Ajay Singh Chaudhary: The Exhausted of the Earth: On the Politics of Climate Change (ASL)

Room: History, Biography & Religion, 2nd Floor

Climate change is not only about the exhaustion of the planet, it's about the exhaustion of so many of us, our lives, our worlds, even our minds. So, what is to be done? In this talk, Ajay Singh Chaudhary answers this question by presenting key concepts and arguments from his book The Exhausted of the Earth. Synthesizing natural scientific and social analyses, these ideas begin to outline a comprehensive politics particular to this moment of social and ecological crisis, one which necessarily connects ecology, global political economy, exploitation, and colonization, with the most ordinary extraction and exhaustions of daily life--and which points to a still-possible politics far beyond survival. 

Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a core faculty member specializing in social and political theory. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. His research focuses on social and political theory, Frankfurt School critical theory, political economy, political ecology, media, religion, and post-colonial studies. He has written for The Guardian, The Nation, The Baffler, n+1, Los Angeles Review of Books, Quartz, Social Text, Dialectical Anthropology, The Hedgehog Review, Filmmaker Magazine, and 3quarksdaily, among other venues. Ajay’s book on the politics of climate change, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World, is forthcoming from Repeater Books in February, 2024.