Postcolonial Futures: Climate, Race, and the Yet-to-Come

[T]here is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism, since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters. Human mobility features centrally within the climate change imaginary. So it goes that if allowed to gain purchase on our world, climate change will unleash unprecedented migration and displacement. Elsewhere I have argued that within the rapidly growing discourse on migration and climate change we find an emerging racial script.2 In what follows, I add to this conversation by showing how the figure of the climate change migrant or climate refugee3 bears a strong affective resemblance to that of the monster. And monsters, as cultural theory reminds us, signify.4 Drawing from Michel Foucault (“Abnormal”) and Jane Anna Gordon and Lewis Gordon (“On Divine Warning”), my claim is that in its monstrousness the figure of the climate migrant or climate refugee signifies a coming racial future. That is, it generates a foreboding sense that the twin European fantasies of impermeability and containment have run their course,5 a future that ultimately threatens to dissolve the colonial/racial hierarchy in which a “white” European humanism is elevated above all other forms of difference. But if the first claim set out here is that the figure of the climate migrant designates a racial future by virtue of its monstrousness, the second is that efforts to govern the climate migrant, paradoxically, have little to do with governing “the racial Other” of climate change and everything to do with resuscitating European humanism amid its own unravelling. The argument unfolds in three parts. The figure of the climate migrant designates a particular kind of Other6 within the context of climate change. The first part of the argument asks whether postcolonial theory is adequate for coming to terms with the Other amid our current condition of pending environmental catastrophe, whether understood as climate change or the Anthropocene. The suggestion is that postcolonial methodology may not be up to the task or that it may need to be modified. The central claim is that while postcolonial methodology is predicated on distinguishing difference in the dialectical idiom of different from, the form of difference pertinent to climate change and migration is the yet-to-come. The second part of the argument builds an account in which the yet-to-come figure of the climate migrant or climate refugee is synonymous with the monstrous by virtue of its epistemological excess and ambiguity. The final stage of the argument then returns to the question of humanism. I argue that the figure of the climate migrant is deployed as a biopolitical tactic of humanist and thus racial renewal in response to the crisis of climate change. Is postcolonial methodology best suited to addressing questions of difference in light of the wider futurist turn animating much current cultural theory? By “futurist turn,” I have in mind, for example, the recent outpouring of work across the humanities and social sciences on climate change and the concept of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene concept is significant for numerous reasons. As Dipesh Chakrabarty reminds us in his essay, “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change,” it is the moment when the human becomes fully manifest in earth history and, paradoxically, the moment in which we lose our ability to comprehend this effect (14). I take from this that the primary historical significance of the Anthropocene lies in the way its proponents give finality to the blurring of Nature and the Human, even while we know this distinction to have been an artifact of European imperial power. But the Anthropocene is additionally significant because by calling the category of the Human into question it forces critical race theory to reconsider how racial power is traced in the Anthropocene if by racial power we refer to the myriad ways groups of people are designated outside the category of the Human. In other words, the Anthropocene demands that we historicize dehumanization at the very moment in which the Human becomes posthuman, when the Human is no longer understood as internal to itself (if it ever was) but is instead being re-imagined as a reflection of the totality of the Earth system. And yet it would seem that attempts to theorize the Anthropocene have mostly elided the thematic of race. Thus, as we approach the Anthropocene analytically a healthy dose of caution seems warranted insofar as among the more prevalent themes emerging within discussions about the Anthropocene are those of long-term human survival, extinction, sexual difference, social reproduction, and, by implication, the kind of human that will endure the coming epoch. And these are all important themes because lurking within them we find the disturbing notion of survivability, disturbing because contained within survivability is the political question of which bodies will come to be designated as best suited for survival. Or Foucault’s terms survivability designates a form of power that “consists in making live and letting die” (“Society Must be Defended” 247) Inasmuch as these are racial questions, the analytical challenge before us is whether postcolonial theory is capable of deciphering the politics of otherness contained within them, and, additionally, whether