Abstract
This paper mobilises a decolonial critique of the Anthropocene. It argues for a certain epistemic disobedience to what, conceptually and politically, the Anthropocene seeks to legitimate. The paper counterposes recent critical and global governance epistemologies, which summon the Anthropocene as a new humanist and statist moment for universal politics, against plural, parochial forms of relational, non-statist affirmation. Hegemonic governance imaginaries that invoke universalist and naturalising rationales are shown to reproduce colonial logics. The paper argues for marginalised and systematically ignored forms of earth-bound relationality that evidence long-standing political and ontological means for responding to modernity’s ecological and social harms. Earthbound and rooted life-worlds can affirm ecological responsibility and co-constitution otherwise. Two examples are presented, one from Afro-Caribbean geographies, another from Anishinaabe legal scholarship. Together they evidence enduring ecological reciprocities that unsettle and refuse the totalising rationalities invoked by Anthropocene horizons.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Annals of the American Association of Geographers |
Early online date | 24 Aug 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 24 Aug 2020 |
Keywords
- Afro-Caribbean
- Anthropocene
- Decoloniality
- global environmental governance
- Indigenous law
- ontology
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Dr Mark Jackson
- School of Geographical Sciences - Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Migration Mobilities Bristol
- Cabot Institute for the Environment
Person: Academic , Member