Critique and the black horizon: questioning the move ‘beyond’ the human/nature divide in international relations

Chipato, F. and Chandler, D. (2023) Critique and the black horizon: questioning the move ‘beyond’ the human/nature divide in international relations. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, (doi: 10.1080/09557571.2023.2231090) (Early Online Publication)

Abstract

In the contemporary moment of the Anthropocene there appears to be a growing consensus on the need to move beyond the key modernist binary, the Human/Nature divide. We draw out a shared understanding at work in International Relations across critical approaches in Science and Technology Studies (STS), new materialist, and material feminist fields, as well as critical Indigenous, decolonial and pluriversal thought. This is an understanding that seeks to go beyond the limits of modern epistemological and ontological assumptions of human exceptionalism. These approaches seek to rework both sides of the Human/Nature divide: to reconstitute the Human as a knowing, responsive and relational subject, no longer tainted by hierarchies of race and coloniality; while, redistributing agential capacities of responsivity, care and relation beyond the Human. Drawing from work across the broad field of critical Black studies, we flag up the limitations of these entangled, relational posthuman and more-than-human imaginaries, which can easily reproduce hierarchies of subordination and control. We suggest that another approach to the Human/Nature divide is possible, a critical perspective we call the Black Horizon, focused upon the task of deconstruction: an approach which emphasises difference rather than identity, negation rather than addition, critique rather than affirmation.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Early Online Publication
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Chipato, Dr Farai
• Authors: Chipato, F., and Chandler, D.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Journal Name: Cambridge Review of International Affairs
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 0955-7571
• ISSN (Online): 1474-449X
• Published Online: 10 July 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Author
• First Published: First published in Cambridge Review of International Affairs 2023
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License