Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World
Talk
Malcom Ferdinand
Emory University
Goodrich C. White Hall , Room 112
301 Dowman Dr
Atlanta, GA, US 30322
April 22, 2022 | 4:15pm
Malcom Ferdinand will be at Emory University Friday, April 22 to discuss his new book, “A Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World,” published by Polity Press in the Spring of 2022.
ABOUT A Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World
Polity Press | Translated by Anthony Paul Smith
The world is in the midst of a storm that has shaped the history of modernity along a double fracture: on the one hand, an environmental fracture driven by a technocratic and capitalist civilization that led to the ongoing devastation of the Earth’s ecosystems and its human and non-human communities and, on the other, a colonial fracture instilled by Western colonization and imperialism that resulted in racial slavery and the domination of indigenous peoples and women in particular.
In this important new book, Malcom Ferdinand challenges this double fracture, thinking from the Caribbean world. Here, the slave ship reveals the inequalities that continue during the storm: some are shackled inside the hold and even thrown overboard at the first gusts of wind. Drawing on empirical and theoretical work in the Caribbean, Ferdinand conceptualizes a decolonial ecology that holds protecting the environment together with the political struggles against (post)colonial domination, structural racism, and misogynistic practices.
Facing the storm, this book is an invitation to build a world-ship where humans and non-humans can live together on a bridge of justice and shape a common world. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in environmental humanities and Latin American and Caribbean studies, as well as anyone interested in ecology, slavery, and (de)colonization. More info
This event is open to the general public, and his discussion will be of particular interest to students and scholars in environmental humanities and Latin American and Caribbean studies, as well as anyone interested in ecology, slavery, and (de)colonization.
Malcom Ferdinand was born and raised in Martinique. He is a civil and environmental engineer (University College London) and a doctor in political philosophy (Université Paris Diderot). He is currently a researcher in the fields of political ecology and environmental humanities at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and based at the University Paris Dauphine-PSL. He is the author of Une écologie décoloniale (2019), the English translation of which is available under the title A Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World (Polity Books, 2021).
Sponsored by the Department of French and Italian at Emory University; co-sponsored by the Latin & Caribbean Studies Program, the Global Development Studies Program, the Department of Environmental Sciences, the Global & Postcolonial Studies Program, the Department of English, the Department of Philosophy, and the Minor in Sustainability; with the generous support of the Villa Albertine and the Consulate General of France in Atlanta.
