Carlos Tornel
Biographic Data
| ID | 376697 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carlos Tornel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carlos |
| FAMILY NAME | Tornel |
| SIGNATURE | TORNEL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6338-066X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 211 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Extractive masculinity and the war on subsistence: Thinking with Ariel Salleh’s DeColonize EcoModernism
Engaging Ariel Salleh’s theorization of the Androcene as a patriarchal–colonial–capitalist ‘debt matrix,’ this commentary article on DeColonize EcoModernism! argues that contemporary ecomodernism—liberal and socialist—extends a war on subsistence. We introduce the concept of extractive masculinity as the affective-political engine of the Androcene. The concept organizes desire, authority, and legitimacy around the conversion of living relations i…
From vanishing to terricide: Political ontology and the colonial negation of worlds
This commentary responds to Özge Can Doğmuş's account of vanishing lakes and the ontology of absence by arguing that “vanishing” should not be understood as a sudden event, but as the perceptible threshold of a longer colonial, capitalist, and extractivist organization of loss. Drawing on Lacanian critical political thought and political ontology, this commentary shows how socioecological destruction is disavowed: known, yet rendered governable t…
On failure: The persistence of (ecological) modernism
This Forum Article addresses the current schism within and between degrowth and Marxist (eco)modernism. At its root is whether emancipation requires completing modernity through state-led industrial transformation or composting modernity through anti-authoritarian, place-based autonomy. Identifying a strand of leftist ecomodernism, we engage recent works by Jason Hickel and Max Ajl, who advance socialist modernist and communist agendas. After sum…
De-modernizing energy justice: Ivan Illich and the struggles for pluriversal territorialities in the Global South
Decolonization without development? The war on subsistence and the limits of decoloniality
Decrecimientos situados: Perspectivas críticas desde América Latina y el Sur Global
Este artículo, en formato de diálogo, recoge un intercambio colectivo entre académicxs y activistas del Sur Global que explora críticamente el concepto de decrecimiento desde América Latina. Frente a un debate dominado por perspectivas del Norte Global, se propone un enfoque situado que reconozca la pluralidad de experiencias y resistencias en los territorios latinoamericanos. Se plantea que el decrecimiento no puede ser entendido como una receta…
Energy and Colonialism: How Energy Policy Is Driving Capitalism and Extractivism in Mexico
This article examines how Mexico’s expansion of energy and low-carbon infrastructure under the López Obrador administration (2018–2024) reinforces colonial and extractive dynamics under the guise of sovereignty and post-neoliberalism. Rather than disrupting extractivism, state-led energy policies have intensified territorial dispossession, militarization, and socioecological degradation through the expansion of both fossil fuel and low-carbon pro…
Eurocentrism, Development, and the Challenge of Decolonization: Notes on the 2025 Degrowth Conference
Contribuciones de Gustavo Esteva a la ecología política: Del pluralismo radical al diálogo de vivires
This article revisits Gustavo Esteva’s contributions to political ecology and the decolonial turn, highlighting his critique of development and his notion of autonomy beyond capitalist modernity. Although internationally recognized, his work in areas such as postdevelopment, radical autonomy, and the end of capitalism has been only partially integrated into political ecology in the Global South. His contributions—closely tied to Zapatismo and to …
Sharpening the needle: A critical engagement with the call to ‘discipline energy justice’
This commentary critically engages Festus Boamah's proposal to ‘discipline’ energy justice scholarship, examining its implications for critical, decolonial, and pluriversal approaches. While acknowledging the value of conceptual clarity and grounded analysis, it challenges Boamah's framing of critical energy justice as universalist or impractical. Drawing on grounded normativity, post-development, and pluriversal thinking, it argues that these pe…
Development as terracide: Sacrifice zones and extractivism as state policy in Mexico
Weaving a rhizomatic pluriverse: Allin kawsay , the Crianza Mutua Networks, and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives
Drawing on experiences from Abya Yala/Latin America, and based on the Andean philosophy and praxes of Allin kawsay, this article proposes and introduces the idea of a 'rhizomatic pluriverse' as a horizontal structure of dialogue(s) between multiple and diverse pluriversal alternatives. The article draws on the experiences of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and the Crianza Mutua Networks as points of reference to argue for the possibility of b…
Was postdevelopment too much? Autonomous struggle, academic coloniality & the radical roots of the pluriverse
Where did postdevelopment thought go? Was its anti-development message too much for academia? While acknowledging some overlap between postdevelopment and mainstream academic decolonial thought, we argue that postdevelopment, and its conceptualization of the pluriverse directly challenges extractivism, statism, and capitalism or, in a word, development. After discussing aspects of mainstream decolonial thought, seven main points of postdevelopmen…
