2025/02/01 by Matthew Gravlin · 1 voice · 1 citation
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights #Indigenous Studies and Ecology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/03058298251319283
openalex publication_date 2025/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/12
This article emerges from dissatisfaction with Indigenous responses to the Anthropocene – a geological epoch that, after centuries of seeking industrial mastery over the Earth, now subordinates human interests to a world rendered alien and beyond control. Indigenous engagement with the Anthropocene and the associated post-, more-than-human and relational turns, typically affirms the entangled nature of reality that it foregrounds. This does not mount an objection to neoliberal capitalism, however, because the contemporary world order governs by invoking relational ontologies that are epitomised by Indigenous Peoples. I argue that the valorisation of indigeneity in critical theory and International Relations does not resolve Indigenous critiques of the Anthropocene as a western construct, it exacerbates if not renders them insufficient. In response to this, I seek to articulate a political theory of non-relation – a schematic model through which Indigenous Peoples might disguise themselves to the forces that expose and govern them in the Anthropocene.