Climate Coloniality and the Limits of Resilience
Reading discussion of David Chandler’s Decolonising resilience: reading Glissant’s Poetics of Relation in Central Eurasia
23 March 2026, 18:30 CET, via Zoom
From climate governance to colonial policy imaginaries, join South/South Movement for a reading discussion of David Chandler’s article Decolonising resilience: reading Glissant’s Poetics of Relation in Central Eurasia.
The article critiques Eurocentric frameworks in which “resilient” communities are expected to self-govern risk, adapt efficiently to crisis, and rapidly return to equilibrium. Chandler shows how these models of resilience operate as techniques of governance — demanding adaptation and “responsibilization” while leaving the structural conditions of harm intact.
Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, the text offers an alternative understanding of resilience grounded in relation rather than self-sufficiency, and in opacity rather than transparency and control. Here, uncertainty and unknowability are not failures to be managed, but vital conditions for experimentation, improvization, and becoming-with others.
This reading group will reflect on how resilience discourse functions within climate coloniality, particularly in contexts shaped by conflict, environmental degradation, and uneven responsibility for climate harm. Please join us as we collectively explore how climate governance shapes demands for resilience, and how relation, opacity, and becoming-with others open alternative political possibilities beyond adaptation.
Participants are encouraged to read the text in advance. All are welcome to join, listen, and contribute.
Reading materials will be shared with participants after registration.
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