postcolonial theory is able to contribute toward a progressive politics capable of responding to the Anthropocene crisis alongside its resurgent contemporary fascisms. It goes without saying that postcolonial thought is indebted to Edward Said (Orientalism; Culture and Imperialism). We find this indebtedness, for example, in Derek Gregory’s groundbreaking postcolonial geography, The Colonial Present, as well as across the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Above all it is to Said’s thought that many have turned in order to clarify how the figure of otherness constitutes notions of the West, modernity, subjectivity, humanism, and knowledge formation, alongside numerous other concepts. Testimony to its significance, the relationality that Said exposed through a method of literary criticism is now a core feature of contemporary critical geography, even while its adequacy is now being called into question.7 But it is the method and the philosophy of difference informing postcolonial critique that I wish to put in question here. We might call this postcolonial methodology, a methodology widely understood and practiced as the act of excavating the colonial past in the present, exposing how what passes as after colonial continues to reproduce colonial relations in the present. This method is encapsulated in Said’s idea that “there is no just way in which the past can be quarantined from the present. Past and present inform each other and, [ … ] each co-exists with the other” (Culture and Imperialism 4). For Said, “these traces of the past in the present point the way to a study of histories … created by empire” (20). We should read these statements as Said’s call for effective history, a methodology that reaches into the past through the study of texts to reveal the Other in text, to help us locate the Other’s repetition in the present, but above all to help us clarify how the repetition of the Other in the present is central to subjecthood, or indeed being human. But through its reliance on a method that traces the colonial past in the present, exposing the primordial Other in the text, postcolonial theory appears inadequate to the task of building an analytics and politics of otherness specific to the future-conditional grammar of climate change. Caught in a methodological space that seeks to trace the colonial past in the present, the postcolonial theoretical gaze seems wedded to the past as the exclusive time-space through which difference comes to be understood. My proposition is that such a past-oriented gaze seems habituated to characterizing otherness as the repetition of historically produced caricatures that take the axiomatic form of “different from.” But such an account of difference seems inadequate for grappling with the future-conditional form of difference found in the figure of the yet-to-come. This ghostly figure recurs throughout the discourse on climate change in the figure of the climate change migrant about which I will say more below. My argument is not that we ought to dispense with postcolonial theory for its failure to trace the impress of the yet-to-come on the present. Instead, I want to suggest that we consider augmenting postcolonial methodology such that it better attends to the ways in which the yet-to-come configures colonial imaginaries, both past and present. The yet-to-come can be promissory; it is precisely recognition of an open malleable future that fuels the ethics and politics of invention now so prevalent across the social sciences and humanities. But more often than not, and this is Derrida’s point, the yet-to-come is monstrous, excessive, and unknowable.8 In this sense, the yet-to-come Other exceeds prediction; its arrival can never be known in advance. But the yet-to-come can also inaugurate new forms of categorization, domestication, and colonization. And so while I share Mark Jackson’s optimism that a refreshed postcolonial geography might find promise in the compositional possibilities afforded by concepts like ontogenesis and ontologies of immanence (85), concepts which are themselves future-oriented, my only caution is that phenomena such as ontogenesis, emergence, and immanence, are also geographical phenomena over and through which power is exercised.9 Indeed, this is precisely the point argued by numerous biopolitical theorists10: biopower is precisely a power that regularizes ontogenesis, not least the capitalist fantasy in which ontogenesis and capital merge once and for all. And so in this sense, I wish to suggest that a revitalized postcolonial theory would do well to address itself to the ways in which the yet-to-come is itself colonized but also to the ways in which the subaltern becomes central to its colonization. Such a revitalized postcolonial theory might, for example, try to expose how difference, or rather how the movement of difference, or otherness, is forged in relation to ontogenetic processes. The movement of difference I have in mind is a few steps removed from forms of dialectical difference that are self-evident within postcolonial theory: Self-Other, inside/outside, White/Black, colonizer/colonized. The concept of difference I have in mind is instead a kind of pre-differentiated difference, or subaltern in the making, one not yet fully formed and, as such, one that functions as an epistemological limit, or the excess of