The political ecologies of "green" extractivism(s): An introduction
What is so-called 'green' extractivism and where did it come from? The introduction to this Special Section examines the origins and implications of the concept, linking it to a long history of exploitation, dispossession and (neo)colonialism under the guise of green-washing notions such as 'sustainable development.' Conducting an in-depth literature review, we first revisit the concept of extractivism, exploring its origins, development and anal…
El desarrollo como terricidio: Zonas de sacrificio y extractivismo como política de Es-tado en México
La declaración de Zonas Económicas Especiales (zee) de México en 2017 marcó un cambio territorial con amplias implicaciones geopolíticas. Surgiendo de reformas neoliberales iniciadas en 1992, el establecimiento de zee representa la culminación de tres décadas durante las cuales las políticas estatales mexicanas priorizaron cada vez más la extracción de hidrocarburos y minerales. La proliferación de zee, o 'polos de desarrollo', subraya una expans…
Territorializar el derecho a la energía. Otros horizontes de la transición energética
Durante la última década, el proceso de transición energética ha sido ampliamente cuestionado por su apego a las estructuras hegemónicas de la modernidad capitalista. Diversos movimientos han identificado las maneras en que la infraestructura y la gobernanza de los sistemas energéticos, así sean fósiles o «bajos en carbono», perpetúan formas de violencia y estructuras coloniales. Esto ha impulsado a algunos de estos movimientos a codificar un der…
Pluralizing energy justice? Towards cultivating an unruly, autonomous and insurrectionary research agenda
An insurrection in energy research: A dialogue between Carlos Tornel and Alexander Dunlap on energy justice, capitalist warfare & decolonization
This interview discusses energy justice, the university, academic research and autonomous politics. This dialogue expresses concern with energy, but also environmental, justice scholarship and movements. This entails the failure to adequately connect the continuity between (neo)colonialism, capitalism and statism in theory and action, which simultaneously subordinates anti-authoritarian and autonomous politics to liberal academic frameworks (e.g.…
Decolonizing the political economy of energy transitions: New energy spaces and pluriversal politics in Mexico
This paper draws on Critical Political Economy (CPE) to explore energy transitions in Mexico. It analyzes struggles over competing energy visions from a decolonial, spatial and post-development perspective. The article frames energy transformations as more than a move away from fossil fuels: They encompass a radical overhaul of universalized Eurocentric capitalist modernity that call the state’s role as both facilitator and driver of the energy t…
Energy justice beyond identity: Planting anarchist seeds towards total liberation
Energy justice in the context of green extractivism: Perpetuating ontological and epistemological violence in the Yucatan Peninsula
As the world gets warmer, the deployment of low-carbon infrastructure is seen as the cornerstone to mitigate the pressures created by fossil capitalism, prompting questions over what constitutes a 'just' energy transition. This has simultaneously broadened the discussion over what are the social justice and colonial legacies embedded in the infrastructural, technological and material composition of energy systems. Drawing on semi-structured inter…
Seeking common ground: On possible dialogues between Marxisms and Political Ontology
On design, development and the axes of pluriversal politics: An interview with Arturo Escobar
This interview deals with Arturo Escobar’s recent work on Pluriversal Politics and the Pluriversal transitions. The discussion is divided into three main themes: the first section addresses Escobar’s reflections on the contemporary civilizational crisis and the politics of the pluriverse; the second section engages with the contents of the Theme Issue, particularly those aspects of the transition that include radical relationality, the transition…
Decolonizing energy justice from the ground up: Political ecology, ontology, and energy landscapes
The purpose of the paper is to expand the concept of energy justice by considering the struggles over coloniality and cultural identity in the Global South and their interactions with the spatial and historical development of energy systems and the ongoing forms of energy transitions. The article argues that the current conceptualizations of energy justice cannot be separated from the politics of incumbency as, without a decolonial critique, they…
Comunalizando a Marx: La Aportación De Lo Común Y Lo Convivial Desde Gustavo Esteva Y Jaime Martínez Luna
Em novembro de 2020, a Universidad de la Tierra organizou um painel intitulado "Comunalidade e vida concreta". Entre os participantes estava o intelectual Zapotec Jaime Martínez Luna, que, em sua intervenção, disse: "Marx o diz claramente: os filósofos interpretam o mundo, o que está em causa é transformá-lo. Eu diria: nem um nem o outro. Trata-se de compartilhá-lo". Esta frase abre outro tipo de paradigma político, centrado na dimensão comunitár…
Decolonizing energy justice from the ground up: Political ecology, ontology, and energy landscapes
