This article tracks a double contestation of responsibility; first over the conceptualisation of responsibility itself, and second over scholars’ responsibilities with respect to imagining and conceptualising responsibility. An actual encounter with the world we are facing, characterised by catastrophic climate change, devastation of biodiversity, and ecological unravelling commands theorists to form and convey conceptions of responsibility adequate to the complex dynamics underpinning the unravelling of worlds, and the vast stakes of harm. This means imagining, articulating, and advocating forms of responsibility capable of buttressing a capacious duty of care, not just to humans in the future, but to the more-than human-world. Clinging to hegemonic, individualised and anthropocentric conceptions of responsibility represents a multiple failure: to recognise that the conditions under which theorising is occurring have radically changed; to theorise in favour of the vast majority of Earth beings; and to ethically exercise the privilege the community of scholars enjoys with respect to epistemic access to alternative conceptual possibilities.