Trickster carbon
Stories, Science, and Postcolonial Interventions for Climate Justice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4867432 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anita Girvan (0009-0007-3751-3167) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2017-09-27 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Political Ecology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1073-0451 • E-ISSN: 1073-0451 |
| Publisher | University of Arizona (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2458/v24i1.20981 |
| OpenAlex | W2758865537 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 7 |
This article proposes the idea of the trickster figure as a way to account for the shifting material, and cultural properties of carbon in the cultural politics of climate change. Combining scientific understandings of allotropy in chemistry – describing the property of certain elements to manifest in various highly diverse forms – and the insights of Caribbean trickster stories, trickster carbon enables novel understandings of the multiple workings and effects of carbon as a material and cultural element. Rather than granting 'carbon' a singular seemingly-scientific meaning or reducing carbon to a singular problem that master human agents can ever definitively trap or sequester, this notion allows us to view carbon's unique ability to shape-shift in a variety of contexts and for myriad agendas. Understanding carbon in this way provides more than simply a theoretical or imaginative 'romp'; rather, this lens enables both a critique of the ways in which carbon is mobilized in practice as a profit-generating tool of colonial capture and also a generative opening for understanding carbon's potential as a connector to more transformative associations and postcolonial politics. As an ambivalent and paradoxical figure, trickster carbon offers a powerful method of cultural way-finding through the urgent concern of climate change
Aesthetics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Trickster · Anthropology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance · Law · Philosophy
Imagination and transformations to sustainable and just futures
Re-territorializing Climate Governance
Coal, climate and change
Disrupting the opportunity narrative
Coal, Climate Justice, and the Cultural Politics of Energy Transition
Rewilding and repeopling in Scotland
Topographies of coal mining dissent
Defining Climate Finance Justice
| Citations per year | 1.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |