Uma Ecologia Decolonial: pensar a partir do mundo caribenho

by Malcom Ferdinand, Letícia Mei (Translator)

É para cuidar da ferida aberta pelas inúmeras crises engendradas pelo sistema capitalista que o martinicano Malcom Ferdinand propõe uma ecologia decolonial, uma abordagem interseccional extremamente sagaz que reúne o ecológico com o pensamento decolonial, antirracista, em uma crítica contundente ao “habitar colonial da Terra”. Nesta análise urgente, Ferdinand critica o que chama de “dupla fratura colonial e ambiental da modernidade”, de que resultam, por um lado, as teorias ecologistas que desconsideram o legado do colonialismo e da escravidão; por outro, os movimentos sociais e antirracistas que negligenciam a questão animal e ambiental. Como mostra o autor, tal fratura só enfraquece as demandas desses movimentos, uma vez que a exploração do ser humano e da natureza caminham lado a lado. Para tanto, escolhe como centro de seu pensamento as regiões caribenhas, com seus modos de vida crioulos e suas formas de resistência – entre elas a marronagem, uma estratégia de aquilombamento para fora do mundo colonial. Com um prefácio de Angela Davis que situa historicamente o conceito de justiça ambiental, esta obra oferece uma aproximação para pensar um navio-mundo que não mais atire algumas pessoas no porão, condenando-as a uma sobrevida precária sujeita a doenças, fome e morte, enquanto oferece a outras a perspectiva de uma viagem segura e lucrativa no convés, possibilitada justamente pelo assujeitamento daqueles no porão.
O livro recebeu o prêmio da fundação de ecologia política de 2019

Genres: Nonfiction, Ecology, History, Philosophy, Environment, Sociology, Politics

320 pages, Paperback

Published May 27, 2022

Reviews

[Thaïs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing

[Jia Yi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un texte immense qui délivre un regard nécessaire sur l'écologie. J'ai pris le temps chaque jour (et mois) à me plonger dedans et laisser décanter chaque réflexion présentée et je peux seulement le résumer ainsi :  c'est un incontournable pour faire le pont entre les luttes décoloniales, antiracistes, patriarcales, anticapitalistes et antivalidistes avec les luttes écologiques. 

La perception que nous avons des terres, de ceux qui les habitent (humains ET non-humains) découlent d'une lutte commune. On y gagnerait toustes à pousser la convergence des luttes dans chacune de nos actions collectives et personnelles.

Bref, à lire ! Et prendre le temps qu'il faut pour lire chaque passage.

[Melvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a gorgeous book; beautifully written (and translated). I appreciate how Ferdinand builds on modernity/coloniality to demonstrate that environmentalism and colonialism are always already connected, culminating in his "decolonial ecology." I found this framework and the connections between oppressions (perhaps a re-centering of oppressions on a singular oppression of coloniality) to be the strongest points of his book. I missed a discussion of the co-construction of species and race as well as how animals can world, too. However, I don't think that lack of discussion takes away from the book. To this end, I would suggest that "Decolonial Ecology" is read alongside books such as "Racism as Zoological Witchcraft" and "Staying With The Trouble."

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really wanted to give this book 5 stars. it makes really important points and offers interesting and almost ground breaking historical insights for the discourse about anticolonialism and environmentalism but his analysis lead to nowhere and he is not really able to connect decolonial and environemntal struggles, additionally he almost leaves the animal/multispecies question untouched which is dissapointing since its crucial for this topic. that he is heavily relying on haraways plantationocene and also her chthulucene concept shows that he has no clue about anthropocene critique that comes from native americans who heavily criticize haraways concept for being reductive, anecdotal, appropriating, white and neocolonial. his lack of engagement with the critical indigenous studies discourse of northern america and also the critical decolonial anthropology of southern america as well as the decolonial proposals of maori and aborginial scholars is really dissapointing. i get that he is "thinking from the Caribbean World" but this is no excuse to these sins of omission since he suggests a "worldly-ecology" at the end of his book which is worth nothing without indigenous insights and taking into account their important role in decolonial stuggles and how their cosmology's get appropriated by people like donna haraway and anna tsing.

