Climates of Migration: Ecology, Literature, and Propaganda

Climate and migration provide the organizational pillars, and the plural “climates” in the title accentuates the figurative non-literal sense to signify the atmosphere that is attached to anxiety, disinformation, fear and violence. Competing narratives and storytelling mechanisms conjointly operate over a longer history of colonial conquest and remain present in the mind-sets informing the afterlives of empire, as evidenced in debates on identity politics, nationalism, environmental, racial and social justice. The broad transregional (Africa, the Caribbean, Europe) and transdisciplinary framework privileges comparative analysis between various disciplines and fields, notably migration studies, environmental humanities, eco-feminism, nationalism, and decolonial and postcolonial studies, while adopting multigenre approaches that include a diversity of perspectives from literature, media discourse, art, propaganda, visual culture and new technologies. Together, these challenge the criminalizing, debasing and often dehumanizing logic associated with official policymaking and propose instead alternative forms of humanization and identification aimed at fostering modes of empathy. Climates of Migration explores various forms of environmental exploitation and degradation, especially in African literatures where the thematic transformations that have resulted from engagement with environmental ecocide have contributed to a revitalization of writing. Planetary climate change and the accompanying disruption to the global ecosystem is traced to European territorial conquest and expansion and subsequently mapped onto the contemporary institutional (European Union) and political discourses that are structuring our present, while also enabling unforeseen forms of planetary consciousness.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments; Figures; Prologue: Erasure: From Colonial-Washing to Greenwashing; 1-Ecolonial Games; 2-Migrant Ecologies; 3-Ecological Relations; 4-Ecological Frontiers in Literature; 5-Ecology and Propaganda; Epilogue: The New Conquistadors; Notes; Bibliography; Index

About the Author :
Dominic Thomas is Madeleine Letessier Professor of French at the University of California Los Angeles and Gutenberg Research Chair in Ecology and Propaganda at the University of Strasbourg.

Review :
“Climates of Migration is both timely and timeless—offering a vital lesson in history, a revealing lens on present complexities and a pressing warning for the future.” — Dr. Julia Ebner, Leader of the Violent Extremism Lab and Calleva Researcher, the University of Oxford “A searing examination of how climate, empire and migration collide in the world and on the page. Moving from colonial propaganda to contemporary eco-literature, Thomas’s Climates of Migration rethinks the geographies of race, displacement and ecological desire in a time of planetary crisis.” — T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor, Vanderbilt University “This superbly crafted book offers a compelling analysis of conflicting modes of thinking about issues of global significance arising from the interface between colonialism, environmental degradation, climate change and postcolonial migration. Drawing on a rich body of personal and collaborative research that has positioned the author as a leading contributor to scholarly debates on these issues, the book shows how the destructiveness of powerful propagandist discourses, transmitted in multiple forms ranging from political argumentation to popular culture, is being challenged by counter-cultures of empathy and holism articulated by artists and writers from the Global South. This breadth of vision brings home both the deep-seatedness of the ills that afflict relations between Europe and Africa and the potential for pathways out of the gridlock that currently prevails.” — Alec G. Hargreaves, Emeritus Winthrop-King Professor of Transcultural French Studies, Florida State University