Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures

(Hardback)

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Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures critically interrogates the discursive framing of extinctions and how they relate to the systems that bring about biocultural loss. The chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine ecological and social preservation movements from a variety of fields, including environmental studies, literary studies, political science, and philosophy. Grounded in a de-colonialist approach, the contributors advocate for discourses of renewal grounded in Indigenous, counter-hegemonic, and de-colonialist frameworks which shift the discursive focus from ruin to regeneration.

Reviews

This dynamic book is an exciting and timely contribution to urgent conversations in the environmental humanities and postcolonial and ethnic studies about extinction. Rather than consider extinction as a singular or future event, this interdisciplinary collection explores temporally expansive settler-colonial extinctions in the plural. Foregrounding Indigenous, Black, and decolonial responses, the contributors trace a praxis of contestation to capital's eradicating drive that is rooted in critical relationality.

--Carolyn Fornoff, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

This volume is a crucial addition to the growing field of extinction studies. The editors and contributors elucidate how contesting extinction means careful attention to both loss and revitalization: It means finding new ways to write about animals, plants, waters, and places; it means dismantling settler colonialism and contributing to Indigenous resurgences; it means practicing new ways of grieving and loving together in a non-extractivist manner. These are powerful essays against erasure and towards regenerative biocultural futures.

--Joshua Schuster, Western University

When the biomass associated with humans threatens to surpass that of all other living biomass on the planet, observant people know that humankind has fulfilled the biblical command to multiply and subdue Earth. With the exception of a few pests that consume food supplies (e.g., locusts), the human race has poisoned many insects nearly out of existence, some, such as honeybees, essential to human survival. In this anthology, six essays from the related conference dissect various existing and anticipated outcomes of human influence while also contesting the allegedly capitalistic premise underlying the term Anthropocene.... The book is mainly about historical or anticipated extinction of indigenous peoples and languages--events not to be ignored, of course. The text does a good job of documenting these. [A]ppropriate for use as a supplementary text. Recommended... Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students.

-- "Choice Reviews"

Author Bio

Luis I. Prdanos is associate professor of Hispanic contemporary studies at Miami University.

Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan is visiting assistant professor of Italian Studies at Miami University.

Suzanne McCullagh is assistant professor of philosophy at Athabasca University.

Catherine Wagner is professor of English at Miami University.