Planetary Portals

A speculative spatial theory for mapping the colonial afterlives of extraction. Planetary Portals investigates the colonial afterlives of extraction, travelling from the Rhodes estate in East London to the Kimberley diamond fields of southern Africa. Guided by an ethics of environmental restitution and repair, the book examines colonialism as an ongoing planetary condition that radically transforms material states of being. The idea of the “portal” is deployed as a speculative, archival and creative method for mapping spatial and temporal patterns of colonial environments, while troubling these sightlines to glimpse at alternative planetary futures. Through “speculative nonfictions” Planetary Portals presents a new theory for apprehending the environmental harms of the colonial present while tacitly reimagining the structures of environmental life within the long shadows of continuous extraction.