CLaSP Book Discussion

Discussion with Prof. Areil Salleh on her new book ‘Decolonize Ecomodernism!’

When: 10 June 2025; 4:00-6:00 PM

Location: GC601, Graduate Centre, Mile End Campus, Queen Mary University of London

Abstract: 

In this book, Ariel Salleh engages with the patriarchal- colonial-capitalist mindset and its threats to Life-on-Earth, including climate change and nuclear risks, mining and the gene trade, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital coloniality. She spells out the social and ecological contradictions of the contemporary Androcene. 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 i not healed by consumerism in the name of 'development'. Breaking with ecomodernist policy, including 'the tech fix' of mainstream environmentalism, Salleh contests the new imperium with its Green New Deals, Earth Governance, Sustainable Development Goals, and Smart Futures. Worldwide 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 posthuman ideology circulating in high-tech quarters. Beyond 'exchange value', these Others of the Androcene call for self-governing bioregional futures, respectful of indigenous skills; they want local food sovereign economies which both meet people's needs and protect nature's 'metabolic value’. Tracing the biopolitical violence of modernity, the book follows 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.