Call for Proposals – Performing Climate Emotions: Staging Grief, Care, and Climate Justice

Call for Proposals – Performance Philosophy (Vol. 11, Issue 2)
Performing Climate Emotions: Staging Grief, Care, and Climate Justice

Edited by Eve Katsouraki (University of the West of Scotland) and Graham Jeffery (University of the West of Scotland)

Proposal deadline: 1 May 2026

This themed issue of Performance Philosophy invites contributions that interrogate the entanglements of eco-emotions, climate justice, and performance. We are living in an era defined not only by accelerating climate breakdown but also by the emotional landscapes it produces: grief, anxiety, solastalgia, rage, numbness, and fragile hope. These eco-emotions are not merely private states; they are public, political, and philosophical forces that register the affective dimensions of environmental crisis (Pihkala 2022; Albrecht 2006). They shape how individuals and communities experience climate disruption, how they imagine justice, and how they act—or fail to act—in response.

Performance has become a crucial arena for working through these intensities. Within the remit of performance philosophy, we approach performance not as a means of representing ecological crisis, but as a mode of thinking-in-action. Performance does not merely express climate emotions; it thinks with and through them, generating forms of reflection that exceed purely discursive or analytical frameworks. By staging the ‘unthinkable’ scale of climate change, performance becomes a site of situated inquiry, where affect and collective presence become primary resources for philosophical experimentation.

We ask: How might eco-emotions allow us to think climate change through performance? What relationships emerge between feeling, thinking, and performing when the ‘human’ subject is displaced by multispecies ethics? In what ways does the materiality of performance allow us to think with ecological wounds without foreclosing the possibility of care?

We welcome traditional articles (6,000–8,000 words) as well as experimental submissions (visual essays, manifestos, aphorisms, or ficto-criticism).

Themes include, but are not limited to:

• Eco-Performance as Philosophical Practice: How performance generates ecological thinking through rhythm, duration, and affect, moving beyond representation to register and shape responses to climate change.
• Aesthetics of the Hyperobject: How the materiality of performance provides a site for thinking the ‘unthinkable’ scale of planetary collapse and climate hyperobjects (Morton).
• The Sovereignty of the Human: How eco-emotions like solastalgia challenge the human subject, using performance to stage multispecies ontologies and relational care.
• Temporal Collapses: Investigations into how the ‘deep time’ of geology and the ‘urgent time’ of catastrophe collide in performance to challenge philosophical concepts of presence and liveness within performance.
• Climate Witnessing and Testimonial Ethics: Performance as a space for collectively engaging ecological loss, responsibility, and the uneven distribution of harm.
• Indigenous and Intercultural Ontologies: Practices that sustain ecological reciprocity and alternative, non-Western ways of knowing environmental change.
• Civic Rehearsals and Resilience: Participatory and socially engaged practices that cultivate emotional literacy and collective reflection as a form of political recognition.

Initial proposals of up to 500 words, plus a short biography (max. 200 words), should be sent to the editors by 1 May 2026 to: [email protected]

You can contact the editors of the issue directly if you have any queries: [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Submission Guidelines & Timeline

• Abstracts: Submit500 max words and a short bio (max. 200 words) by 1 May 2026.
• Notification of acceptance: by 25 May 2026.
• First draft:6,000–8,000 words (including references), due 30 September 2026.
• Peer review feedback: by 15 January 2027 (All submissions undergo double-blind review, following Performance Philosophy’s editorial policies).
• Final draft: 15 March 2027
• Publication: Special issue scheduled for June 2027

Please consult the journal’s style guide: https://www.performancephilosophy.org/journal/about/submissions

Peer Review Process

Performance Philosophy operates a system of double-blind peer review. Every article that is accepted for consideration will be evaluated by external referees, selected by the Editors based on their areas of expertise. The Editors will make the final decision about publication or assess the need for further revision.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. We do not charge fees for accessing articles, nor for publishing or processing submissions.

Author Guidelines

Performance Philosophy only considers submissions that have not been previously published and are not under consideration for publication with another journal. We do not charge fees for publishing or processing articles. You will submit your proposals and, if selected, final articles in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF format. A typical article will be 6000-8000 words including notes, though other formats are welcome in consultation with the editor. For complete author guidelines, please visit: https://www.performancephilosophy.org/journal/about/submissions#authorGuidelines