Searching for Ethical Hope: Ideas on what Feminist Debates on the Anthropocene can offer Theorisations of Gender and Violence

Abstract

This article reviews some contemporary responses by feminists such as Haraway and Braidotti to the invitations offered by the concept of the Anthropocene to reimagine the human and the violent. Finding the need to think more closely about questions of race and rape, in these responses, the article turns to the theory of Sylvia Wynter and the poetry of Yvette Christiansë for a rich enough language. The article then moves to the consideration of how to use such a language in the understanding of a particular ampersand - the & of gender and violence. The article is shaped as an exercise to trying to think, across contradictions and myriad accountabilities.

Keywords

• race
• Anthropocene
• Slavery
• feminist theory
• gender and violence