Abstract
We live in a shadow that many of us have inherited without realizing it. This shadow is not a metaphor for destruction or despair, but an obscurity that forms when our relationship with justice becomes distant. Modern societies speak about justice with great ease, yet this way of engaging often places us outside the relationships that give justice meaning. Drawing on the insights of Simpson (2011), Plumwood (1993), Haraway (2016), and Whyte (2018), this essay explores how justice becomes obscured when it is treated as an object of discourse rather than a presence we participate in.
The essay traces how this obscurity gradually developed over generations as relational ways of knowing shifted to managerial and procedural understandings of justice. When speaking about justice becomes our only mode of communication, we lose the ability to perceive justice as a tension that holds relationships together. While speaking about justice remains necessary, without speaking with or speaking to justice directly, our understanding becomes technically precise but relationally thin.
Speaking with justice stems from presence, listening, and reciprocity. Speaking to justice recognizes our place within a network of relationships that recall our actions. These modes of engagement show justice as a living condition rather than an institutional construct. The eclipse we experience is the dimming that happens when these relational modes are forgotten.
This essay does not advocate for a reform program or a new system of justice. Instead, it calls for recognition. Obscurity diminishes not through commands or doctrines but through returning to the relationships that sustain life. Justice has not disappeared. it remains present in the more-than-human world, waiting for us to realign ourselves with the tensions that hold the fabric of being intact.
Living in the Shadow
We live in a shadow many of us have never learned to name. It drapes over our days in ways that feel normal, familiar, almost natural. We inherit it before we realize there is anything to inherit. By the time we start to understand the world, the shadow has already shaped our expectations of how life unfolds. It becomes the backdrop against which we learn to think, speak, and make sense of justice. But the shadow is not the world. It is a condition created when our relationship with justice becomes obscured.
This obscurity did not develop suddenly. It grew gradually, through choices that pulled us further away from the relationships that connect life. Simpson (2011) reminds us that relationships need presence, participation, and reciprocity. When these forms of engagement weaken, understanding becomes harder to grasp. We can still identify justice, and many people do, but we do so from a distance. We discuss it without remembering that justice is something we’re meant to live with, not just think about from afar.
Over generations, this distance widened. The more societies organized themselves around extraction, accumulation, and the belief that the Earth exists to be used, the more their connection to justice weakened. What once required mutual understanding was reframed as a set of rules or principles. What once existed between beings was treated as an idea to analyze or a system to control. Plumwood (1993) demonstrates how this shift turns relationships into objects, placing the speaker above what is being discussed. When justice became something to describe rather than something to practice, its meaning began to fade.
The shadow is not just ecological; it also impacts the social and political realms. Racial injustice, gender inequality, the erosion of trust, and ongoing failures of solidarity all flourish in areas where relationships are neglected. Whyte (2018) describes these conditions as long emergencies—not isolated incidents but states of rupture that recur and deepen across generations. When the relational tension that maintains coherence breaks down, the harm does not stay contained. It spreads through communities and ecosystems alike. Nothing and no one remain unaffected.
Part of the challenge is that we were born into this obscurity. Most of us never experienced the clarity that existed before it. We grew up in a world where justice was something discussed in courtrooms, policy debates, and moral talks, rather than something practiced through daily interactions. We inherited institutions built on separation, not connection, and were conditioned to see this separation as the natural order. The shadow grew deeper as generations passed, and we learned to navigate darkness as if it were light.
And yet, the feeling that something is missing remains. It manifests as restlessness, distrust, and the quiet discomfort of living within systems that often seem out of sync with the world they inhabit. Haraway (2016) reminds us that relationships ask us to stay with the trouble, to remain present even when the way forward isn’t clear. But presence is hard when the connection itself has been obscured. When we’ve lived too long in the shadow, we start to mistake obscurity for normalcy.
Still, the shadow isn’t absolute. We can find signs of clarity in places where relationships are still intact. Some communities, especially those who maintain older traditions of relational care, still recognize what has been dimmed. They remind us that justice hasn’t disappeared; it has simply moved out of view, hidden behind the habits of distance we’ve inherited and learned to repeat.
The shadow we live in isn’t a sign of failure but of forgetting. We have forgotten what justice feels like when it is lived within relationship. Eclipse begins here, in this moment of recognition: not as blame, not as despair, but as a call to remember the relationship we once knew and may yet rediscover again.
