Race Re(con)figurations through Speculative & Environmental Futurity

Abstract

This article argues that climate change prediction and projection of dystopic futures have affected processes of race re(con)figuration through the logic of development and disaster risk management. It argues for an epistemological shift in our understanding of race that passes through space, and most importantly, time, and situates the analysis of race within chronobiopolitics that is used as a framework to explain the rationales and mechanisms of evolution, development, and adaptation. In this context, the article attempts to delineate the shift from endless progress to sustainability and eventually adaptation. By analysing the rhetoric and images in specific reports, videos, action plans, and frameworks related to climate change predictions and weather-related disasters in Africa, it attempts to show how the fictioning and preemption of predatory futures creates a fertile ground for resilience building through the production of a racial(ising) affect that favours the proliferation of market dystopias.