Enough: Reading notes from media studies

In 2023, the NECS Sustainable Media Workgroup initiated a reading group on the topic of ‘degrowth’. We took a piece by Judith Keilbach and Michał Pabiś-Orzeszyna (2021) in this journal as a starting point, where questions of overproduction, sufficiency, and justice emerge as part of a call for an ecocritical reorientation of media studies. This annotated bibliography continues that discussion in response to this issue’s invitation to think with the concept of #Enough. Co-created by reading group members and intrigued scholars, it captures a moment in our collective thinking and engagement with a complex area of scholarship and public discourse. It does not claim to be a comprehensive or systematic review of literature. Instead each of us brought to the discussion themes and sources we can see from our plural standpoints. This is a map of our multiple views, which allowed us to share sources and critical discussions through the series of conversations that have led to this piece.

There are already numerous bibliographies of the broader context (for instance, the International Degrowth Network’s ‘Degrowth Papers Explorer’, or, for more field-specific approaches, the ‘Foundations’ in Architecture is Climate and this Places journal reading list by Mireille Roddier), but by favouring eclecticism over comprehensiveness we have tried to represent our own paths into the field. Historical and contemporary examples challenge the claim that there is no alternative to ecocidal and unjust ways of living, and offer visions of post-extractivist media futures. We trust this serves as an invitation for anyone interested in critical media studies.

We present and discuss a selection of readings that we have found useful to consider what #Enough may mean in the context of media studies, divided in four sections. The first section sets out some of the broader terms of the discussion drawing on other areas of scholarship, such as economics, philosophy, and politics. The second section then shows how alternative economies of the moving image, those outside financialised and growth-driven models, have been articulated into media practice. This section draws out connections between an eclectic range of historical media movements and manifestos, exploring divergent political and aesthetic positions in relation to resources, limits, and tactics of scale. The third section turns towards critical approaches to media industry practices in contemporary scholarship, tracing some of the debates around ‘green’ initiatives within the broader area of ecocinema and ecocriticism, though a deeper engagement with these thriving fields is beyond our scope. The fourth section looks to digital technologies and their materiality, focusing on emerging concerns about the acceleration of data overproduction, storage, and transmission.

The choice of sources followed different criteria for each section. Some of the most influential pieces have been included, but also lesser-known ones that pose a different provocation or a specific instantiation of an idea. By drawing on different types of literature, emerging across different times and places, and across political, aesthetic, or critical projects, our discussions are brought together by the question of how to live well on this finite planet. Media, as a set of material practices that weave social relations, cannot stand outside that enquiry, and we share this exercise in that spirit.