as a good starting point to complement this book i recommend the work of zoe todd, kyle whyte, linda tuhiwai smith, leo tallbear and max liboiron, to some extend also the book by david chandler and julian reid.

nevertheless, the concept of decolonial ecology is what we need and the paragraphs about it slay <3

[Lilith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is spectacular. If you are interested in history, anthropology, environmental studies, colonialism, ecology, or conservation futures you have read this!

[Karel · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Here, the word "Negro" no longer designates a skin color, a
phenotype; it does not even refer to an ethnic origin or
specific geography. It refers to all those who were and are in
the hold of the modern world: the off-world. Those whose
social survival is marked by an exclusion from the world and
who are reduced to their "value" as energy. […] Negroes are
the many (human and non-human) off-worlders whose vital
energy is forcibly dedicated to fuel the lifestyles and ways of
inhabiting the Earth of a minority while being denied an
existence of their own in the world.'

4,5

[Uva Costriuba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caiu na fuvest, me vem na cabeça quando observo São Paulo florescer e fritar no concreto quente... foi de longe a leitura mais importante desde a pandemia. Devo reler e voltar nas minhas anotações nas margens muitas vezes ainda.

[Camille Brule · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a book club. Some really incredible and insightful chapters about the colonial damage to Caribbean islands (environmental and social). I learned a lot about the historical ties to environmental justice and anti racist movements. Kinda of dense to get through and felt repetitive at times but an important read.

[HajarRead]

Je ne le note pas parce que je me suis arrêtée aux 3/4 et qu’il reste très très exigeant je trouve. Il est très conceptuel aussi selon ma lecture des choses, ce n’est pas évident de tout assimiler.

[TanguyYun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense conceptuellement. Une forme poétique très élégante dans sa pertinence et son affection. Les figures du cyclone, la tempête, la cale, le marronage, et autres peignent un constat lourd et urgent de la situation mettant en exergue la base violente de la modernité. Ainsi, il ne suffit pas de tourner vers le futur pour "nous" sauver. Mais de voir et dépasser les fractures composées des vestiges et continuation de dominations étouffantes, et aspirer à un véritable navire monde inter-espèce, où les voix censurées peuvent être entendues.

Je trouve le livre salutaire dans sa nuance de la question du rapport à la nature ( merci Malcom de mentionner la sentience et la question animale) et de l'égalitarisme . En effet on rejette, la figure du promeneur solitaire qui apprécie dans la "beauté" de la "nature" derrière une vitrine privilégiée. Malcom semble plutôt référer l'importance de l'écologie en tant qu'un rapport d'existence dans un monde, où il y a cohabitation, ne mettant plus l'accent sur une protection d'une soi-disant "nature", terme à tendance trompeuse voire néfaste.
Et c'est par la fracture écologique d'exploitation de cet habitat que les populations souffrent d'arrachement, un processus qui nous seulement les aliènent mais qui les naturalisent en tant que ressources appropriables et exploitables car ne faisant plus partie du monde de co-habitation.

Le terme Plantationocène en dit beaucoup ( et la force de cette formulation à réfléchir la domination dans un contexte plus précis et réel des Caraïbes). La "domination de la nature" cache en faite une domination de l'habitant colonial, qui dans ses activités productivistes maximalistes, exploite et esclavagise les non-habitant.es, ceux ne faisant plus partie du monde, car naturalisé.es en ressources pour service ses intérêts.
Cette activité cause des dommages à de nombreuses populations, non seulement celles exploitées que celles subissant les dommages écologiques par manque de protection. Cela vaut inversement, l'asservissement et naturalisation de personnes implique une logique extractiviste écocidaire intrinsèque d'une configuration économique, centralisée, capitaliste, d'accumulation.

