Colonial fantasies of invulnerability to climate change

Abstract

Despite an ever-growing critical literature, vulnerability retains its place as a dominant concept in climate politics. What is less heavily researched is the concept of “invulnerability,” an idea that feminist and decolonial theory has many tools to critique. After unpacking the material and discursive elements of vulnerability politics, this article focuses on invulnerability as a concept that is an influential yet unexplored set of masculine and colonial fantasies. These fantasies–of modernity, mastery, and continentalism–are critiqued through different critical traditions, which are brought into conversation with climate politics literature. I then discuss the counternarratives of Oceanic thought, following Teresia Teaiwa’s prompt to “island the world.” I argue that this can be done through a focus on care, relationality, and a decolonial politics of resistance. I conclude that resisting the politics of vulnerability requires an engagement with critical feminist and decolonial thought to enable an imaginative piercing of the fantasies of invulnerability.