A Decolonial Ecology. Malcom Ferdinand

Part IV The World-Ship

       Rencontre

       Corpo Santo e Almas

       Baleine

       Justice

       Epilogue

       Soleil d’Afrique

Illustrations

Figure 1 Joseph Mallord William Turner, Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On, 1840.

      Figure 2 William Clark, “Cutting the Sugar Cane,” in Ten Views in the Island of Antigua (London: Thomas Clay, 1823).

      Figure 3 Detail from René Lhermitte, Plan, Profile and Layout of the Ship Marie Séraphique of Nantes, c. 1770.

      Figure 4 The cyclones Katia, Irma and José, 8th September 2017, © NOAA satellites, GOES-16.

      Figure 5 Thomas Moran, Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia, 1861–2.

      Figure 6 Soil erosion in Haiti, which maroons towards the sea, 2012. Photo © Malcom Ferdinand.

      Figure 7 Banana plantation in Martinique, 2017. Photo © Malcom Ferdinand.

      Figure 8 Anse Cafard Memorial (Mémorial de l’anse Cafard) in Martinique, sculpture by Laurent Valère, 1998. Photo © Malcom Ferdinand.

      Figure 9 Jason deCaires Taylor, Vicissitudes, 2007, © Jason deCaires Taylor. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2021. Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor.

Figure 10 Albert Mangonès, Statue of the Unknown Maroon (Statue du Marron inconnu) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1968. Photo © Marie Bodin.

      Figure 11 Hector Charpentier, Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery (Mémorial de l’abolition de l’esclavage), Prêcheur, Martinique. Photo © David Almandin.

Dedication

       For my mother Nadiège

       and my father Alex

       To the struggles of the shipwrecked

       and the ecological battles for a common world

Acknowledgments

If writing is a solitary work, these pages are full of the generous inspiration of companions in search of a world-ship. I would like to thank Christophe Bonneuil for welcoming the French edition of this book into Seuil’s “Anthropocène” collection, for his reading advice, and for his enthusiasm for this project. A big thank you to the team at Éditions du Seuil who made this book possible. I would also like to warmly thank the entire team at Polity for providing a welcoming atmosphere for this English translation. A special thank you to Natalia Brizuela and Elise Heslinga, who supported the project from the beginning, and to Anthony Paul Smith for the great care, ingenuity and dedication he showed in the translation of the book, turning this process into a joyful encounter. Thank you to Meghan Skiles and Gerry Regan, librarians at La Salle University’s Connelly Library, who helped track down and scan many of the English translations of the works referenced here. Based on my doctoral thesis, this book owes so much to my late thesis director Étienne Tassin, to his encouragement-rivers, and to his painting of a cosmopolitan horizon for the world. Thank you to the LCSP team at the University of Paris-Diderot and the members of my thesis committee, Catherine Larrère, Bruno Villalba, Émilie Hache, Justin Daniel, and Myriam Cottias, for their encouragement and crucial support after the thesis. Thank you to the Collectivité territoriale Martinique for its support of my thesis and this book project, as well as the Institut des humanités, sciences et sociétés (IHSS) for its support of the French edition by awarding me the Robert Mankin thesis prize for interdisciplinary research.

      In the writing and post-thesis journey, I was fortunate to receive various forms of encouragement from colleagues and friends. Thanks to Pierre Charbonnier, Audrey Célestine and Silyane Larcher for opening up possible routes. Thanks to Gert Oostindie, Rosemarijn Hofte, Wouter Veenendaal, Stacey Mac Donald, Sanne Rotmeijer, Jessica Roitman and the whole team of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies for their hospitality within the framework of a postdoctoral fellowship. Thanks to Nathalie Jas, Catherine Cavalin, and the members of the IRISSO whose welcome made it possible for me to prepare this book in agreeable conditions. Thanks to the fellow thinkers whose discussions, criticisms, and re-readings enriched this project: Axelle Ébodé, Yves Mintoogue, Pauline Vermeren, Odonel Pierre-Louis, Jean Waddimir, Jephté Camil, Kasia Mika, Adler Camilus, Margaux Le Donné, Laurence Marty, Gratias Klegui, Fabania Ex-Souza, Sarah Fila-Bakabadio, Kémi Apovo, Trilce Laske, Alizé Berthé, Grettel Navas, Raphaël Lauro, Sonny Joseph, Sada Mire, Angus Martin, Marie Bodin. Thanks to the collective of l’Archipel des devenirs for the philosophical practice of utopia and the utopian accounts of the world. Thank you to the many colleagues encountered in colloquia (they will know who they are), whose discussions have generously nourished this work. Thanks also to the environmental thinkers who initiated these reflections long before me. My disagreements with some of them are nothing more than a mark of respect. Thank you to the staff of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, whose smiles, handshakes, and sympathy pleasantly accompanied my long days. Thank you to friends for their precious companionship: Rudy, Jacques, Fred, Marie-George, Morgane, Mathieu, Régis, Hassan, Ludivine, Sarah, Benjamin, Luce, Davy, Domi, Jean-No, Gaëlle, Christelle, Olivier, Yannick, David, Wilhem, Cédric, and many others. Thank you to the late Lila Chouli, early decolonial ecologist. Thank you Carolin. Thanks to all the Caribbean ecologists, and especially those from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, and Puerto Rico, whom I met during my thesis, and whose struggles for Mother-Earth encouraged me to follow this path.

In a modern world that has constantly reminded me of the inferiority of those with whom I share a Black skin, discovering that you are worthy of love, gifted with words, and capable of thinking is an incommensurable task. Alongside the poets, philosophers, activists, and artists who have guided our Maroon nights and have saved us from infinite bitterness, it was first the fruit of my family that taught me to love and to fight. Love and Fight. Thank you Malik for opening up the literary paths of the world. Thank you Youri, Sonny, Wally, Marvin, Papa Jojo, Isambert Duridveau, Tonton Joseph, Nathalie, Vanessa, Loïc, Tatie Carole, Nicolas, Laurence, Tatie Fofo, Johanne, Sandra & co. Thank you to my brother Jonathan Ferdinand, who left us far too soon, for showing me the power and intelligence of sensitivity. Finally, thank you to my father, Alex Ferdinand, for his volcanic-tchimbé rèd support and to my mother, Nadiège Noël, for her oceanic support and her victorious light over the world.

Foreword

      Malcom Ferdinand’s astute analyses in Decolonial Ecology moved me to reflect in myriad ways on many of my own core ideas and life experiences over the decades. I found myself thinking that this is a book I wish I could have read years ago, especially when I was attempting to grasp the interrelationalities of gender, race, and class. And even as I thought about the many ways his theoretical and methodological approach might have advanced our thinking then, I also recognized how perfectly his conceptualizations illuminate the frameworks we need for both philosophical and popular understandings of our planetary conditions today.

      Whoever recognizes how entangled we are in the chaos of contemporary racial capitalism with its heteropatriarchal contours, and whoever is attempting to imagine emancipatory futures in ways that do not privilege a single component of the crisis, will greatly benefit