Deadline: 12/1/2024
Contact: John W Maerhofer, Assistant Teaching Pro9fessor, Rutgers University
Email: jmaerhofer@gmail.com

Panel CFP for the ASLE 2025 Biennial Conference, Collective Atmospheres: Air, Intimacy, and Inequality, July 8-11, 2025 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

This panel intends to explore the relationship between contemporary imperial projects of genocide and the prospects for ecological struggle. On the one hand, the genocide unfolding in Gaza reflects a long trajectory of systemic violence committed under the banner of the US-Zionist led state of exception doctrine, beginning in 1948 and extending to the present. Such violence is predicated on ecocide and the forced expropriation of land and other resources. At the same time, the annihilation of Palestinians also reflects what some might argue is a new chapter in genocidal ideology, one that reveals a more sinister mechanics of violence and its potential impacts on the biosphere.

Accordingly, as Stephanie Barca emphasizes, cultivating transformative spaces for ecological activism requires a reframing of the story of how imperialism utilizes violence as a necessary tool for restoring value-form domination during periods of deepened crisis. Considering the visible intensification of original accumulation and its effects, this panel offers a forum for self-critical reflecting on the narratives we teach and write about ecosystemic integrity and its attendant perils and disasters. Presentations will be geared toward fostering an intersectional consciousness about the conditions underlying climate catastrophe and genocidal accumulation, focusing not only on the differential impacts of disaster on various communities, classes, and regions, but also on the role Marxist ecological thought plays in inspiring genuinely transformative action.

Please send 300-word abstracts and a short bio to jmaerhofer@gmail.com by 12/1/2024.

Posted on August 26, 2024