La double fracture est difficilement réfutables, et on nous ramène donc aux enjeux matériels de l'écologie, la souffrance réelle des personnes(humaines et non humaines) prises dans le cyclone, et non une protection abstraite de la survie de l'espèce humaine ou de la "nature". Deux fracture s

1) En effet, même si on imagine des rapports égalitaristes dans une société productiviste. Sans intégrer les dommages écologiques qui nous frapperont, les dommages causés par la production se feront sur des personnes vulnérables.

2) Si on imagine une société écologique qui protège un groupe suprémaciste de l'extinction( par exemple la civilisation humaine occidentale). L'absence du discours décolonial réduit au silence une immense souffrance pour les personnes déplacées à la cale du navire des privilégié.es qui tiennent à la survie.

J'aurais aimé apprendre plus sur la stratégie et notamment une réflexion sur l'industrialisation du sud global, et l'Asie tant que l'Occident n'est pas encore capable de se responsabiliser. (Est ce que cette dernière évitera des écueils oppressifs. Peut elle servir de rapport de force à l'occident pour gagner et tendre vers le navire monde ensuite? )Cependant je conçois que ce n'est pas vraiment la portée du livre et qu'il peut servir de point de départ pour des stratégies politiques.

[Caroline Sol (Drinks & Livros) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A proposta do autor é situar a luta ecológica no contexto do mundo que a tornou necessária: um mundo colonialista, racista, imperialista. Através de exemplos e metáforas do mundo caribenho, nos leva a pensar no mundo como um navio negreiro (onde existem aqueles no convés e aqueles no porão), a questionar o conceito de ambientalismo "arca de Noé" (em que muitos mais são deixados para fora do que embarcam) e na importância de agregar as lutas anticoloniais e antirracistas ao discurso ambiental, sob o risco deste se tornar ecofascista/jardinagem (como diria Chico Mendes)

Um livro difícil, que certamente renderá um releitura futura, mas que valeu cada página.

[Lise Sanson]

Unpopular opinion mais j’ai pas aimé…
Je pense que les propos auraient tenu en 200 pages de moins
Je pense aussi que j’aurais du le lire à 18 ans parce que là pour le coup j’ai pas eu l’effet WOW que le texte fait normalement

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to think of a text more vital for Now // has completely reconfigured the way I think about environmentalism

[Mochi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decolonial Ecology offers a framework of what could be. It is, in many ways, a book to live by, connecting theoretical notions of environmental justice with realities both historical and forward-facing, from the ways that the slave trade has facilitated environmental damage to the possibilities of unifying social justice movements to create a better future. Ferdinand weaves together many metaphors, each of which represent different dimensions of the colonial makings that limit today’s mainstream narratives of anthropogenic climate change. These metaphors draw upon previous work, from Charles Mills to Rob Nixon, to connect colonialism, racism, and ecological destruction.

First, Ferdinand illustrates the ideas of mainstream ecology, in which the Anthropocene is conceptualized as a movement that is independent of other injustices. As Charles Mills writes in “Black Trash,” this movement attempts to be apolitical, obscuring the structures of domination that have led to our current reality. Ferdinand makes it explicit that a framework of decolonial ecology paints a different picture where the destruction that mankind has wreaked on the Earth is not by a homogenous notion of man, but rather a specific group. He uses the terminology of the Plantationocene and the Negrocene, rather than the Anthropocene, to capture the inextricable link between slavery and the environment. He characterizes the slave trade as not only a crime against humanity but also an ecocide, a crime that has harmed the planet and its capacity to have humans. Ferdinand lumps the environmental landscape with social and political ones, characterizing racism as the dominant paradigm that enables the abusive engineering of these spaces.