The purpose of the paper is to expand the concept of energy justice by considering the struggles over coloniality and cultural identity in the Global South and their interactions with the spatial and historical development of energy systems and the ongoing forms of energy transitions. The article argues that the current conceptualizations of energy justice cannot be separated from the politics of incumbency as, without a decolonial critique, they…
The political ecologies of "green" extractivism(s): An introduction
What is so-called 'green' extractivism and where did it come from? The introduction to this Special Section examines the origins and implications of the concept, linking it to a long history of exploitation, dispossession and (neo)colonialism under the guise of green-washing notions such as 'sustainable development.' Conducting an in-depth literature review, we first revisit the concept of extractivism, exploring its origins, development and anal…
Pluralizing energy justice? Towards cultivating an unruly, autonomous and insurrectionary research agenda
Was postdevelopment too much? Autonomous struggle, academic coloniality & the radical roots of the pluriverse
Where did postdevelopment thought go? Was its anti-development message too much for academia? While acknowledging some overlap between postdevelopment and mainstream academic decolonial thought, we argue that postdevelopment, and its conceptualization of the pluriverse directly challenges extractivism, statism, and capitalism or, in a word, development. After discussing aspects of mainstream decolonial thought, seven main points of postdevelopmen…
Energy justice in the context of green extractivism: Perpetuating ontological and epistemological violence in the Yucatan Peninsula
As the world gets warmer, the deployment of low-carbon infrastructure is seen as the cornerstone to mitigate the pressures created by fossil capitalism, prompting questions over what constitutes a 'just' energy transition. This has simultaneously broadened the discussion over what are the social justice and colonial legacies embedded in the infrastructural, technological and material composition of energy systems. Drawing on semi-structured inter…
Development as terracide: Sacrifice zones and extractivism as state policy in Mexico
Weaving a rhizomatic pluriverse: Allin kawsay , the Crianza Mutua Networks, and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives
Drawing on experiences from Abya Yala/Latin America, and based on the Andean philosophy and praxes of Allin kawsay, this article proposes and introduces the idea of a 'rhizomatic pluriverse' as a horizontal structure of dialogue(s) between multiple and diverse pluriversal alternatives. The article draws on the experiences of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and the Crianza Mutua Networks as points of reference to argue for the possibility of b…
Decolonizing the political economy of energy transitions: New energy spaces and pluriversal politics in Mexico
This paper draws on Critical Political Economy (CPE) to explore energy transitions in Mexico. It analyzes struggles over competing energy visions from a decolonial, spatial and post-development perspective. The article frames energy transformations as more than a move away from fossil fuels: They encompass a radical overhaul of universalized Eurocentric capitalist modernity that call the state’s role as both facilitator and driver of the energy t…
An insurrection in energy research: A dialogue between Carlos Tornel and Alexander Dunlap on energy justice, capitalist warfare & decolonization
This interview discusses energy justice, the university, academic research and autonomous politics. This dialogue expresses concern with energy, but also environmental, justice scholarship and movements. This entails the failure to adequately connect the continuity between (neo)colonialism, capitalism and statism in theory and action, which simultaneously subordinates anti-authoritarian and autonomous politics to liberal academic frameworks (e.g.…
Petro-populism and infrastructural energy landscapes: The case of Mexico’s Dos Bocas Refinery
In 2018, recently elected presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) promised the construction of a new refinery in Mexico. Arguing a lack of energy independence and the urgent need to ‘rescue’ petro-state giant PEMEX and the stateowned electricity company CFE from the mismanagement and neoliberal policies of previous administrations, the Dos Bocas Refinery (DBR) became one of the main flagship projects of AMLO’s administration sym…
On design, development and the axes of pluriversal politics: An interview with Arturo Escobar
This interview deals with Arturo Escobar’s recent work on Pluriversal Politics and the Pluriversal transitions. The discussion is divided into three main themes: the first section addresses Escobar’s reflections on the contemporary civilizational crisis and the politics of the pluriverse; the second section engages with the contents of the Theme Issue, particularly those aspects of the transition that include radical relationality, the transition…
Seeking common ground: On possible dialogues between Marxisms and Political Ontology
Energy justice beyond identity: Planting anarchist seeds towards total liberation
A Research Agenda for Climate Justice
Petro-populism and infrastructural energy landscapes: The case of Mexico’s Dos Bocas Refinery