How the Shadow Was Cast
The shadow we live in didn’t appear out of nowhere. It formed gradually, often quietly, as our ways of relating to the world changed around us. We shifted from being embedded in relationships to merely managing them, from participating in justice to observing it from a distance. Over time, we created systems that rewarded separation and made connection optional. The shadow grew each time we moved further away from the relational ground that once supported us.
Many traditions remind us that relationships are not abstract concepts. They are experienced, reciprocal, and require our active presence. Simpson (2011) describes justice as something that arises within the bonds between beings, not as a set of principles imposed from above. However, modern societies have learned to treat relationships as resources, tools, or variables to be optimized. Instead of asking how to stay in right relationship, we ask how to control, measure, or improve the world around us. These questions are not malicious, but they shift our focus away from the relationships themselves.
As our institutions expanded, we developed categories and frameworks that allowed us to discuss justice without being in relationship with it. In that process, justice became something external, something to define and analyze rather than something that emerges from mutuality. Plumwood (1993) describes this as the standpoint of mastery, a way of viewing the world that places the speaker above what is being discussed. When justice is approached this way, it becomes an object, and when justice becomes an object, the relationship collapses.
This shift also changed how we understand responsibility. Haraway (2016) uses the term response-ability to describe the capacity to respond from within a relationship rather than from outside it. But as we moved into systems that valued efficiency, growth, and control, that capacity weakened. We were taught to respond to rules, not relationships. To improve outcomes, not strengthen bonds. To solve problems from above rather than participate with those affected. Responsibility became procedural rather than relational.
These transformations happened gradually. We didn’t notice them taking place. We adapted as each new generation was born deeper into the shadow. We learned to depend on ideas of justice rather than actual experiences. We relied on debate instead of dialogue, policy instead of presence. We confused the tools meant to support justice with justice itself.
Even well-meaning efforts to create fairness sometimes made things more unclear. Talking about justice, which is necessary and often essential, became the main way we engaged. We debated definitions, developed frameworks, and constructed institutions. But the more we discussed justice, the less we actually connected with it or spoke to it. The relationship grew weaker as our descriptions became vaguer.
Whyte (2018) reminds us that relational breakdowns do not announce themselves; instead, they build up gradually. They become the background conditions of life. The systems that cast this shadow were not created to destroy justice, but they were also not designed to uphold it. They were built with other goals in mind: growth, stability, predictability, and control. Justice, in its relational sense, could not remain intact under those conditions.
The shadow was cast through this movement from relationship to object, from mutuality to abstraction, from presence to distance. Not because we stopped caring about justice, but because we changed how we related to it. We came to believe that speaking about justice was enough to sustain it. We forgot that justice is a relationship that must be lived.
Speaking Only About Justice
We speak about justice. We identify its failures, explore its history, and debate how to best achieve it. This work is important. Talking about justice helps us describe harm, see patterns, and imagine different futures. However, talking about justice cannot be the entire relationship. When it becomes the sole focus of our engagement, something vital begins to fade from view.
Speaking only about justice shifts us into a position Plumwood (1993) warns us about: the stance of mastery. From this perspective, we stand outside the relationship, observing or managing it. Justice becomes something separate from us, something to define, measure, or control. We become commentators on justice rather than active participants. The more fluently we speak about justice, the easier it becomes to forget that justice is not just a concept but a relationship.
This way of speaking is familiar because we have inherited its habits. Our education systems, political structures, and public conversations all teach us to treat justice as an object of discourse. We learn to assess its presence or absence as if we are standing outside of it. But no one stands outside of justice. We are always already within its relationships or outside of them. We either participate in justice or rupture it. Describing justice from a distance obscures this truth.
Simpson (2011) reminds us that knowledge stored only in language, without relational grounding, becomes fragile. Talking only about justice creates the same fragility. The more we discuss justice without speaking with it or to it, the more justice turns into a thing rather than a presence. We start to see it as a system that can be adjusted or fixed without addressing the relationships that give it meaning.
In this way, even efforts to make justice more precise can unintentionally lead to obscurity. As we refine definitions, frameworks, and indicators, justice becomes more conceptual. It becomes easier to talk about than to implement. Easier to analyze than to practice. Easier to define than to recognize. Each layer of abstraction adds distance, and this distance reduces our ability to perceive the relational tension that justice actually is.
Haraway (2016) notes that abstraction can detach us from our responsibilities in relationships. When we focus solely on justice, we risk shifting responsibility into procedures rather than genuine presence. We assess whether justice has been achieved without considering how our relationships are holding up or breaking down. We tend to categorize harms instead of recognizing how we are already entangled in them. Procedures become a substitute for genuine relational accountability.
Speaking only about justice does not eliminate justice; it obscures it. It shifts us into a conceptual realm where justice can be discussed endlessly without actually experiencing it. The shadow deepens when our engagement with justice remains purely theoretical. We might still care about justice, argue for it, or even fight for it. But caring about justice is not the same as being in a relationship with it.
We find ourselves in a state where justice is constantly invoked but rarely experienced. Its language is familiar, but its meaning remains unclear. The more we speak about justice, the less we recognize the relational practices that make justice possible. This is the beginning of an eclipse, not as a failure of intention, but as a result of how we have learned to speak.
Speaking With Justice
Speaking with justice differs from speaking about it. Speaking about justice keeps us outside the relationship, observing from afar. Speaking with justice involves us inside the relationship, engaging with it as something alive, present, and already influencing us. It represents a shift in posture, not in vocabulary. A change in how we understand where our words originate from.
Simpson (2011) describes relational knowledge as something experienced through presence, reciprocity, and attentiveness. It is not created by observing a relationship but by actively participating in it. Speaking with justice comes from this same place. It begins with understanding that justice is not an ideal we impose but a tension we live within. We speak with justice when our words stem from the relationships that define justice possible.
This kind of speaking requires us to slow down, pay attention to the ways relationships hold or fail, listen before we speak, and let the world reveal its meaning rather than assuming we already know it. Communication becomes less about delivering conclusions and more about staying present in the relational space. In this way, speaking with justice is inseparable from listening.
Listening is not passive. Haraway (2016) reminds us that listening is a form of response ability, the capacity to respond because we recognize that we are already entangled with others. When we listen with justice, we allow ourselves to be affected. We let the relationship shape our understanding. We accept that justice is not something we control. It is something we must stay attentive to.
Speaking with justice also requires humility. It asks us to release the certainty that we can define justice once and for all. Plumwood (1993) warns that mastery seeks to dominate by placing itself outside the relationship. Speaking only about justice reinforces this stance. Speaking with justice counters it. It acknowledges that justice is not a system we design but a relationship we must enter.
We speak with justice when our words reflect mutuality rather than dominance. When we acknowledge that the more-than-human world is not merely an object of concern but a participant in the relationship. When we allow the Earth, waters, forests, and the beings who depend on them to shape our understanding of what justice requires. When our language mirrors the reciprocity that is already present in the world.
Whyte (2018) notes that Indigenous traditions often teach justice through practices of accountability that develop within networks of kinship and trust. Speaking with justice draws on this understanding. It means recognizing that we cannot stand outside the relationship and still expect to understand it. Justice exists in the connections we maintain and the responsibilities we accept.
This way of speaking is surprisingly risky. It breaks down the barriers that modern societies have established around justice. It returns us to a world where justice is not just a concept but a lived experience, not merely abstract but based on relationships. It questions the idea that justice can be achieved without engaging in the relationships that give it meaning. It forces us to recognize that we are part of the conditions that either support or undermine justice.
Speaking with justice opens a space that the shadow has hidden from view. It reminds us that justice is not a destination or a doctrine. It is a way of being with the world—a way of recognizing our place within relationships that extend far beyond us. A way of allowing those relationships to shape how we speak, how we listen, and how we act.
The shadow obscures this mode of engaging. But it hasn’t erased it. Speaking with justice is still possible. We just need to remember how to step back into the relationship.
Speaking To Justice
If speaking with justice requires presence, then speaking to justice requires acknowledgment. Not acknowledgment in the sense of recognizing a principle, but acknowledgment as we do when addressing someone already in relationship with us. To speak to justice is to turn toward a presence rather than a concept. It is to address the relationship itself.
This might feel unfamiliar because many of us were taught that justice is something humans create, administer, or guarantee. We learned to see justice as a system under our control, something we grant or revoke based on rules. But when we understand justice this way, we speak only talk about it. We don’t actually speak to it. Why would we? Systems don’t listen. Concepts don’t respond. Only relationships do.
Speaking to justice becomes possible when we recognize that justice is the tension that holds relationships together. It is not an invention but a condition of being. Simpson (2011) teaches that relational accountability arises when we recognize our responsibilities within a network of life that extends far beyond the human. When we speak to justice, we address those responsibilities directly. We speak as participants, not overseers.
This mode of speaking shifts the orientation of our voice. We are no longer speaking to justify ourselves to institutions. We are no longer speaking to persuade others to adopt our definitions. We are speaking to the relationship itself, recognizing where it exists and where it has been ruptured. This is not a confession or a ritual. It is a recognition that we are accountable to something larger than ourselves.
Whyte (2018) describes this as accountability to a living world that remembers. The lands, waters, and beings around us hold the memory of how we have related to them. Speaking to justice is speaking to that memory. It is speaking to the relationships that carry histories of care, neglect, or exploitation. It acknowledges that justice is not abstract. It lives in the ways we show up, or fail to show up, for one another.
This mode of address may unsettle us because it challenges a familiar way of thinking. Many of our institutions and inherited moral frameworks see justice as a law or rule that comes from outside the relationships it affects. They view justice as a principle to be applied rather than as a presence to be engaged with. In these systems, justice becomes something granted, managed, or enforced, instead of something experienced from within. Speaking to justice steps outside this structure. It reminds us that justice is not a possession or a ruling. It is a relationship we are already part of, one that calls for our acknowledgment and participation.
Speaking to justice does not elevate us. It humbles us. It places us back inside the world rather than above it. It restores our position within the fabric of being. And from that place, justice becomes visible again, not as an idea to dominate, but as a presence we must respond to.
The Eclipse
The shadow we inhabit is not the end of anything. It is merely an obscurity, a dimming that makes it harder to perceive the relationships that still hold the world together. Justice has not disappeared. It has not retreated. It has simply slipped out of sight, hidden behind the habits of distance we have inherited and learned to accept.
Eclipses remind us that obscurity is not absence. When the moon casts its shadow across the Earth, the light does not vanish. It remains there, unchanged, waiting for the alignment to shift. The darkness we experience is temporary, not a fundamental change in the world. The return of light requires no effort from us. It arrives as soon as the relationship between Earth, moon, and sun realigns.
The obscurity we live within is different. It will not lift on its own. But it is still only a shadow—a consequence of how we’ve positioned ourselves in relation to justice, not a sign that justice has ceased to exist. We stand in a dimness we helped create, and the world waits quietly for us to recognize what has been obscured.
Nothing in the fabric of relationships has been beyond repair. The more-than-human world continues to enact justice through the coherence of its connections. Forests hold. Rivers remember. Winds and waters keep their exchanges going without pause. These relationships endure even when we fail to notice them. They carry the light of justice even when our own alignment has drifted.
If obscurity means that justice becomes hard to see, then clarity starts with remembering that the light is still there. Not just as a comforting metaphor, but as a recognition: justice exists because relationships exist. It doesn’t depend on our belief in it. It doesn’t fade when we forget. It remains present, waiting for us to return to the tensions that sustain it.
We cannot force this return, nor can we be compelled into it. Recognition cannot be forced. It does not come through obligation or certainty. It slowly emerges, like our eyes adjusting when shadows begin to lift. Something once hidden becomes visible again. Something we thought was lost shows it was present all along.
The eclipse, then, is an invitation. Not a warning or a demand, but a quiet reminder that clarity is possible. Justice has not abandoned us. We stepped out of alignment with it, and we can step back. The shadow will stay as long as we remain in it, but it will fade the moment we stop standing in it.
I cannot tell anyone where to walk. I can only gesture toward the light that waits beyond the dimness. What comes next belongs to each of us.
References
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. Routledge.
Simpson, L. B. (2011). Dancing on our turtle’s back: Stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence, and a new emergence. Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
Whyte, K. P. (2018). Indigenous environmental justice: Anti-colonial action through kinship, accountability, and relationality. In R. Holifield, J. Chakraborty, & G. Walker (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of environmental justice (pp. 381–392). Routledge.