Ferdinand uses the metaphor of Noah’s ark to describe the world that such “environmentalists” aspire to achieve. They dream of a world that supposedly once was, invoking notions of safety, paradise, and refuge for a select few. Ferdinand problematizes this “ideology of wilderness” against the backdrop of natural catastrophes. The environmental destruction in Puerto Rico is emblematic of this “new Western civilizing mission, a modern rendition of the White man’s burden,” to protect enclaves of paradise. This paradise is imagined to have incredible biodiversity that must be saved from “careless and faceless hands.” And while this version of environmentalism aims to protect these reserves at any cost, it completely neglects the populations outside the carefully-drawn boundaries of these reserves and obscures the fact that such notions of paradise are only made necessary by the violence enacted by the same forces of colonialism—the same actors pretend to aim to fix the problem that they themselves have created, all the while othering and displacing the indigenous inhabitants of the areas that are most devastated by environmental injustice. This calls upon Mills’ assertion that Westerners treated indigenous people as part of the local flora and fauna, and thus unworthy of human rights.

Ferdinand also describes the free use of toxic substances that have been used to control nature, and their users' utter lack of concern for the ways that these substances devastate local communities. Such acts result in a slow, multidimensional violence that slowly destroys the landscape and thus the lives of its inhabitants. This idea builds on Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, which discusses the ways that ecological destruction disproportionately affects disadvantaged communities in ways that are at once so slow that they are undetectable and so vast that they cannot be fully captured, from the “indiscriminate casualties” caused by DDT to the limbless “jellyfish babies” borne decades after nuclear devastation to the lasting fallout of the chemical weapons used during the Vietnam War. Moreover, this violence often occurs so slowly that it often becomes decoupled and de-attributed from the original cause of environmental damage. Nixon explores the powers behind the forced removals of impoverished populations from their homes, and laments the lack of scholarship discussing the relationship between the foreign policies of Western powers (specifically, American-led neoliberal economic policies) and ecological destruction. Ferdinand’s work perhaps begins to bridge that gap, as Decolonial Ecology also discusses the economic incentives that have put such structures in place: for example, banana farming continues, despite the contamination it engenders, because it yields more profit to corporations than sustainable forms of agriculture. Ferdinand terms this colonial heterotopia, an imaginary that permits horrors—ones that would be unfathomable in the centered spaces—to occur at those deemed as the margins. This form of “Noah’s Ark” environmentalism only prolongs the subjugation of the enslaved.

Ferdinand contrasts the Noah’s Ark to the slave ship by invoking the politics of the hold. He describes how Negroes were forced onto these ships, viewed never as subjects but instead as objects: “the enslaved are kept offside of responsibility, as regards both the land and the colonial world. Hold politics produces off-ground individuals.” This fracture continues to be seen in the spatial isolation continued in the patterns of geographical segregation that percolate the United States today, which Charles Mills weaves into the notion of the racial contract and “a geography of aversion.”

Ferdinand is careful to distinguish the Negro as distinct from the mere idea of a racial Capitalocene, referring to “those who were and are in the hold of the modern world: the off-world.” Ferdinand articulates how it is the “productive work of the Negro, directed at expanding colonial inhabitation” that has caused changes in the Earth’s ecology and environment. He likens this productive power to another form of energy comparable to oil, gas, coal, and wood, illustrating at once the sheer magnitude of the industry of slavery and the amount of world-defining work that was made possible by this labor. To further understand the connection of slave ships to natural systems, we can look to Paulla A. Ebron’s “Slave ships were incubators for infectious diseases”, an article that discusses the relationships between humans and non-humans on slave ships, and the ways in which diseases were spread in the hold of ships.

The slave ship and Noah’s ark seem to be vastly different on the surface: Noah’s ark is named in relation to its exterior, while the slave ship is defined by its contents. Yet Ferdinand draws surprising similarities between the politics of Noah’s ark and those of the slave ship: both impose an alienation of its residents from their cultures, ecosystems, and worlds. In lieu of these vessels, Ferdinand advocates for the creation of a world-ship. In contrast to the hold, the world-ship is Ferdinand’s possibility for another world, for subverting the hold of the modern world as we know it—that is, the one that has been created by colonization—and of the Anthropocene. Rather than a return to some hypothetical past, the creation of the world-ship is instead a question of encounter, of opening up new relationships between populations both human and non-human. While the double fracture of colonialism has created divides between movements for ecology, animals, feminism, etc., Ferdiannd draws surprising parallels between these causes. For example, he writes about the connection between the enslavement of animals and the animalization of enslaved Black people, as well as other people of color and women.We are prey in concrete jungles, subject to the hunting, caging, and violence that one associates with the extermination of animals. Against this backdrop, Ferdinand portrays the existence of alliances between humans and our non-human counterparts, such as the ways that the venomous snake, in the dangers that it posed to the European settlers, became the protectors of the colonized people in Martinique. This is a stark contrast to Nixon’s venomous animal metaphors, comparing the giant investment bank Goldman Sachs to a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Ebron takes a more nuanced approach, using the example of the mosquito to simultaneously vectorize disease and exemplify the necessity and possibility of adjusting to new living conditions.

Ferdinand argues for the necessity of worldly transformations: moving away from Eurocentrism, incorporating the perspectives of women and people of color, and centering the importance of decolonization, quoting sociologist Nathan Hare that “the real solution to the environmental crisis is the decolonization of the black race.” These transformations can be embodied starting with our consumption choices in food, clothing, transportation, etc. While these choices are not novel, Ferdinand’s ardent insistence on world-making gives these suggestions a renewed sense of purpose, such that the reader sees these actions not only as ways to lessen our individual carbon footprints but as powerful actions toward building a more just world.

[Guido Ruschel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Malcom visibiliza brilhantemente a fratura colonial que constitui a modernidade, fratura que separa as lutas ambientalistas das lutas antirracistas, anticolonialistas e feministas; e propõe que o desafio que a contemporaneidade nos coloca vai além de "resistir à barbárie que chega", provocada pelo ciclone moderno. Ou, como sintetiza o autor martinicano, "Enfrentar essa tempestade obriga a cuidar dessa dupla fratura colonial e ambiental da modernidade".

[Juliette Deseilligny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would really have liked to put 5 stars for the content but the form forces me to dock one star off.
I agree wholeheartedly with the other person here who commented "life changing"; I think this book contains one of the most important perspectives voiced today, bar none. But it is presented in an extremely dense academic way which makes it both hard to follow if you actually can and inaccessible to most. This frustrates even more because it should so be in all hands.

J'aurais beaucoup voulu attribuer 5 étoiles à ce livre pour son fond, mais sa forme m'en retient.
Je suis tout à fait d'accord avec la personne qui a commenté ici "life changing" — ce livre ouvre vraiment nos yeux; je pense honnêtement que la vision qu'il présente est une des plus nécessaires à faire connaître et à prendre en compte aujourd'hui. Mais le livre est écrit de manière tristement dense et académique: non seulement est-il ainsi très dur à suivre, mais il est complètement inaccessible pour une majorité de lecteurs.
C'est d'autant plus frustrant qu'il devrait vraiment se retrouver entre toutes les mains.

[Charles Taillon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allier les luttes écologiques aux luttes contre les inégalités raciales et socio-économiques est un paris pris par beaucoup d'études et essais ; celui-ci y parvient. L'exposition en 4 temps de l'environnementalisme et la critique du concept d'antropocène sont bien rélaisés. En fait ce livre regorge de bon contenu, mais la forme est indigeste. La lecture est fastidieuse et il y a beaucoup de répétitions. Malgré tout, j'airais aimé avoir lu ce livre plus tôt.
4.4/5

[Miek Gysen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this book - Decolonial Ecology by Malcolm Ferdinand - in a museumshop in Berlin and finally finished reading it. I needed to stretch my brain and seriously flex my neural paths for this read but what a rewarding read! The books meticulously analyses and dissects the colonial past and patiently lays out how deeply violent and disruptive it was to the physical world and the metaphysical being. People were denied humanity, stripped of context and simply refused an identity, even a Self. The planet earth forcefully turned into a defenseless source for exploitation. The economy and ecology of the slave-fueled plantations signalled the start of a worldscale capitalist consumerism of which the consequences are far reaching and incontournable. The book connects ecology and decolonisation using authentic written sources- often specifically on slavetrading- as an opening perspective. This angle is brutally real and exposes centuries of almost casual abuse.
The analyses in the book search to fit models or templates over the horrors of colonial inhabitation. Using litarary references as well as political and economical data results in detailed options to understand the depth of the trauma implied, on both the Earth and its humans. Self-abandonment, self-elimination, how to think about Self and Other. What does wild mean? What nature is wild? Did no-one really live in those Virgin-forests?
The second part of the book sets out to detail how the colonial inhabitation (and later the remorseful and staged return to the Wild with untrue imagery of virgin forests and a pre-colonial paradise) has radically changed eco-systems and the pre-existing dependencies of human and non-human lifeforms. As it still continues to this day where ecological approach and sustainability are aspired by selling and buying CO2 rights, mining toxic raw material in other continents than ours, conducting nuclear trials on islands where the inhabitants are less assertive, or have their land taken away (again) to turn it into natural parks, and in doing so denying them of a livelihood. Ground water is contaminated and toxic exhausts are breathing freely on grounds and people who have no means of removing themselves from those health hazards.
This is seamlessly tying in all those who are racialized and discriminated against. As such, Ferdinand explains that decolonial ecology makes the colonial fracture the central issue of the ecological crisis. It follows from the observation that pollution, loss of biodiversity and global warming are the material traces of colonial inhabitation of the earth, comprising global social inequalities and gender and racial discriminations.
What made the book especially powerful to me is how Ferdinand brings all of this back to our everyday reality, where migrants are on boats, stripped by context, and denied hospitality where they touch land. It is still he easiest thing to do if you want to ignore or deny the harsh inequalities in this world: dehumanise the people looking for survival, make them into the Other. Or don't even grant them that...
Politicians do use this rhetoric too often, a CAPS LOCK message that usually does the trick. Ferdinand proposes the Encounter as a solution. If we would allow migrants a real encounter, the demand for equal citizenship would ring loud and clear. The true Encounter is not threatening nor need it be hostile, it would simply make sense that to articulate that local institutions, our countries, should provide dignified political treatment to newcomers.
In literature, colonial and postcolonial have moved from an exchange with the Other towards compositions of plurality making our classic reference of a deep, monolithic idea of self irrelevant. Sustainable and respectful socio-economic constructs lis within allowing for plurality.
In economics and politics, antislavery (for it is still a practice in many parts of this world) and decolonial emancipation also involve decolonizing our modes of consumption and our relations to non-human animals. We should all be looking to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods and work hard on weaving a new durable social fabric that allows for true, just encounters with newcomers.
So yeah! The book was a stretch but so many powerful insights! What made it all the more enjoyable were the references to Suriname, where the Maroon communities managed to defend their village-communities in the rainforest from economic exploitation. Or that was the case still when I got to visit those villages as a 5-year old. It was a weirdly mesmerizing experience for us as kids, we did sense even at that age, how special and meaningful that Encounter was. On top of that, as the book is specifically focussed on the Caribbean Islands, I also found reference to David Dabydeen, the poet who inspired my master's thesis a zillion years ago now. So picking up a book in a berlin museum 6 months ago was actually just affirming my personal interests: at 49 as well as at 20, I appear to be still reading the same stuff!

