Presentation short abstract

This paper focuses on the concepts of vulnerability and resistance in climate politics, and how colonial historical discourses relate to material outcomes. Climate change is posed as a form of sacrificial colonialism and a site of struggle over whose lives are protected and whose vulnerabilised.

Presentation long abstract

This paper focuses on the concepts of vulnerability and resistance in climate politics, focusing on how colonial historical discourses relate to material outcomes. Climate change is posed as a form of colonial violence and a site of struggle over whose lives are to be enriched and whose vulnerabilised, and the discursive justifications for the ensuing inequalities.

Drawing on a new book, to be published with Liverpool University Press later this year, this paper first outlines the critique of vulnerability, drawing on feminist arguments around paternalism and victimisation. It then offers an alternative: a breaking down of vulnerability into the concepts of precarity, which builds on the work of political economists; grievability, which builds on the work of Judith Butler, and ‘islanding’ a resistance concept that builds on Pacific Studies. Taken together, this paper turns vulnerability discourse on its head and tries to relocate these conversations within the reality of climate change.