1st Edition

Race in the Anthropocene Coloniality, Disavowal and the Black Horizon

By Farai Chipato, David Chandler Copyright 2025
    214 Pages
    by Routledge

    Race in the Anthropocene provides a radical new perspective on the importance of race and coloniality in the Anthropocene. It forwards the Black Horizon as a critical lens which places at its heart the importance of ontological concerns fundamental to problematising the violences and exclusions of the antiblack world.

    At present, multiple new approaches are emerging through the shared problem field of Anthropocene thought and policy, offering to save not just the world, but the practice of governance, the business of Big Data, the progress of development and the dream of peace. It is against this backdrop that Race in the Anthropocene unsettles not just the already shaky foundations of modernity, but also the affirmative visions of its critics, by directing our gaze to how race and coloniality are baked into the grounding concepts of international thought.

    This book is essential reading for students of international relations, particularly those interested in international politics, security, and development. It is also of relevance for those interested in contemporary social, political, and environmental debates and policy practices.

    Acknowledgements

     

    Chapter 1

    Introduction: Posthumanism and Disavowal

     

    Chapter 2

    The Black Horizon in Context

     

    Chapter 3

    Another Approach to Decoloniality is Possible

     

    Chapter 4

    How Race Matters

     

    Chapter 5

    Unsettling Peace

     

    Chapter 6

    Unlearning Development

     

    Chapter 7

    Race as a Technology

     

    Chapter 8

    Conclusion: Metapolitics and the Black Horizon

     

    References

     

    Index

    Biography

    Farai Chipato is Lecturer in Black Geographies at the University of Glasgow.

    David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster. He edits Anthropocenes: Human, Inhuman, Posthuman and has published widely on the Anthropocene, political ontology and international theory.

    Race in the Anthropocene calls for the radical transformation of the world that slaveholding and colonialism have made. With rigor and theoretical power, Chipato and Chandler provide a much-needed riposte against the racial fantasies of posthumanism and the facile forms of decolonization that too often grip the philosophical summations of this world. While critical thought can seem beholden to the past, Race in the Anthropocene clears the ground for a praxis of invention.

    --P. Khalil Saucier, Professor of Critical Black Studies, Bucknell University, PA, USA