comprehension. To illustrate, let me turn now to the relation between climate change and human migration. Much has been said about this relation,11 some of which I develop below. Let me start, however, with the observation that the figure of the climate change migrant bears striking resemblance to the figure of the monster. Jane Anna Gordon and Lewis Gordon tell us that disasters, far from natural, amount to the “materialisation of values on the world,” “symptoms of other phenomena that we would do well to ponder,” and monsters, they tell us, are the survivors of disaster. And more than simply survivors, monsters are, what they call, the sign continua of the disaster, the lingering effects of disaster that admonish us to query the values that materialized the disaster. As such, monsters are made to signify the symptoms of disaster. Markers of and marked by disaster, monsters emerge from disastrous landscapes as a warning: disasters are the manifestation of a crisis of values, a crisis forged in the crucible of historical time, a man-made crisis that is a crisis of social relations in which humanity comes to know itself only through the oppressions and violent repudiations of its perceived others. Gordon and Gordon remind us, however, that we often fail to heed the warnings that monsters signify. Instead, monsters come to be blamed for own collective inability to respond to the crisis of values from which monsters arise. We have here something akin to the racist practice of confining Black bodies to the present by casting them outside “both culture and historicality” (Gilroy 32). In doing so, monsters are blamed for their failure to read the warning signs of disaster properly. For example, Black bodies criminalized in the wake Hurricane Katrina are blamed for their “monstrous” condition, even while this perceived condition owes more to a collective failure to address the crisis of race in America. Thus, for Gordon and Gordon, the monster is both signifier of and signified by the crisis—and here we see the monster’s ambivalence beginning to take shape. But what makes monsters so? For this I suggest we turn to Michel Foucault’s 1974–75 College de France lectures published under the title Abnormal. Here Foucault tells us that “The frame of reference of the human monster is, of course, the law” (55). He adds “what defines a monster is the fact that its existence and form is not only a violation of the laws of society but also a violation of the laws of nature” (55–56). Foucault continues: And yet, although it is a breach of the law [ … ] the monster does not bring about a response from the It be said that the monster’s power and its to are to the fact that it the law while it with nothing to [ … ] the monster the law by its very it the response of something different from the law It the will for and or and For Foucault then the human monster is marked by an ambivalence which also to as its The monster’s difference is to comprehend so one is to into all the little internal of the monster in order to its difference. We the monster in a of The of Foucault’s monster can also to be understood as to the figure of the climate change for the monster’s as both outside the law but also of response from the Indeed, it is precisely this that defines the of the figure of the climate migrant or climate As Jane a on climate and human “the fact that is no of what it to be an environmental or makes it to about and In other words, the is to respond to the migration or effects of climate it into law and thus to a figure that exceeds all comprehension. This of across the discourse on climate change and migration. for the now within the the on Climate which is that as a climate change migrant or climate refugee is The argument here is that because migration from a set of social and is thus to or the of climate migration and its are to as And yet to for of the climate internal are to be and instead come up the like the the climate change migrant designates an excess of and as with Derrida’s monstrous so, the climate migrant is a figure of as its form is the And here we find the ambiguity. As a figure on the of coming into the climate migrant is both and an well in claim that with the methodological and the is a of and will migration in the to Here the of climate change and migration is in its To clarify the and thus monstrous of the climate change migrant, consider by way of an the of the are said to be with that are said to be in their of the is found in the fantasy in what and for the for call the of a space said to and in which the effects of climate and migration from to in this fantasy space can one find an climate migrant yet by the of the racial in that space is a climate migrant, on the of As such the of the is an ontogenetic a of in which the of that the climate change migrant, is not yet fully This is the ontogenetic subaltern in Here in the ontogenetic space of the climate change migrant, we might to trace a new in the making, a that is specific to the Anthropocene. We might call this a rather than a dialectical a form is the yet-to-come rather than the more dialectical form of different from that I which is the self-evident form of difference synonymous with postcolonial methodology and In that the of is and of for in turn specific to and in this sense, race is precisely the category that for the and of social relations to be the of a this