Description
Book SynopsisMimi Sheller delves into the ecological crises and reconstruction challenges affecting the entire Caribbean region, showing how vulnerability to ecological collapse and the quest for a "just recovery" in the Caribbean emerge from specific transnational political, economic, and cultural dynamics.
Trade Review“An accomplished and brilliant scholar, Mimi Sheller writes with imagination and insight, a deep theoretical sophistication, and an eye toward the configuration of new epistemic visions and approaches grounded in Caribbean realities. I can't think of any other analysis of the contemporary Haitian and Caribbean context quite like this important book.” -- Laurent Dubois, coauthor of * Freedom Roots: Histories from the Caribbean *
“In this timely and timeless book, Mimi Sheller offers a long overdue critical historical analysis of the contemporary state of infrastructure and climate change in the Caribbean at a time when its environmental vulnerabilities and dependencies could not be more apparent.
Island Futures is an outstanding and groundbreaking book set to provoke and sustain dialogues across disciplines and beyond.” -- Gina Athena Ulysse, author of * Because When God Is Too Busy: Haiti, Me, and the World *
"I wish all researchers of the Caribbean, but especially those recently drawn to the region seeking to find quick answers to their research questions, could read
Island Futures. In it they will find an excellent model to emulate how to ethically engage with a culture, place, and people without reproducing the coloniality of climate change. In addition, the book is recommended for journal and book editors who after reading how ethical research in the Caribbean can be conducted should be able to articulate similar ethical demands to their authors." -- Joaquín Villanueva * Journal of Latin American Geography *
"The significance of
Island Futures lies in the way the structure of each chapter, and the structure of the book as a whole, gradually reveal the uneven economies of racialized desire. . . . [Sheller] takes readers to the edge of an ethical aporia where our own decisions on how to engage with opacity and difference in White supremacist societies contribute to or foreclose alternative future-making projects." -- Kevin Grove * AAG Review of Books *
"
Island Futures is a work with a rich content, reflections and imaginaries on just recoveries from disaster colonialism and climate colonialism, and alternatives to development in the Anthropocene. . . . This book will be of great interest to Caribbean studies and disaster studies scholars, and to anyone interested in broadening their notions of what development is and what it should look like. Individual chapter could be useful as main or complementary readings in modules at the graduate or late bachelor levels." -- Gibrán Cruz-Martínez * Alternautas *
"
Island Futures is a fascinating, important book, one whose urgency and honesty will challenge a wide range of readers, including scholars in several disciplines and students well versed in Haitian and Caribbean studies." -- John Patrick Walsh * Journal of Haitian Studies *
"Island Futures is a vital provocation and contribution toward visions of sustainable and just futures. Sitting in productive dialogue with scholarly work in disaster and mobility studies, this timely book resonates with myriad disciplinary strands, such as Caribbean philosophy and human geographies. As a valuable addition to decolonizing literatures, this book is a 'must-read.'" -- Shiva S. Mohan * Small States & Territories *
Table of ContentsPreface: An Autobiography of My Mother ix
Acknowledgments xxvii
Introduction: Im/Mobile Disaster 1
1. Kinopolitical Power 29
2. Water Power 48
3. Aerial Power 65
4. Digital Power 83
6. Sexual Power 129
Conclusion: Surviving the Anthropocene 144
Afterword: This Is Not a Requiem 159
Notes 173
Bibliography 193
Index 217
