Paperback : £14.31
With a new introduction by the author
Some thousands of years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals. From wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to giant ground sloths and armadillos the size of automobiles, these spectacular creatures roamed freely. Then human beings arrived. Devouring their way down the food chain as they spread across the planet, they began a process of voracious extinction that has continued to the present.
Headlines today are made by the existential threat confronting remaining large animals such as rhinos and pandas. But the devastation summoned by humans extends to humbler realms of creatures including beetles, bats and butterflies. Researchers generally agree that the current extinction rate is nothing short of catastrophic. Currently the earth is losing about a hundred species every day.
This relentless extinction, Ashley Dawson contends in a primer that combines vast scope with elegant precision, is the product of a global attack on the commons, the great trove of air, water, plants and creatures, as well as collectively created cultural forms such as language, that have been regarded traditionally as the inheritance of humanity as a whole.
This attack has its genesis in the need for capital to expand relentlessly into all spheres of life. Extinction, Dawson argues, cannot be understood in isolation from a critique of our economic system. To achieve this we need to transgress the boundaries between science, environmentalism and radical politics. Extinction: A Radical History performs this task with both brio and brilliance.
Show moreWith a new introduction by the author
Some thousands of years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals. From wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to giant ground sloths and armadillos the size of automobiles, these spectacular creatures roamed freely. Then human beings arrived. Devouring their way down the food chain as they spread across the planet, they began a process of voracious extinction that has continued to the present.
Headlines today are made by the existential threat confronting remaining large animals such as rhinos and pandas. But the devastation summoned by humans extends to humbler realms of creatures including beetles, bats and butterflies. Researchers generally agree that the current extinction rate is nothing short of catastrophic. Currently the earth is losing about a hundred species every day.
This relentless extinction, Ashley Dawson contends in a primer that combines vast scope with elegant precision, is the product of a global attack on the commons, the great trove of air, water, plants and creatures, as well as collectively created cultural forms such as language, that have been regarded traditionally as the inheritance of humanity as a whole.
This attack has its genesis in the need for capital to expand relentlessly into all spheres of life. Extinction, Dawson argues, cannot be understood in isolation from a critique of our economic system. To achieve this we need to transgress the boundaries between science, environmentalism and radical politics. Extinction: A Radical History performs this task with both brio and brilliance.
Show moreInterviews likely: The New Inquiry, Against the
Grain, Forthright Radio, This Is Hell!, Politics
Theory Other, Counterfire
Excerpts likely: The Guardian, Grist, New
Politics, Climate & Capitalism
Ashley Dawsonis a professor of English at CUNY, New York City. He is the author ofMongrel NationandThe Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature, as well as a short story in the anthologyStaten Island Noir.
Praise for the first edition:
“Ashley Dawson’s slim and forceful book … makes a case for being
the most accessible and politically engaged examination of the
current mass extinction … a welcome contribution to the growing
literature on this slow-motion calamity.”
—Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Assistant Professor of Environmental
Studies, Yale University, in the Los Angeles Review of
Books
“Dawson's searing report on species loss will sober up anyone who
has drunk the Kool-Aid of green capitalism. For a bonus, readers
will learn a lot from his far-sighted, prehistoric survey of
extinction.”
—Andrew Ross, author of Creditocracy and the Case for Debt
Refusal
“Dawson has summed up the threat to our fellow species on Earth
with clarity, urgency and the finest reasoning available within the
environmental justice literature. He explains how capital's
appropriation of nature cannot be 'offset,' nor solutions found in
financialization. Fusing social and ecological challenges to power
is the only way forward, and here is a long-awaited, elegant and
comprehensive expression of why the time is right to make these
links.”
—Patrick Bond, Professor of Political Economy, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and author of Politics of
Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below
“A succinct and moving account of the co-evolution of capitalism,
imperialism, and climate change. Dawson demonstrates not only how
capitalism created climate change but also why the former must be
challenged in order to halt the latter. Offering not only critique
but also solutions, this rousing book is a great tool for
anti-capitalists, climate change activists, and those still making
sense of the intrinsic connections between the two.”
—Jasbir Puar, Associate Professor, Graduate Program Director
Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, author
of Terrorist Assemblages
“Historically grounded, densely researched, fluidly written, Ashley
Dawson’s book on extinction is a powerful and painful exploration
of human civilization's environmental irrationalities. Yet Dawson
does not see annihilation as inevitable and he even points towards
an alternate path.”
—Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate
Change and the New Geography of Violence
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