factor in the air quality index and the amount of smoke and fire particulate matter in the air each day. Is it safe to go outside today?
Like water, fire is life giving and destructive. This is a meditation, a personal documentary, a witnessing of a world on fire.
