Course description:

To the extent that the civilizational crisis worsens, the decolonization of the analyses and practices that struggle to make a political turn to overcome the climate emergency becomes necessary.

In this context the global energy crisis and climate emergency create new geographies that are situated within territories dominated by pre-existing (and in many cases, intensifying) colonial and racist practices of extraction and segregation. In the contemporary era, these neo-apartheid politico-financial regimes are exacerbated by increasing energy (and materials) scarcity (e.g. in Europe, due to war in Ukraine) alongside the effects of the climate emergency. Recently, recognition has emerged that hegemonic narratives of energy transition and climate change policies produce climate apartheids that not only criminalise the demographic sectors of humanity that consume minimum energy and have minor responsibility for climate change, but also serve to further harm them. These landscapes of injustice, entrenched by legacies of racial capitalism, produce new politico-financial practices that are increasingly referred to as energy colonialism by climate activists, deploying this lexicon to challenge the colonial corporatization of energy transition. In addition to this, climate change policies are also considered to be producing climate apartheids where subaltern populations suffer the effects of climate emergency while privileged groups are always trying to escape from these problems through racist dispossession and segregation. In this course, we apply a decolonial approach to analyse the new geographies of climate apartheid and energy colonialism, and the conditions of racist dispossession that renew historical colonial injustices. This counter narrative is essential to properly describe the real aims and effects of the climate change policies and the corporate energy transition as well as to imagine alternative visions that will need to be built on the basis of the politics of liberation.

Who Should Apply:

• The seminar is open to advanced undergraduate, graduate students, post-doctoral candidates, junior faculty, professionals with MA, teachers, activists, etc. 

• Preference will be given to students based on the following criteria:

• High school and university teachers.

• Undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline (social sciences and the humanities, professional schools, interested in decolonizing the climate emergency, anti-racism and the politics of liberation;

• Post-doctoral candidates already engaged or wanting to engage in climate emergency, anti-racism or the politics of liberation;

• Junior Faculty from all over the world;

• Activists committed to climate change, anti-racism, decoloniality;

• Professionals with MA degrees already working or interested in working in education, government institutions, NGOs, corporations;

• High school and university teachers.

Program Structure:

The program is a lecture intensive one with additional optional dialogical space for students to raise issues and process their thoughts with the instructors and with each other.

1. Formal classes with discussions by the program’s designated lecturers will be conducted five days a week from 16 to 19 pm.
2. There are two 2 hours optional informal sessions with faculty (one per week from 10 am to 12 am) where all available faculty will meet informally with participants for an open-ended discussion.
3. Faculty will have designated an inevitably limited office hours to meet with students individually on a first come basis. 
4. A month in advance, registered participants in the seminar will receive the reading material for the seminar.
5. Much learning takes place in conversations outside the formal program structure and often continues deep into the morning. 

Program Content:

How do we understand the relationship between colonialism and climate emergency? What are the implications of green colonialism and energy colonialism?

How can we experience alternatives from the politics of liberation?

What is racist dispossession in a century of increasing extractivism and climate-apartheid? What are anti-racist responses?

What relevance does racism have in the civilizational crisis?