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

Show notes

#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.