Power and Polycrisis: on the durability of capitalism-patriarchy-colonialism (CPC)

Abstract

This paper is inspired by Jamaican cultural critic Sylvia Wynter who notes that contemporary times do not face a list of separate problems, but a ‘global problematique’. While these current socio-political, economic and ecological challenges are often referred to as ‘polycrisis’, this paper asks what the focus on crisis obfuscates and how instead a focus on power can help move beyond the emergency-exceptionalism of crisis-thinking. Our argument highlights how specifically the durable and interlocking effects of capitalist, patriarchal and (neo-)colonial power have to be analysed in conjunction. For these interlocking vectors of power, we propose the acronym ‘CPC’.