A Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World

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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, Decolonial Ecology published by Polity Books, 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.

Born and raised in Martinique, Malcom Ferdinand 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), of which an English translation is available under the title A Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World (Polity Books, 2021).

Mohamad Amer Meziane is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public and the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. Mohamed Amer Meziane will be joining Brown University as an Assistant Professor.

Madeleine Dobie is Professor and Chair of the French Department at Columbia.

The event is co-sponsored by the Maison Française and Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

This event is free and open to the public. Proof of vaccination is required and masks are to be worn over the mouth and nose at all times. To register for this in person event, please click here. You can also follow the discussion live on Facebook.