Extractivism

Catalog description

Extractivism is a concept developed by Latin American thinkers to describe the region’s historical insertion into the world economy based on the large-scale removal and export of raw materials, like gold, timber, and oil. Extractivism drove empire and funded its expansion; it also was the impetus for enslavement, dispossession, and extinction. It names an instrumentalist logic that is underwritten by the assumption of infinite resources and the pursuit of endless growth and accumulation. In this course, we will dig into theories of extractivism as well as how Latin American art, literature, and film lay bare extractivism's violence and offer ways of conceptualizing life otherwise, moving toward the proliferation of plural ways of conceptualizing the planet.