As global rates of plant and animal extinctions mount, anxieties about the future of the earth’s ecosystems are fueling ever more ambitious efforts at conservation and efforts to control earth's systems. In their recently published book Revenant Ecologies, Audra Mitchell argues that these responses not only ignore but also magnify powerful forms of structural violence like colonialism, racism, genocide, extractivism, ableism, and heteronormativity, ultimately contributing to the destruction of unique life forms and ecosystems. Critiquing the Western discourse of global extinction and biodiversity through the lens of diverse Indigenous philosophies and other marginalized knowledge systems, Revenant Ecologies promotes new ways of articulating the ethical enormity of global extinction. Mitchell offers an alternative framework—(bio)plurality—that focuses on nurturing unique, irreplaceable worlds, relations, and ecosystems, aiming to transform global ecological–political relations, including through processes of land return and critically confronting discourses on “human extinction.”
Building on the main arguments made in Revenant Ecologies, this talk picks up on one of its key themes: unconditionality. Drawing on insights from disability justice and abolitionist thought, Mitchell asks: how can we develop unconditional relationships with earth?
Audra Mitchell is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at the Balsillie School of International Affairs & Wilfrid Laurier University, which are located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and Neutral/Attawandaron peoples. Audra’s body of research examines how interlocking forms of violence and patterns of harm shape multi-life-form communities and ecosystems. In particular, it focuses on how globally-marginalized human and nonhuman communities survive, resist, heal and create alternative worlds in the face of eliminative power. Audra’s most recent book is Revenant Ecologies: Confronting the Violence of Extinction and Conservation (University of Minnesota Press 2024).