Interruption: World-Ecology and Religious Imaginations

Dear Colleagues,

Today’s world-ecology is a capitalist system (Moore, 2017, 2018; Sklair, 2002). Rooted in the logics, desires, and structures of Western extractive and settler colonialism, the system continues to structure the planetary household in accordance with these logics and desires (Malcom, 2021; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Mbembe, 2019; Quijano, 2000). Reliant upon “cheap natures” (Patel and Moore, 2018), created through the exploitation of labor and the violation of the dignity of both human persons and non-human creation, the contemporary capitalist world-ecology devours both human life and the life of the world (Fraser, 2023). This world-ecology does so by perpetuating socially constructed and monetized hierarchical differences along racialized, gendered, classed, and human/non-human lines, in order to facilitate the asymmetrical accumulation of wealth and power throughout the world (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018). In doing so, the contemporary world-ecology sustains and deepens the present-day planetary emergency (Foster, et al, 2010, Wynter and McKittrick, 2015).

The planetary emergency is a politico-ecological emergency in which the modern categories of “nature” and “society” only appear coherent when they are taken to be intrinsically entangled and mutually informing (Harvey, 1993; Malm, 2017). While the complexities and ambiguities of the planetary emergency resist exhaustive definition, the emergency is characterized by phenomena such as inequalities of material wealth (Milanovic, 2011), the rise in a globalized market society and the related upsurge of ecofascism (Conversi, 2023), the acceleration of the rates of species extinction (Kolbert, 2014), intensifying forms of social acceleration (Rosa, 2013), environmental racism (Mohai, et al, 2009), the feminization of poverty (Mies, 2014), the displacement of human populations (Berchin, et al, 2017), climate change (Steffen, et al, 2011), and experiences of despair and hopelessness (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018). In varying and interrelated ways, these realities are constitutive of the regnant world-ecology.

In view of the foregoing account, Johannes Baptiste-Metz’s conception of religion appears particularly relevant today. Metz writes, “The shortest definition of religion: interruption” (Metz, 2007). For Metz, an essential dimension of any liberating and life-giving religion is its ability to contest the unjust, exploitative, and death-dealing structures of a given status quo. As such, religion ought to challenge its adherents to discern whether the “plausibility structures” of a society (or, in this case, a politico-ecological system) are, in fact, “obfuscation structures” that should be denounced, contested, and dismantled (Ashley, 1998; Downey, 1999).

This Special Issue invites scholars to consider how religious imaginations function or might function as interruptive forces to the contemporary world-ecology. In recent decades, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grimm have edited a ten-volume series exploring a multitude of theological and religious grounds for environmental ethics (Tucker and Grim, 1997–2004). This Special Issue seeks to extend the work of those volumes by focusing specifically on the task of delineating the theological and religious grounds for contesting the regnant world-ecological order of the day. Scholars, then, are invited to consider how critical politico-ecological ethics might be grounded in varying forms of religious thought and expression.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Notably, while Metz’s aphorism helps to define this Special Issue, direct engagement with Metz’s thought is not required. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) responses to the following:

• What religious narratives, doctrines, practices, rituals, etc. might be embraced, critically retrieved, or lived into in service to ethical manifestations of politico-ecological interruption?
• How can religious wisdom be of aid in discerning the proper aims, means, and ethics of interruptive practices in the face of systems of politico-ecological domination?
• How can interruptive religious imaginations be of service in helping persons and communities of faith to conceive and develop constructive practical and political projects, so as to avoid a self-defeating eclipse of praxis?
• How might interreligious dialogue be of service in cultivating pluralist political coalitions aimed at contesting and transforming the dominant politico-ecological orderings of the world?
• What are examples of interruptive religious or cultural logics and practices already being operationalized to challenge the logics and structures of the dominant politico-ecological order?
• How might practices of prayer, contemplation, or the cultivation of a particular theological/religious aesthetics function to contest the logics of the dominant world-ecology?

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor or to the Assistant Editor of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Ashley, J. Matthew. Interruptions: Mysticism, Politics, and Theology in the Work of Johann Baptist Metz. University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.

Berchin, Issa Ibrahim, Isabela Blasi Valduga, Jéssica Garcia, and José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório De Andrade. "Climate change and forced migrations: An effort towards recognizing climate refugees." Geoforum 84 (2017): 147-150.

Connolly, William E. Climate Machines, Fascist Drives, and Truth. Duke University Press, 2019.

Conversi, Daniele. "Eco-fascism: An Oxymoron? Far-right Nationalism, History, and the Climate Emergency." Frontiers in Human Dynamics 6 (2024): 1373872.

Cunsolo, Ashlee, and Neville R. Ellis. "Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss." Nature Climate Change 8, no. 4 (2018): 275-281.

Downey, John K., ed. Love's Strategy: The Political Theology of Johann Baptist Metz. A&C Black, 1999.

Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia, 2004.

Ferdinand, Malcom. Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World. John Wiley & Sons, 2021.

Foster, John Bellamy, Brett Clark, and Richard York. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York University Press, 2011.

Fraser, Nancy. Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It. Verso Books, 2023.

Harvey, David. "The Nature of Environment: Dialectics of Social and Environmental Change." Socialist Register 29 (1993).

Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. A&C Black, 2014.

Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity. Duke University Press, 2008.

Mbembe, Achille. Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization. Columbia University Press, 2019.

McNeill, John Robert. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. WW Norton & Company, 2001.

Metz, Johann Baptist. Faith in History and Society: Towards a Practical Fundamental Theology. Crossroad Pub., 2007.

Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.

Mignolo, Walter D., and Catherine E. Walsh. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Duke University Press, 2018.

Milanovic, Branko. Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global inequality. Princeton University Press, 2011.

Moore, Jason W. "The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of our Ecological Crisis." The Journal of peasant studies 44, no. 3 (2017): 594-630.

Moore, Jason W. "The Capitalocene, Part II: Accumulation by Appropriation and the Centrality of Unpaid Work/Energy." The Journal of Peasant Studies 45, no. 2 (2018): 237-279.

Mohai, Paul, David Pellow, and J. Timmons Roberts. "Environmental Justice." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34, no. 1 (2009): 405-430.

Patel, Raj, and Jason W. Moore. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Univ of California Press, 2017.

Quijano, Anibal. "Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America." International Sociology 15, no. 2 (2000): 215-232.

Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin III, Eric Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton et al. "Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity." Ecology and Society 14, no. 2 (2009).

Rosa, Hartmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. Columbia University Press, 2013.

Sklair, Leslie. Capitalism and its Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Steffen, Will, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill. "The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842-867.

Tucker, Mary Evelyn and John Grim, series eds. “Religions of the World and Ecology Book Series,” vol. i–x. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997–2004.

Wynter, Sylvia, and Katherine McKittrick. "Unparalleled Catastrophe for our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations." Sylvia Wynter: On being human as praxis (2015): 9-89.

Dr. Daniel Castillo
Guest Editor

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• political ecology
• dangerous memory/counter memory
• religious environmental ethics
• political theology
• world-ecology
• capitalism
• environmental racism
• colonial matrix of power