Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence

#6 What makes people sick? Racial capitalism and the politics of suffocation

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#6 What makes people sick? Racial Capitalism and the Politics of Suffocation, with Françoise Vergès and Edna Bonhomme, A Podcast by HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin).

The current environmental crises are rooted in racial capitalist exploitation of both humans and nature. The basic elements of life such as water and fire are violently turned into ‘cheap’ commodities and weaponised against unprivileged communities. “I can’t breathe” , echoed by Black communities around the planet, speaks to a politics of suffocation that works both through social oppression and environmental devastation. Activist and theorist Françoise Vergès engages in a discussion with writer and science historian Edna Bonhomme around the feminist and decolonial aspects of the question of what makes people sick, the racially differentiated exposition to environmental risks, the relation between cleaning and care, and the revolutionary potential of dreaming.

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Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence
#Too little, too late
A look at the state of our planet gives every reason to worry – and to think. The speed and extent of the environmental disasters looming over us with climate change, species extinction, extreme weather events, pollution and overuse of land, air and water, etc. are unprecedented and as real as they are incomprehensible. The slow violence of these transformations has accelerated to a staccato of events. The series of lectures and discussions at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, "Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence", initiated by Magarita Tsomou (HAU) and curated by Maximilian Haas, looks at the escalating and indeed apocalyptic discourses of the coming catastrophes against the background of ever-growing ecological crises and debates ways and aims of political action. While we can still discuss these issues in a relatively safe and sound environment, in the global South and elsewhere the ecologies of human existence are already being destroyed by rising sea levels, hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires. Yet it is primarily the way of life and production of the industrialized West, based on the destructive exploitation of resources, human and other, that has led to this situation, from which it is still quite well shielded today. The ecological question is therefore closely linked to economies of extractivism, racial capitalism, patriarchal oppression and colonial exploitation, and thus cannot do without critically addressing them. For these reasons, this discussion series is not intended to be an expert debate on ‘nature’, but to take an intersectional perspective on ecological issues and make economic and cultural contexts explicit.

“Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence” is a lecture and discussion series by HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. With kind support by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Initiated by Margarita Tsomou (HAU Hebbel am Ufer) and curated by Maximilian Haas.
Podcast Production: Fritz Schlüter. Speaker: Orlando de Boeyken. Jingle: Sonja Deffner

by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Margarita Tsomou, Maximilian Haas

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