In this episode, we are joined by Ajay Chaudhary to discuss his book The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World and the political, economic, and affective sites of exhaustion reproduced through climate degradation. We examine the expanding colonial relations of what Chaudhary calls the “extractive circuit” between the both the Global South and Global North as well as widening segments of the working classes in the Global North. We dispel fantasies of both the hope that climate change will automatically unify a coherent politics for a just transition and the fear of a human apocalypse. Given this, what would a left-wing climate realism look like as opposed to burgeoning forms of right-wing climate realism that aims to extract and protect as much wealth as possible for a vanishingly small minority? Much of our conversation concerns the role of temporality in our politics and the imperative not to wait for the future to solve our climate crises. Turns out waiting for Greta Thunberg to solve all our problems is a poor strategy!
leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil
thebrooklyninstitute.com | @materialist_jew
References:
Ajay Singh Chaudhary, “We’re Not in This Together,” The Baffler (2020) https://thebaffler.com/salvos/were-not-in-this-together-chaudhary
Ajay Singh Chaudhary, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World (London: Repeater Books, 2024).
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
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51 Teaser | What is Utopia? Part III. Hermeneutics and Utopia: From Hans-Georg Gadamer to Ernst Bloch (Part 2)
50 | Hermeneutics and Utopia: From Hans-Georg Gadamer to Ernst Bloch (Part 1)
49 | Coming to Terms with Human Finitude w/ Prof. Martin Hägglund
48 | Gillian Rose: Speculative Thinking and Post-Kantian Sociology with James Callahan
47 | Guy Debord and the Society of the Spectacle
46 Teaser | What is Dialectics? Part V: Adorno's Negative Dialectics
45 | On Solidarity and Conflict with Nathan DuFord
44 | Karl Kautsky's Cooperative Commonwealth
43 | Transindividuality and Marxism with Jason Read
42 | Going Beyond the Pleasure Principle with Freud
41 | James Boggs and the Problem of Rights under Capitalism
40 Teaser | What is Liberalism? Part I. John Locke's Second Treatise of Government
39 | Lukács: Social Totality and the Commodity Form
38 | Liberal Democracy in Crisis: Carl Schmitt and the Present
37 Teaser | What’s the ‘Structural’ in ‘Structural Injustice’?: Iris Marion Young and Political Philosophy
36 | What is Utopia? Part II. Plato's Republic (with Owen Alldritt)
35 | Moral Luck and Pedagogy (with Aaron Rabinowitz)
34 Teaser | What is Dialectics? Part IV: Dialectic of Enlightenment with Adorno and Horkheimer
33 | (Un)Learning How to Do Politics with Hannah Arendt
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