climate change and the Anthropocene is that both phenomena a kind of coming To the that the about climate change and migration is ultimately one about this in the of the of to that this is also with new ways to bodies in a way that them the of order in light of the racist fantasy of a coming Here I would simply point out that in the discourse on climate change and which migration as a response to climate the now being are those of and And as one might are now for of and and by migration. My is that we need to the of and as an even racial To this of the let me to the question of postcolonial postcolonial methodology the Other in the by exposing the that their through to a colonial we might call dialectical postcolonial methodology to its gaze toward the future in order to become better to the subaltern in formation, difference, or the figure of the yet-to-come. Let me now to the question of humanism and the as Dipesh Chakrabarty is the question that now be at the of progressive political postcolonial for is a the point for which is “the need to the human on as a and as a political as a of and as of to both the forces of itself one such and open to the of human (14). For my I with and I would only add that it is that we locate this within the movement now across the although even here I we should to the way the “white” is through of colonial In out what I such a humanism might which we might call humanism, from on let me with what I it should not My is first that we humanism that itself in the of climate or climate As I have been we find here nothing but a climate a that appears to me to be about the indeed the yet-to-come precisely as a of up a humanism with the present moment in which humanism is now so called into the future in this I would to a biopolitical tactic of racial that a hierarchy survival. such humanism in my ought to to or in much the way a humanism would historicize race. And here I wish to a with on these what as a new in the humanities and social one that of and by and for and with the of makes a strong and for a humanism in the humanist of and other Black argument is that the Anthropocene what a humanism that would take from and Black and its critique of in But in making this a claim I his humanist in the act of on the of which for are a sign of to the arrival of climate That his new humanism in the act of is what it to be human amid the of contemporary migration in the is a I however, that this humanism can be to the of climate our yet-to-come Other without at the to the colonial and racial histories that its is, of course, more than of but it is the and of the climate refugee to which I take precisely my Indeed, I would argue that the climate refugee is a category precisely to up European humanism on the of its and here I would suggest this is precisely how the figure even if only in humanism. climate change designates a kind of future of of or in the the figure of the climate migrant is precisely in order to the But I would even one by saying that is here a kind of epistemological that when we people climate or climate as we the humanity of these people into a political into a space of monstrous ambiguity. And the here is precisely a humanism that its own historical of one that Gordon and Gordon us is all in the history of the monster. Let me then with my own on how we might approach the question of humanism as an of progressive political I we need to expose the at in the of climate change migration and climate The in not doing so is that the discourse on climate change and migration becomes a for us to climate change as a of which is all the more the and in contemporary political culture in and America. In this a progressive politics of climate change would do well to climate change and migration not as a to be or as an of but as a racial relation to be I we need to expose the of this relation and trace the kind of political work it does across all of and cultural This seems an important in order to fully the by this relation and to develop an account of the way capital itself is to the crisis of the Anthropocene through a new and emerging progressive humanism would to precisely these emerging form this response might take from as in his In such a context it is that we “the task of building and capable for And to this the relation between migration and environmental change a to such a And by I not a or of the world, but a of the world, one in which the of in for and defines that which is understood to be of us might well live our own difference understood in terms of history, geography, and so But the I have in mind is not of a of numerous and as on a by the and the of the It is instead of the way that own in the is forged in relation to all other and It is, the to that and our sense of in the is from the world, but of of social relations … on a far than what we to for that moment as the whether that be a or a or even a in this sense, is a moment of with the of relations that And for this sense of as a for of not as from the of capital but as for in a by the of and such a progressive sense of is important in the context of a of migration and environmental change. we into the that the each of us can be made to the wider Instead, by the of and the about climate change and migration from a with or I would argue for a humanism that and collective and as a condition of what it to live and being human in the