The aesthetics of extractivism: violence, ecology, and sensibility in Turkey’s Kurdistan

Çaylı, Eray ORCID: 0000-0001-8113-0349 (2021) The aesthetics of extractivism: violence, ecology, and sensibility in Turkey’s Kurdistan. Antipode, 53 (5). 1377 - 1399. ISSN 0066-4812

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Abstract

Focusing on dams and sand quarries, I discuss extractivism’s racialised workings along the uppermost stretch of the Tigris river in Turkey’s Kurdistan. In conversation with decolonial scholarship on “the Anthropocene”, I theorise through aesthetics the symbolic, epistemic, and corporeal violence of reducing the value of human and nonhuman life and agency to that of an extractable resource. My contribution to this scholarship involves a twofold argument. First, extractivism is upheld not only by the negation (or rendering insensible) of humans and nonhumans, but also the affirmation (or rendering excessively sensible) thereof, insofar as the latter shares the former’s racialised logic of valuing life and agency quantifiably. Second, the affirmations are not always straightforwardly territorialisable as they are often geographically entangled with the negations, particularly in times of crises that throw extractivist excesses into sharp relief. I conclude by thinking with activism to flesh out the counter-extractivist implications of my argument.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14678330
Additional Information:	Funding Information: Research and writing were funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (ECF-2017-529). I am grateful to Ryan Centner for his critical input on an earlier draft, the three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, and Marina Lathouri (the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London), Ishita Sharma (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Murat Alat (Açık Seminer, Istanbul), the Political Violence in Turkey research network, and Roza Atac (Kurdish Student Union Society, SOAS), for inviting me to debate the ideas discussed here with their communities. I am indebted to Amed’s independent art space Loading (run by Cengiz Tekin, Erkan Özgen, and Dicle Beştaş) for being my home away from home, and to Herdem Doğrul for being ever the generous and continuous interlocutor. Funding Information: Research and writing were funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (ECF‐2017‐529). I am grateful to Ryan Centner for his critical input on an earlier draft, the three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, and Marina Lathouri (the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London), Ishita Sharma (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Murat Alat (Açık Seminer, Istanbul), the Political Violence in Turkey research network, and Roza Atac (Kurdish Student Union Society, SOAS), for inviting me to debate the ideas discussed here with their communities. I am indebted to Amed’s independent art space Loading (run by Cengiz Tekin, Erkan Özgen, and Dicle Beştaş) for being my home away from home, and to Herdem Doğrul for being ever the generous and continuous interlocutor. 1 Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Antipode published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Antipode Foundation Ltd.
Divisions:	European Institute
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Date Deposited:	20 May 2021 10:09
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 02:32
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/110510

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