(De)Colonial 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.

‘Jason Allen-Paisant grew up in a village in central Jamaica. ‘Trees were all around. We often went to the yam ground, my grandmother’s cultivation plot. When I think of my childhood, I see myself entering a deep woodland with cedars and logwood all around… The muscular guango trees were like beings among whom we lived.’ Now he lives in Leeds, near a forest where he goes walking. ‘Here, trees represent an alternative space, a refuge from an ultra-consumerist culture…’

In this poetry reading and conversation Jason-Allen Paisant explores the political implications of his book ‘Thinking With Trees’ and how it relates to Black lives and Black communities. Thereby he will discuss how the conversation around nature and the environment has been shaped, how the COVID pandemic has highlighted these questions, and how art can intervene.

Born and raised in Martinique, Malcom Ferdinand is a civil and environmental engineer from University College London and a doctor in political philosophy from 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)

Jason Allen-Paisant is a poet and academic from a village called Coffee Grove in Manchester, Jamaica. He’s a lecturer in Caribbean Poetry & Decolonial Thought in the School of English at the University of Leeds, where he’s also Director of the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. His first poetry collection Thinking with Trees (Carcanet, 2021) has been much lauded since its publication last summer. He serves on the editorial board of Callaloo: Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. He holds a doctorate in Medieval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford, and he speaks seven languages. He lives in Leeds with his partner and two daughters.

Samie Blasingame (she/her) is a researcher, facilitator and creative with a background in environmental policy and intercultural studies. She regularly curates, hosts and facilitates events on topics related to sustainability, environmental justice, anti-racist decolonization, and ecosystem mapping. She sits on the board of Greenbuzz Berlin and is an active member of the Berlin-based climate and environmental justice collective, Black Earth. Her work ethos revolves around community building and collective imaginations toward a just and resilient future.