Research Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam

Imagining energy futures beyond colonial continuation

The enduring material effects that colonial extractivism has had on human and more-than-human life, and on geopolitical formations, continue to shape imaginaries of future energy security in new ways. This chapter interrogates this context through an examination of (de)colonial energy futures through empirically grounded investigation. By bracketing ‘(de‐)’ in ‘decolonial’, we wish to stress both how continuities of colonial imaginings of energies and landscapes unfold and how they could be imagined otherwise in paying attention to local struggles and alternatives. The colonial legacies in perceiving the environments we inhabit as spaces to be conquered or as ‘standing reserves’ (Heidegger 1977, see Waltorp et al. forthcoming) resonate into the present, particularly in the way such treatments have become central to capitalist modes of extraction and expansion. This, however, is only one of many possible framings, and it interacts in unforeseen ways with alternative ecological imaginings of landscapes as relational forces and energies – from below the earth’s surface, to water and ice and into the air.

Publication Year

2023

Citation

Waltorp, K., Dale, R. F., Fonck, M., & du Plessis, P. (2023). Imagining energy futures beyond colonial continuation. In S. Abram, K. Waltorp, N. Ortar, & S. Pink (Eds.), Energy futures: anthropocene challenges, emerging technologies and everyday life (pp. 169-214). Berlin: De Gruyter.

DOI

10.1515/9783110745641-006
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