Abstract
The international politics of climate change invokes the imagination of various potential global futures, ranging from techno-optimist visions of ecological modernisation to apocalyptic nightmares of climate chaos. This article argues that most dominant framings of the future in climate policy imaginaries tend to be depoliticised and linear visions of universal, homogenous time, with little spatio-temporal or ecological plurality. This article aims to convince IR scholars of climate politics that Africanfuturist climate fiction novels can contribute to the decolonisation of climate politics through radically different socio-climatic imaginaries to those that dominate mainstream imaginations of climate futures. The Africanfuturist climate fiction novels of authors such as Nnedi Okorafor, Lauren Beukes and Doris Lessing imagine different spaces, temporalities, ecologies and politics. Reading them as climate theory, they offer the possibility of a more decolonised climate politics, in which issues of land and climate justice, loss and damage, extractive political economies and the racialised and gendered violence of capitalism are central.
Highlights
Climate change is altering how the future is imagined. This presents a dual challenge to the discipline of International Relations (IR), in which climate change remains a somewhat peripheral albeit growing concern, and explicit conceptual interrogations of Corresponding author: Carl Death, University of Manchester, Politics, Arthur Lewis Building, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
The implications of reading Africanfuturist climate fiction as climate theory include the possibility of a more decolonised climate politics, one that focuses on issues of land and climate justice, loss and damage, extractive political economies and the racialised and gendered violence of contemporary capitalism
Such an attempt is a crucial element of ‘ongoing efforts to destabilise the modern-colonial episteme and is intimately connected with the possibility and imagination of radical social transformation, of the shape and time of futurity’.158
Summary
Citation for published version (APA): Death, C. Climate theory: Decolonising imaginations of global futures. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 50(2), 430-455. Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on Manchester Research Explorer is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Proof version this may differ from the final Published version. It is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Explorer are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. 1 0 6 3 9 2 6 MIL0010.1177/03058298211063926Millennium – Journal of International StudiesDeath research-article2021
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