Another instance of a black feminist thought experiment, this talk takes on the conversation about the anthropocene and moves towards an image of ‘the world’ that does not begin with the human. Towards an elemental (instead of a universal) basis for considerations of justice, it experiments with an imaging of ‘the world’ intended to expose and dissolve the effects of how organic and the historic sustain colonial and racial violence as state-capital’s key governing modalities in the global present. Taking heat as an example, the paper offers a reading of climate change that tries to explore its relation to the colonial-jurdico mechanisms that facilitate the kind of extraction capital finds necessary for securing its desired margins of profit.

Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva’s academic writings and artistic practice address the ethical questions of the global present and target the metaphysical and ontoepistemological dimensions of modern thought. Currently, she is an Associate Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute (the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice) at the University of British Columbia. Before joining UBC, she was an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, at the University of California, San Diego and, from 2010 to 2015, she held the inaugural chair in Ethics, at the School of Business and Management and the directorship of the Centre for Ethics and Politics, at Queen Mary University of London. Her research areas include Critical Racial and Ethnic Studies, Feminist Theory, Critical Legal Theory, Political Theory, Moral Philosophy, Postcolonial Studies, and Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Denise Ferriera da Silva’s talk is a co-presentation between the Daniels Faculty's Master of Visual Studies Proseminar and Mercer Union’s fORUM lecture series.