An insurrection in energy research: a dialogue between Carlos Tornel and Alexander Dunlap on energy justice, capitalist warfare & decolonization

Abstract

ABSTRACT This interview discusses energy justice, the university, academic research and autonomous politics. This dialogue expresses concern with energy, but also environmental, justice scholarship and movements. This entails the failure to adequately connect the continuity between (neo)colonialism, capitalism and statism in theory and action, which simultaneously subordinates anti-authoritarian and autonomous politics to liberal academic frameworks (e.g. recognition, procedure, distribution). Extractive development is not adequately challenged by energy justice, meanwhile academic decolonial theory tend to ignore combative struggles and discussion in the Global South or North. Academic decolonial theory remains selective about struggles, simplifies them and/or remains detached from societies-in-movement, which results in tokenizing and ignoring the complexities of autonomous and insurrectionary struggle. Discussing a range of intense topics, this dialogue suggests the need to advance decolonial and anarchist critique of energy and environmental justice scholarship, suggesting the need to move away from justice framings and towards autonomous political conceptions.