Better Footprints

Abstract

The figure of the “carbon footprint” has wandered around environmental discourse for some time now, moving us to attend to our environmental impact in both embodied and quantifiable ways. There is, nevertheless, something that does not quite sit well in the metaphor of the footprint, which bears productively on movement and place; it impresses upon us the stakes of our inhabitation. It does so, however, at the cost of making the primary ethical stance one of absence or disconnection. This chapter argues that this hands-off (or feet-off) approach to environmental ethics comes at a price. In short, any ethics that disparages relations and the traces they leave can be no ethics, since ethics are fundamentally relational. This chapter briefly traces the emergence and persistence of the footprint metaphor (affirmatively) and then reads it through (and against) various new materialist and speculative approaches in order to suggest its ontological dimensions and limitations. Ultimately, it proposes that a revised figure of the footprint can forward a positive, “intimate sociality” among humans, animals, and plants, rather than promoting a lessened impact and a lessening of contact.