‘I don’t want your progress! It tries to kill … me!’ Decolonial encounters and the anarchist critique of civilization

From hegemony-reinforcing to hegemony-transcending transformations: horizons of possibility and strategies of escape

“…Nonetheless, we join L&M, Butler, and a wide contingent of decolonial, feminist and some degrowth and anarchist scholars (e.g. Abazeri 2022;Akbulut et al 2019;Dengler and Seebacher 2019;Dunlap 2022;Hanaček et al 2020;Hickel 2021;Nirmal and Rocheleau 2019;Paulson 2021) in acknowledging the significant limitations associated with purely planetary-limits and Anthropocene-based approaches. Decolonial feminist theorists have critiqued such approaches on the basis that whilst biophysical processes must be acknowledged, their functional significance can only be understood relationally, through a multiplicity of local perspectives and experiences which are flattened by the universal narratives of scarcity centred theories (Luks 2010;Mehta 2010;Mehta et al 2019.…”

“…The bloc tends to also favour more open, relational and collectively constituted realities compared to those of the previous two blocs (Garcia-Arias and Schöneberg 2021; Escobar 2018; Schöneberg 2019; Dengler and Seebacher 2019;Visseren-Hamakers et al 2021;Vogel and O'Brien 2022). There is a diversity of literature and social movements associated with this bloc, with popular approaches drawing on often eclectic mixtures of theories linked with eco-feminism, decoloniality, and increasingly eco-anarchism (Dunlap 2022). It is also heavily rooted in and influenced by historically marginalized theoretical perspectives associated with indigenous peoples and the cultural and economic 'peripheries' of the 'Global South' (Álvarez and Coolsaet 2020;Dengler and Seebacher 2019;Kothari et al 2019;Escobar 2020;Sultana 2022).…”

“…Proponents have come to the conclusion that truly radical transformations are only attainable through truly radical, collective and relational processes of world-making (Escobar 2020;Rajan et al 2021). Finally, such approaches commonly emphasize the importance of autonomy to transformative processes, which in hegemonic terms can be framed as breaking down of the structures of the dominant hegemony on terms that actively assert the sovereignty and relational agency of marginal communities (Escobar 2020;Dunlap 2022).…”

“…An example is Chandler and Reid's harsh critique of decolonial theory (2020), which they accuse of having tendencies towards cultural essentialism and of appropriating of indigenous and marginalized voices. Another is the anarchically rooted criticisms of Dunlap (2022Dunlap ( , 2021 who claim that decolonial theories all too often remain implicitly state-centric and affirm various unjust hierarchies in the name of respecting cultural difference. These are valid emerging critiques of the third block.…”

Energy justice beyond identity: Planting anarchist seeds towards total liberation

“…“Energy” and “justice” continue to celebrate uncritically Westernized conceptions of energy and justice. These conceptions reinforce a particular epistemology, relationship, and conception of development, effectively constituting epistemic discrimination (Dunlap, 2022), and—worse of all—smother the socio-ecological or biocentric post-development alternatives desperately amongst ecological and climate catastrophe.…”