Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures critically interrogates the discursive framing of extinctions and how they relate to the systems that bring about biocultural loss. The chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine approaches to ecological and social extinction and resurgence from a variety of fields, including environmental studies, literary studies, political science, and philosophy. Grounding their scholarship in decolonial, Indigenous, and counter-hegemonic frameworks, the contributors advocate for shifting the discursive focus from ruin to regeneration.
Chapter One: Decolonize, ReIndigenize: Planetary Crisis, Biocultural Diversity, Indigenous Resurgence and Land Rematriation
Chapter Two: “The Word for Bringing Bodies Back from Water:” Black Oceanic Ecopoetics and the Re-Imagining of Extinction
Chapter Three: Philosophizing Extinction: On the Loss of World, and the Possibility of Rebirth through Languages of the Sea
Chapter Four: What We Talk About When We Talk About Extinction
Chapter Five: Rat-Fall: Time and Taxa in the Colorado River Delta, c. 1900
Chapter Six: Contesting Extinction through a Praxis of Language Reclamation
Suzanne M. McCullagh is an assistant professor of philosophy at Athabasca University. Luis I. Prádanos is a professor of Hispanic contemporary studies at Miami University. Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan is visiting assistant professor of Italian Studies at Miami University. Catherine Wagner is a professor of English at Miami University.
"This dynamic book is an exciting and timely contribution to urgent conversations in the environmental humanities and postcolonial and ethnic studies about extinction. Rather than consider extinction as a singular or future event, this interdisciplinary collection explores temporally expansive settler-colonial extinctions in the plural. Foregrounding Indigenous, Black, and decolonial responses, the contributors trace a praxis of contestation to capital's eradicating drive that is rooted in critical relationality."
– Carolyn Fornoff, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
"This volume is a crucial addition to the growing field of extinction studies. The editors and contributors elucidate how contesting extinction means careful attention to both loss and revitalization: It means finding new ways to write about animals, plants, waters, and places; it means dismantling settler colonialism and contributing to Indigenous resurgences; it means practicing new ways of grieving and loving together in a non-extractivist manner. These are powerful essays against erasure and towards regenerative biocultural futures."
– Joshua Schuster, Western University