On Decolonising the Anthropocene: disobedience via plural constitutions
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...
Published in: | Annals of the American Association of Geographers |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2020
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1983/0c976ee4-d89e-400d-93a9-b988ced2fcad https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/0c976ee4-d89e-400d-93a9-b988ced2fcad https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1779645 https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/239199503/Jackson_Anthropocene_Annals_Accepted_2020.pdf |
Summary: | 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. |
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