Malcom Ferdinand - A Decolonial Ecology

The publication of this series is supported by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Series editors: Natalia Brizuela, Victoria Collis-Buthelezi and Leticia Sabsay

Leonor Arfuch, Memory and Autobiography

Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia, Seven Essays on Populism

Aimé Césaire, Resolutely Black

Bolívar Echeverría, Modernity and “Whiteness”

Malcom Ferdinand, Decolonial Ecology

Celso Furtado, The Myth of Economic Development

Eduardo Grüner, The Haitian Revolution

Karima Lazali, Colonia Trauma

María Pia López, Not One Less

Pablo Oyarzun, Doing Justice

Néstor Perlongher, Plebeian Prose

Bento Prado Jr., Error, Illusion, Madness

Nelly Richard, Eruptions of Memory

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa

Tendayi Sithole, The Black Register

Maboula Soumahoro, Black is the Journey, Africana the Name

Malcom Ferdinand

Translated by Anthony Paul Smith

polity

Originally published in French as Une écologie décoloniale: Penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribéen © Editions du Seuil, 2019

This English edition © Polity Press, 2022

Excerpt from A Tempest by Aimé Césaire, translated by Richard Miller. Copyright © 1969 by Editions du Seuil. Copyright English translation © 1985 by Richard Miller. Published by Theatre Communications Group. Used by permission of Theatre Communications Group.

Excerpt from Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon. English translation copyright © 2008 by Richard Philcox. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4622-0 hardback

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4623-7 paperback

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Part I The Modern Tempest

Conquérant

Planter

Nègre

La Tempête

Part II Noah’s Ark

Noé

Chasseur

Paraíso

Cavendish

Wildfire

Part III The Slave Ship

Espérance

Escape

Wanderer

Gaïa

Part IV The World-Ship

Rencontre

Corpo Santo e Almas

Baleine

Justice

Epilogue

Soleil d’Afrique

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

Figure 2William 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 S éraphique 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.

For my mother Nadiège

and my father Alex

To the struggles of the shipwrecked

and the ecological battles for a common world

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.