Is Racism an Environmental Threat?

Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne

"In his usual grippingly lucid prose, Ghassan Hage gives us here an insightful critique of the intrinsic connection between racism and speciesism in their most 'ungovernable' contemporary expressions, namely, Islamophobia and the planetary ecological catastrophe. He thereby exposes the politico–metaphysical foundations of Western colonialism alongside with the colonialist – in the broadest and deepest sense – foundations of Western metaphysics, particularly in its capitalist expression with its relentless need of so-called primitive accumulation. By showing, with the help of anthropological classics such as Mauss and Lévy-Bruhl, that our own anthropotechnics of 'generalized domestication' (one of the most innovative concepts of this book) is by no means the only human way of ecologizing – of making ourselves at home in the world – Hage offers us a nuanced, subtle analysis of the metonymic and metaphorical wolves that haunt the obsessive 'mono-realist' project of capitalism, whose glaring failure is now forcing us to pay increased attention to the counter-hegemonic modes of existence (re)emerging through the widening cracks in the ecocidal and racist–colonial nomos of Modernity."—Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The National Museum of Brazil"[This fine book speaks] to the deep healing in people's relations with each other and with the earth that's needed if we are to meaningfully address the damage being done to both our social and natural environments. [Hage] sheds persuasive light on why action on climate change is stalled at the level of talk, by linking it to racism. To him this signals the (largely white male) elites projecting their fear of loss of power onto the racialized 'other' to avoid coming to terms with their need for power through domination, which underlies the environmental crisis in the first place. […] Anyone interested in helping to break this impasse by better understanding it will find this book invaluable."—Watershed Sentinel"Hage has written a rich and profoundly thought-provoking and original monograph on the intertwining of anti-racism and environmentalism."Politics, Religion & Ideology

• Introduction 1. Islamophobia and the becoming-wolf of the Muslim other 2. Islamophobia and the dynamics of ecological and colonial over-exploitaion3. The elementary structures of generalized domestication Conclusion: Negotiating the wolf