DeColonize EcoModernism!

In this opening volume to a trilogy of works critiquing and undermining our approach to our environment, Ariel Salleh argues we need a new word for the contemporary age: the Androcene. This concept establishes patriarchal capitalist coloniality as the foundational issue destroying both the planet and the lives and exist with it. The Androcene is the deepest most intractable fracture of humans from the wider world of natural relations. Salleh peels away the most recent and overt political layers back to their historical source and the healing rediscovery of matristic values.This is a truly intersectional approach to the ecological crisis - one that doesn''t prioritise one species over another (e.g. humans over animals) a particular gender over another (the problem of systematic patriarchy) one race or nation over each other or accept the uneven spread of wealth and resources throughout the globe. Salleh takes as her premise that if all these issues intersect, we need to decolonialise the language and thinking we use to dismantle these overlapping worlds of inequality.>

Auteur
Ariel Salleh is a scholar-activist; appointed Visiting Professor, Instituto de Humanidades, Artes e Ciencias, Universidade Federal de Bahia, Brasil for 2025-26; a Founding Member of the Global University for Sustainability, Hong Kong, and a Visiting Professor in Humanities, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Her classic book Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx, and the postmodern (2017) and some 300 articles are available in multiple translations. In 2019, she co-edited Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary with Ashish Kothari, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria and Alberto Acosta.

Texte du rabat

In the 21st century, the old colonial attitude of terra nullius, meaning a vacant place free for the taking, still lurks behind the global economic expropriation of peoples' lands and bodies. Today, that theft is rationalised internationally by ecomodernist policy. This book engages with the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist mindset of the contemporary Androcene and its threats to Life-on-Earth, including global warming and nuclear risks, mining and the gene trade, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital coloniality. Ariel Salleh spells out the social and ecological contradictions set in motion by neocolonialism. Inspired by decolonial thinkers from Arturo Escobar to Tyson Yunkaporta, and critics of technology like Vandana Shiva and Shoshana Zuboff, she argues that dispossession of First Nation peoples' livelihoods is not healed by consumerism in the name of 'development'. Breaking with ecomodernist policy such as 'the tech fix' of mainstream environmentalists, Salleh contests the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist imperium and its advocacy of Green New Deals, Earth Governance, Sustainable Development Goals, and Smart Futures. Worldwide many decolonial activists see through the zero-sum imagination and its Earth Summits. Youth too, is defying the capitalist ruling class extinction trajectory, and some even challenge the fashionable post-human ideology circulating in high-tech quarters. Beyond 'exchange value', these Others of the Androcene are calling for self-governing bioregional futures, respectful of indigenous skills; they want local food sovereign economies, which meet people's needs while protecting nature's 'metabolic value'. Spelling out the biopolitical violence of digitalization and genetic engineering, this book traces two decades of creative defiance by global peoples' movements against the contradictions of ecomodernist development and its ongoing imposition by nation states and international agencies.

Contenu
Preface to the Trilogy Acknowledgements 1. Resisting Extinction: Youth join the dots 2. Global Synergies: Livelihoods or Lifestyles? 3. Terra Nullius: Consuming Lands and Bodies 4. Nuclear Risks: Voices for Life on Earth 5. Earth System Governance: Uncertainty Principle Revisited 6. The Gene Trade: Organized Irresponsibility 7. Buen Vivir: Ecomodernist or Andean? 8. Climate Science and Water: Coming to Our Senses 9. A Just Transition?: Women Are the Key 10. Food Sovereignty: Meeting Real Needs 11. Another Future Is Possible!: Holding Ground 12. Green New Deals: For Globalization Lite 13. The 2030 Agenda: Sustainable Development Goals 14. The Smart ReSet: A Biopolitical Turn 15. Digital Coloniality: Everyday Contradictions 16. Land Is Law/Lore: Another Ontology Notes Index