Identités en jeu, séduction en scène - Baptiste Lanaspèze

Baptiste Lanaspèze, philosopher and publisher, in a talk followed by a discussion with arts theorist Mathieu Garling

Baptiste Lanaspèze

Ecology, a white people thing?

Looking at the sociology of EELV or the climate movement, the matter seems obvious: ecology would be a luxury of the white middle class; organic food, a thing for the bobos; eco-anxiety, a problem for those who have nothing else to worry about. In response, a decolonial ecology is taking shape on different foundations, from the Global South and non-white social groups.

This Manichean narrative, on either side of the racial divide, nevertheless has a blind spot: the organic links between the environmentalist movement and the decolonial movement. The environmentalist movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s within the counterculture, which was itself immersed in pacifist, anticolonialist and Pan-Africanist movements from which it cannot be separated. Moreover, a philosophically coherent ecology that seeks to move beyond the hierarchical human/nature dualism cannot ignore that this is the keystone of the colonial edifice, which conditions other hierarchical dualisms such as white/indigenous and civilized/savage.

In Guérir de l’Occident, an essay woven with autobiographical elements, I look back at how ecological thought has been for me – since the creation of Wildproject publishing house in 2008 – the common thread in a withdrawal from the white world, a gradual emancipation from its universalist fantasies, its intimidation and its seductions.