A world in broken dropper

(re)thinking futures that are both useless and liveable

Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate that the modes of production and destruction of modern-colonial capitalism have placed the Earth before ‘unthinkable’ climatic and environmental catastrophes, especially since the global hegemony of neoliberalism. These extreme phenomena highlight the alarming reality of an accelerated and uncontrolled deterioration of the world, but whose impacts vary according to pre-existing socio-economic and geopolitical inequalities. In Brazil, the structural power of racism means that such catastrophes disproportionately affect black and indigenous people, something that is very noticeable in the latest cases of mining dam collapses. In addition to reflection on the so-called ‘unthinkable’ of the present, it aims to indicate theoretical paths towards a possible and liveable future, taking into account ancestral epistemologies and cosmovisions that confront the dominant capitalist and colonialist imaginary that guides the exploitation and voracious devouring of all the planet’s constituent elements, human and non-human.