In 2018, recently elected presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) promised the construction of a new refinery in Mexico. Arguing a lack of energy independence and the urgent need to ‘rescue’ petro-state giant PEMEX and the stateowned electricity company CFE from the mismanagement and neoliberal policies of previous administrations, the Dos Bocas Refinery (DBR) became one of the main flagship projects of AMLO’s administration sym…
Seeking common ground: On possible dialogues between Marxisms and Political Ontology
On design, development and the axes of pluriversal politics: An interview with Arturo Escobar
This interview deals with Arturo Escobar’s recent work on Pluriversal Politics and the Pluriversal transitions. The discussion is divided into three main themes: the first section addresses Escobar’s reflections on the contemporary civilizational crisis and the politics of the pluriverse; the second section engages with the contents of the Theme Issue, particularly those aspects of the transition that include radical relationality, the transition…
Decolonizing energy justice from the ground up: Political ecology, ontology, and energy landscapes
The purpose of the paper is to expand the concept of energy justice by considering the struggles over coloniality and cultural identity in the Global South and their interactions with the spatial and historical development of energy systems and the ongoing forms of energy transitions. The article argues that the current conceptualizations of energy justice cannot be separated from the politics of incumbency as, without a decolonial critique, they…
Comunalizando a Marx: La Aportación De Lo Común Y Lo Convivial Desde Gustavo Esteva Y Jaime Martínez Luna
Em novembro de 2020, a Universidad de la Tierra organizou um painel intitulado "Comunalidade e vida concreta". Entre os participantes estava o intelectual Zapotec Jaime Martínez Luna, que, em sua intervenção, disse: "Marx o diz claramente: os filósofos interpretam o mundo, o que está em causa é transformá-lo. Eu diria: nem um nem o outro. Trata-se de compartilhá-lo". Esta frase abre outro tipo de paradigma político, centrado na dimensão comunitár…
Territorializar el derecho a la energía. Otros horizontes de la transición energética
Durante la última década, el proceso de transición energética ha sido ampliamente cuestionado por su apego a las estructuras hegemónicas de la modernidad capitalista. Diversos movimientos han identificado las maneras en que la infraestructura y la gobernanza de los sistemas energéticos, así sean fósiles o «bajos en carbono», perpetúan formas de violencia y estructuras coloniales. Esto ha impulsado a algunos de estos movimientos a codificar un der…
Pluralizing energy justice? Towards cultivating an unruly, autonomous and insurrectionary research agenda
An insurrection in energy research: A dialogue between Carlos Tornel and Alexander Dunlap on energy justice, capitalist warfare & decolonization
This interview discusses energy justice, the university, academic research and autonomous politics. This dialogue expresses concern with energy, but also environmental, justice scholarship and movements. This entails the failure to adequately connect the continuity between (neo)colonialism, capitalism and statism in theory and action, which simultaneously subordinates anti-authoritarian and autonomous politics to liberal academic frameworks (e.g.…
Decolonizing the political economy of energy transitions: New energy spaces and pluriversal politics in Mexico
This paper draws on Critical Political Economy (CPE) to explore energy transitions in Mexico. It analyzes struggles over competing energy visions from a decolonial, spatial and post-development perspective. The article frames energy transformations as more than a move away from fossil fuels: They encompass a radical overhaul of universalized Eurocentric capitalist modernity that call the state’s role as both facilitator and driver of the energy t…
Energy justice beyond identity: Planting anarchist seeds towards total liberation
Energy justice in the context of green extractivism: Perpetuating ontological and epistemological violence in the Yucatan Peninsula
As the world gets warmer, the deployment of low-carbon infrastructure is seen as the cornerstone to mitigate the pressures created by fossil capitalism, prompting questions over what constitutes a 'just' energy transition. This has simultaneously broadened the discussion over what are the social justice and colonial legacies embedded in the infrastructural, technological and material composition of energy systems. Drawing on semi-structured inter…
Development as terracide: Sacrifice zones and extractivism as state policy in Mexico
Weaving a rhizomatic pluriverse: Allin kawsay , the Crianza Mutua Networks, and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives
Drawing on experiences from Abya Yala/Latin America, and based on the Andean philosophy and praxes of Allin kawsay, this article proposes and introduces the idea of a 'rhizomatic pluriverse' as a horizontal structure of dialogue(s) between multiple and diverse pluriversal alternatives. The article draws on the experiences of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and the Crianza Mutua Networks as points of reference to argue for the possibility of b…
Was postdevelopment too much? Autonomous struggle, academic coloniality & the radical roots of the pluriverse
