Decolonizing posthumanist geographies

Abstract

This paper engages my struggles to craft geo-graphs or earth writings that also further broaden political goals of decolonizing the discipline of geography. To this end, I address a body of literature roughly termed ‘posthumanism’ because it offers powerful tools to identify and critique dualist constructions of nature and culture that work to uphold Eurocentric knowledge and the colonial present. However, I am discomforted by the ways in which geographical engagements with posthumanism tend to reproduce colonial ways of knowing and being by enacting universalizing claims and, consequently, further subordinating other ontologies. Building from this discomfort, I elaborate a critique of geographical-posthumanist engagements. Taking direction from Indigenous and decolonial theorizing, the paper identifies two Eurocentric performances common in posthumanist geographies and analyzes their implications. I then conclude with some thoughts about steps to decolonize geo-graphs. To this end, I take up learnings offered by the Zapatistas. My goal is to foster geographical engagements open to conversing with and walking alongside other epistemic worlds.