Morir y Vivir Beyond the Human: Partial Ecological Connections, the Reconceptualization of Life, and Puerto Rican Futures

Abstract: Drawing on the moriviví , as a symbol of strength and refusal as well as a reminder of the continuity between life and death, this essay explores the relationship between the status of nature, the human, and futural possibilities. I advocate the claim that the moriviví gives us an ecological understanding of connectedness that eclipses the distance between morir and vivir in a world informed by a rift between human and nature, which frames our ecological understandings in colonial keys. I suggest that the relationship to the status of nature, even in resistant resonances, must take seriously that the ideas about futurity might not or should not have the proverbial “us” at their center. We need a shift in metaphysics and ontology to reckon with the partial, but no less important, connections that we dwell in, dwell with, and dwell of that are often captured by the term: natural world.