The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives

2017 | Gender Studies

In The Extractive Zone Macarena Gomez-Barris traces the political, aesthetic, and performative practices that emerge in opposition to the ruinous effects of extractive capital. The work of Indigenous activists, intellectuals, and artists in spaces Gomez-Barris labels extractive zones--majority indigenous regions in South America noted for their biodiversity and long history of exploitative natural resource extraction--resist and refuse the terms of racial capital and the continued legacies of colonialism. Extending decolonial theory with race, sexuality, and critical Indigenous studies, Gomez-Barris develops new vocabularies for alternative forms of social and political life. Gomez-Barris shows how from Colombia to southern Chile artists like filmmaker Huichaqueo Perez and visual artist Carolina Caycedo formulate decolonial aesthetics. She also examines the decolonizing politics of a Bolivian anarcho-feminist collective and a coalition in eastern Ecuador that protects the region from oil drilling. In so doing, Gomez-Barris reveals the continued presence of colonial logics and locates emergent modes of living beyond the boundaries of destructive extractive capital.

Macarena Gomez-Barris (Author)