Where did postdevelopment thought go? Was its anti-development message too much for academia? While acknowledging some overlap between postdevelopment and mainstream academic decolonial thought, we argue that postdevelopment, and its conceptualization of the pluriverse directly challenges extractivism, statism, and capitalism or, in a word, development. After discussing aspects of mainstream decolonial thought, seven main points of postdevelopmen…
The political ecologies of "green" extractivism(s): An introduction
What is so-called 'green' extractivism and where did it come from? The introduction to this Special Section examines the origins and implications of the concept, linking it to a long history of exploitation, dispossession and (neo)colonialism under the guise of green-washing notions such as 'sustainable development.' Conducting an in-depth literature review, we first revisit the concept of extractivism, exploring its origins, development and anal…
El desarrollo como terricidio: Zonas de sacrificio y extractivismo como política de Es-tado en México
La declaración de Zonas Económicas Especiales (zee) de México en 2017 marcó un cambio territorial con amplias implicaciones geopolíticas. Surgiendo de reformas neoliberales iniciadas en 1992, el establecimiento de zee representa la culminación de tres décadas durante las cuales las políticas estatales mexicanas priorizaron cada vez más la extracción de hidrocarburos y minerales. La proliferación de zee, o 'polos de desarrollo', subraya una expans…
Decrecimientos situados: Perspectivas críticas desde América Latina y el Sur Global
Este artículo, en formato de diálogo, recoge un intercambio colectivo entre académicxs y activistas del Sur Global que explora críticamente el concepto de decrecimiento desde América Latina. Frente a un debate dominado por perspectivas del Norte Global, se propone un enfoque situado que reconozca la pluralidad de experiencias y resistencias en los territorios latinoamericanos. Se plantea que el decrecimiento no puede ser entendido como una receta…
Energy and Colonialism: How Energy Policy Is Driving Capitalism and Extractivism in Mexico
This article examines how Mexico’s expansion of energy and low-carbon infrastructure under the López Obrador administration (2018–2024) reinforces colonial and extractive dynamics under the guise of sovereignty and post-neoliberalism. Rather than disrupting extractivism, state-led energy policies have intensified territorial dispossession, militarization, and socioecological degradation through the expansion of both fossil fuel and low-carbon pro…
Eurocentrism, Development, and the Challenge of Decolonization: Notes on the 2025 Degrowth Conference
Contribuciones de Gustavo Esteva a la ecología política: Del pluralismo radical al diálogo de vivires
This article revisits Gustavo Esteva’s contributions to political ecology and the decolonial turn, highlighting his critique of development and his notion of autonomy beyond capitalist modernity. Although internationally recognized, his work in areas such as postdevelopment, radical autonomy, and the end of capitalism has been only partially integrated into political ecology in the Global South. His contributions—closely tied to Zapatismo and to …
Sharpening the needle: A critical engagement with the call to ‘discipline energy justice’
This commentary critically engages Festus Boamah's proposal to ‘discipline’ energy justice scholarship, examining its implications for critical, decolonial, and pluriversal approaches. While acknowledging the value of conceptual clarity and grounded analysis, it challenges Boamah's framing of critical energy justice as universalist or impractical. Drawing on grounded normativity, post-development, and pluriversal thinking, it argues that these pe…
Extractive masculinity and the war on subsistence: Thinking with Ariel Salleh’s DeColonize EcoModernism
Engaging Ariel Salleh’s theorization of the Androcene as a patriarchal–colonial–capitalist ‘debt matrix,’ this commentary article on DeColonize EcoModernism! argues that contemporary ecomodernism—liberal and socialist—extends a war on subsistence. We introduce the concept of extractive masculinity as the affective-political engine of the Androcene. The concept organizes desire, authority, and legitimacy around the conversion of living relations i…
From vanishing to terricide: Political ontology and the colonial negation of worlds
This commentary responds to Özge Can Doğmuş's account of vanishing lakes and the ontology of absence by arguing that “vanishing” should not be understood as a sudden event, but as the perceptible threshold of a longer colonial, capitalist, and extractivist organization of loss. Drawing on Lacanian critical political thought and political ontology, this commentary shows how socioecological destruction is disavowed: known, yet rendered governable t…
On failure: The persistence of (ecological) modernism
This Forum Article addresses the current schism within and between degrowth and Marxist (eco)modernism. At its root is whether emancipation requires completing modernity through state-led industrial transformation or composting modernity through anti-authoritarian, place-based autonomy. Identifying a strand of leftist ecomodernism, we engage recent works by Jason Hickel and Max Ajl, who advance socialist modernist and communist agendas. After sum…
Political science (16 works) · Politics (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Mining and Resource Management (8 works) · Economic Justice (7 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (7 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (6 works)