Version 3.2

Degrowth inscriptions within queer and decolonial struggles

The subalternisation of beings segmented by the categories of species, sex, gender, class, and race enabled the fossil extractivism and the organisation of the global capitalist economy (Preciado, 2022). While the threat of the Anthropocene proclaims an exposure of white liberal communities to environmental harms, colonised communities already had to face the end of the world many times over (Yusoff, 2018) as a consequence of the colonial expropriation intrinsic of capital reproduction - and of economic growth (Silva, 2022). Degrowth is a critique not only of excess throughput in the Global North, but also of the mechanisms of colonial appropriation that enable growth itself (Hickel, 2021), opposing ecomodernist reforms that can coexist with other forms of class, gender, class, sexual and racial inequalities, together with other forms of contestation and struggle towards practices of emancipation.
Queer theory and decolonial thinking are modes of thinking not closed upon themselves, but stretched to their own limits, being open to interweaving theories - that encounter each other, causing transformations and transpositions that would otherwise not be heard of, and raising the possibility of distancing itself from pretensions of universality (Pereira, 2019).
This working paper places degrowth in conversation with decolonial feminist and queer theory to investigate how it can 1) strengthen its decolonial theoretical foundations as a step into a decolonial degrowth in practice, that does not hide behind the argument of “being a concept from the North”, but rather stays open to other knowledges, theories, experiences and cosmovisions; 2) contribute to and learn from the broader struggle against the pretosexoracial capitalism (Preciado, 2022) /the colonial/modern gender world system (Lugones, 2010; Mignolo, 2012).

Info

Day: 2023-08-31
Start time: 10:00
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-KC-1
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Feminist, decolonial, anti-racist and anti-ableist ecologies

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