The “Intersectional Ecologies” working group aims to investigate the intersections between race, gender, and alternative ecological futures. Positioned at the crossroad between academic research and spatial practice, the group studies the role of Western technical rationality in producing and maintaining racist, heteropatriarchal, and ecocidal forms of oppression. Within “sustainable” development, narratives of “resilience,” and growth paradigms, practices of hygienism, eco-modernism, and green neocolonialism have offered technological fixes to environmental destruction while funneling capital accumulation.
We challenge these approaches through the lens of critical race theory, Indigenous perspectives, radical and political-ecological feminism, queer ecological critique, and epistemologies from the South that foster relational and non-extractive ways of being in the world. We are interested in learning from place-based forms of resistance to neoliberal logic that include Indigenous claims to ancestral lands, queer collectives building rural communities, urban anarchist enclaves, and Black, feminist, and disability activists.
By studying these practices, we take the difficulty of radical representation in academia seriously: we expose the enabling conditions for our discussions in a first-class university and encourage alternative learning structures. Our intellectual foundation includes collective discussions and open-access publications to investigate alternative ecological futures in a way that refuses to silence race and gender.
