This public lecture is organized by the ERC Rewilding the Anthropocene in Cooperation with the reseach hub Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) and the Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
Animals and Global Racial Capitalism in an Age of Misanthropy
Juno Salazar Parreñas (Cornell University)
Abstract:
Desensitization to human suffering and the hardening of nation-state borders in the contemporary era suggests that this current age is one of misanthropy whereby the category of the human as a person deserving rights and ethical responsibilities has lost meaning. Racial capitalism, originally coined by Black Marxist theorist Cedric Robinson the 1980s, has emerged of late to help make sense of global inequalities through long and ongoing histories of colonialism, genocide, and enslavement. In a world where some animals have more value than some people, how might racial capitalism come to matter in the lives of animals? In South Africa, ex-circus lions from Latin America, Middle East, and Eastern Europe have been repatriated to white-owned properties. In Malaysia, wildlife centers harbor displaced orangutans and their operations depend on both foreign commercialized volunteering efforts and local low-wage labor. In Singapore from the 1970s until the 2010s, tropical polar bears became emblems of the island nation-state’s rapid development and emergence in the global economy as an “Asian Tiger”. Comparing these sites offers a way to think about race, racism, and capitalism by focusing on animals.
Date:
July 4, 2024
16:00 – 17:30 (CEST)
Venue:
Global South Studies Center
University of Cologne
Room 3.03
Classen-Kappelmann-Strasse 24, third floor,
50931 Köln
