Wounded relational worlds

Destruction and resilience of multispecies relationality in the age of climate change

Abstract

In this article we engage with four experimental ethnographies (Blaser, 2010; Lyons, 2020; Miller, 2019; and Gordillo 2014) that build on multispecies approaches for the analysis of what we call ‘wounded relational worlds’ in Latin America. These are worlds in which human and more-than-human relations have been significantly reshaped, broken, or disrupted by colonization and capitalist extractivism(s). Despite this, wounded relational worlds have the capacity to emerge from the ashes, rebuild on rubble, create new knowledge from destruction and use the remnants of capitalist violence as compost for the cultivation of life. Thus, we establish a dialogue with these ethnographies to analyze the diverse forms of relationality through which these wounded worlds are created, the types of knowledge that they produce, and the politics and tactics of action that they generate vis-à-vis climate and socio-environmental disturbances.