Two things to consider before your morning coffee. 1) We are living through a Holocene collapse event,* when the nearly 12,000 year old regime of relative climate stability, the “comfort zone” for most of what we know as human civilization, is beginning to tear to shreds. (Here’s just one of the shreds from yesterday’s news.) […]
Archive for the ‘Cultural politics’ Category
Symbiocene@Ruigoord.NL
Posted in Anthropocene, Cultural politics, Eco-culture, tagged Amsterdam, autonomism, eco-art, Free Cultural Spaces, Glenn Albrecht, hippies, Ruigoort, squatting, Symbiocene, Timothy Morton on July 27, 2023 | Leave a Comment »
Race-shifting, gender transitioning, & other identity moves
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged cultural identity, gender politics, gender transitioning, identity, identity politics, indigenous, Indigenous sovereignty, Kim Tallbear, late capitalism, pretendianism, race-shifting, self-indigenization, transgender, Vermont on May 5, 2023 | Leave a Comment »
These thoughts, written in the aftermath of a half-day conference on race-shifting (first part viewable here) and influenced by Kim TallBear’s critique of identity, have me going out on a limb, for reasons that are likely pretty obvious. But I will persevere with them, and ask that you read them through to the end before reacting to isolated parts of the […]
Sharpening our moral clarity
Posted in Anthropocene, Cultural politics, tagged colonialism, Decolonization, global anti-imperialism, imperialism, indigenous peoples, Indigenous theory, Kim Tallbear on October 12, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Indigenous intellectuals like Kim Tallbear see the current Anthropocene crisis (climate change, etc.) as a continuation and intensification of the kind of thing Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans (among others) have experienced for centuries. Her thoughts for Indigenous People’s Day, shared on Tallbear’s Substack account, are well worth reading. Describing a “radical hope” that might […]
Reindigenization & allyship, part 3: On getting it right
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged Abenaki, Darryl Leroux, First Nations, Gina Adams, identity, Indigenous affairs, Indigenous identity, indigenous peoples, Kim Tallbear, Michelle Cyca, Odanak First Nation, Pretendians, race-shifting, tribal politics, University of Vermont, Vermont, Vermont state recognition of Indigenous peoples, Wabanaki on September 21, 2022 | 5 Comments »
This post is the third in a series on the topic of Indigenous identity, universities, and processes of (re-)indigenization. Part 1 can be read here; Part 2, here. While the following is most relevant to the case of Vermont, I hope it can also contribute to a broader consideration of these issues.
Eco+Deco, a manifesto in progress
Posted in Cultural politics, Eco-theory, Manifestos & auguries, Science & society, tagged colonialism, coloniality, decolonialism, Decolonization, ecological science, ecologization, ecology, indigeneity, indigenization, land, Latour, manifestos, Ontology, postcolonialism, reindigenization, Toronto Biennale of Art on May 31, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Some of the best art exhibitions today show that the socially engaged art world is undergoing two shifts that some of us in the environmental humanities have been advocating for some time: they ecologize and they decolonize. An excellent example of this is the second edition of the Toronto Biennale of Art, currently wrapping up […]
Reindigenization & allyship, part 2
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged Abenaki, Abenaki of Vermont, Darryl Leroux, identity politics, indigeneity, Indigenous identity, indigenous peoples, Odanak First Nation, Pretendians, race-shifting, self-indigenization, Vermont on April 8, 2022 | 6 Comments »
I have been hesitant to follow up on my post of last summer on “Reindigenization and Allyship” because of the complications surrounding this issue, especially in my state of Vermont. The following can be considered part two in a series, as I continue to think through the politics of indigeneity, identity (including its malleability), territoriality […]
Ukraine, the “migrant crisis,” & the future
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged borders, critical zones, cultural politics, ecotopia, futurism, green politics, liberalism, migrant crisis, migration, Putinism, refugee crisis, refugees, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine, xenophobia on March 14, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Here are some thoughts on the humanitarian, historical, moral, and environmental implications of the crisis of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They were prompted by questions asked of me by a public radio interviewer. I’m still working on the answers (and the interview has not aired, as far as I can tell). Comments […]
The feeling of the world
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged affective politics, Anthropocene, conspiracy culture, COVID-19, global cultural studies, global middle class, illiberalism on January 18, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a working thesis on the present global moment: 1. For many people around the world, life has always been precarious. But for a certain class — the global middle class (and up) — the world had felt more or less secure and comfortable, as long as one knew how to navigate it: play by […]
Reindigenization and allyship: starting points
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged Abenaki, allyship, Darryl Leroux, El Nu, Indian country, indigenization, indigenous peoples, Indigenous solidarity, Indigenous studies, Koasek, Land Grab universities, land-grant universities, Métissage, Missisquoi, Nulhegan, Odanak, self-indigenization, University of Vermont, Vermont, W8banaki, Wabanaki, Wolinak on July 30, 2021 | 7 Comments »
I often “think out loud” on this blog. That’s been very useful as a way of getting feedback on work in progress; it also forces me to be both honest and careful with my words. The following is being shared in the same spirit: it’s related to teaching and writing in progress, but also to […]
UFOs, anomalistics, and “wild science”
Posted in Cultural politics, Science & society, tagged Anomalies, anomalistics, conspiracies, conspiratistics, conspiratology, Luis Elizondo, media, military issues, nuclear power, UAPs, UFOs, unexplained things on June 9, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
Of all the theories of what UFOs might be—optical illusions and misperceptions, hallucinations (solo and mass), hoaxes, et al—the one that raises the most epistemically troubling questions is not the Extraterrestrial Visitation Hypothesis (EVH) but the Inter-Dimensional Hypothesis (IDH), popularized by astronomer, computer scientist, and venture capitalist Jacques Vallée. Once you open up to the possibility that there are other dimensions that interpenetrate with ours, all epistemological hell breaks loose… Not only do all religious and folk beliefs become plausible, so do all manner of interaction between the imagined and the real: from human-experimenting reptilians and human-reptilian hybrids (like those Hollywood personalities and high-level Democrats that QAnons go on about) to time-traveling benevolent and malevolent forces, Pleiadians and other star people, and anything else that might pop out of anyone’s cognitive closet. All they need is the technology to “materialize” and “dematerialize” in and out of our reality. Lordy mama help us then.
Letter to a vaccine skeptic
Posted in Cultural politics, Science & society, tagged Anomalies, anti-vaccination movement, anti-vaxx, climate crisis, conspiracies, conspiracy culture, conspiracy theories, conspiratistics, conspiratology, COVID-19, emergency brake, Letters to..., pandemic politics, pandemic response, vaccine science on April 12, 2021 | 1 Comment »
The following distills the essence of my responses to questions from a vaccine (and Covid) skeptical friend. I share it in case it’s useful for others (and because it updates a few things I’ve written before on the topic). I’m not an epidemiologist and the comments on the science of the pandemic are those of […]