[Mari Janssen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sparked my thoughts

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

um livro muito bem articulado e com diversos conceitos interdisciplinares. Ferdinand abre a discussão expondos as fraturas da modernidade, que separam o ambiental do colonial. A partir do habitar colonial, demonstra como as violências cometidas não são apenas contra os humanos (especificamente os Negros, categoria esse que ele emprega não como sinônimo racial, mas como os fora-do-mundo, povos cujas sobrevivências sociais foram atingidas por exclusão e reduzidas ao "valor" energético) e as paisagens, mas também contra os seres não-humanos (que envolve animais de outras espécies, água, pedras, etc.) Traz inúmeros exemplos de explorações contra os povos do Caribe, a qual dá p fazer inúmeros paralelos com o contexto brasileiro.
É uma leitura necessária para quem luta e sonha com um mundo mais justo e plural, pois como ele diz: "A crise ecológica é uma crise de justiça" e a ecologia decolonial visa construir novos horizontes de mundoS.

[Luísa Monteiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um dos livros mais lindos e fortes que já li. Página após página, Malcom Ferdinand surpreende com a qualidade intelectual que possui, ao abordar a dupla fratura colonial e ambiental da modernidade. É um livro denso mas que também evoca nosso imaginário, por meio da ótica sensível do autor. Em alguns momentos, fiquei um tempo sem ler para digerir a quantidade de dados e informações a que fui exposta. Nos capítulos finais ele discorre e vislumbra um novo mundo, o navio-mundo. Fiquei com vontade de ler as referências de livros citados e indico fortemente às pessoas interessadas em se aprofundar em uma luta ecológica interseccional.

[Raymundo VR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.
An amazing read that expresses, in many cases, my thoughts and sentiments, as a racialized person born in a former colony, about how we are losing the world against a socio-economic and political system invented only by a few people to serve themselves with the big spoon.

The book connects several ideas, actions and consequences in a formidable way, however, I've missed more references to the ideas and actions performed by native Americans and their descendants, combating terrorism since 1492.

[Mélanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une lecture essentielle pour questionner l'ancrage de l'écologie dans des modes de pensée et des rapports de pouvoir racistes et (post)coloniaux. M. Ferdinand part de l'espace caribéen, marqué par l'esclavage, l'accaparement des ressources et des terres, et des scandales sanitaires comme celui du chlordécone pour mettre en lumière comment s'imbriquent enjeux écologiques et les situations (post)coloniales. Il propose avec ce livre de repenser une écologie réellement émancipatrice, antiraciste et décoloniale.

[Gabriel Leibold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Malcom Ferdinand oferece a quem o lê a possibilidade de revisitar nossos próprios horizontes de imaginação e, mediante essa visita, a oportunidade de abri-los em um movimento intersseccional de dentro para fora. Os atravessamentos entre colonialismo, racismo, violência de gênero e ecologia propostos nesse estudo deixam entrever, no mundo contemporâneo, novas maneiras de agir nos mundos que compõem o planeta Terra.

[Charlotte Minvielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important book to ensure we think about environmental issues with an antiracist & decolonial lens. Slavery & colonisation have had such detrimental impact on living on & non-living beings. And it’s the poorest & indigenous people who suffer the most from the environmental crisis. Let’s combine these fights for a fairer & better world for all.

[Moé · Rating 5 out of 5]

C’était très intéressant ! Assez exigeant par son nombre de concept dont, personnellement, quelques-uns m’étaient inconnus. Mais du coup assez riche, j’ai appris beaucoup de choses. Malcolm Ferdinand a une écriture assez fluide, ce qui en fait un livre vraiment accessible. J’y retournerai probablement pour relire certains chapitres !

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

philosophy + history + ecology + sociology + activism + a whole lot more, all expertly combined. a few allegories went over my head (especially regarding Noah's Ark) but I blame that on my poor comprehending ability, not a fault of the author's conveying or writing

[Milla Ben-Ezra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brings ideas of intersectionality to discourse about colonialism and ecology; grapples with how we can resist hegemonic and racist structures (in which he argues we're all slaves) while being stuck in those structures.

[Coline Brnx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Puissant

[Karine Éléa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intellectual work. Very well written.