Decolonial Ecology

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.

List of Illustrations

Index of Ships

Acknowledgements

Foreword - Angela Davis

Prologue

Part 1: The Modern Tempest: Environmental Violence and Colonial Ruptures

Chapter 1: Colonial Inhabitation: An Earth without a World

Chapter 2: The Matricides of the Plantationocene

Chapter 3: The Hold and the Negrocene

Chapter 4: The Colonial Hurricane

Part 2: Noah's Ark: When Environmentalism Refuses the World

Chapter 5: Noah's Ark: Boarding, or the abandonment of the world

Chapter 6: Reforesting without the World (Haiti)

Chapter 7: Paradise or Hell in the Nature Preserves (Puerto Rico)

Chapter 8: The Masters' Chemistry (Martinique and Guadeloupe)

Chapter 9: A Colonial Ecology: At the Heart of the Double Fracture

Part 3: The Slave Ship: Rising Up from Modernity's Hold in Search of a World

Chapter 10: The Slave Ship: Debarking Off-World

Chapter 11: Maroon Ecology: Fleeing the Plantationocene

Chapter 12: Rousseau, Thoreau, and Civil Marronage

Chapter 13: A Decolonial Ecology: Rising up from the hold

Part 4: A World-Ship: World-Making Beyond the Double Fracture

Chapter 14: A World-Ship: Politics of encounter

Chapter 15: Forming a Body in the World: Reconnecting with a Mother-Earth

Chapter 16: Interspecies Alliances: The Animal Cause and The Negro Cause

Chapter 17: A Worldly-Ecology: On the Bridge of Justice

Epilogue

World-Making

The Intrusion of Ayiti

Recovering the Sun of Africa

Notes