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SUMMARY:Climate Apartheid: the politics of reappropriating apartheid in cl
 imate discourse - Charlotte Lemanski\, University of Cambridge 
DTSTART:20260224T123000Z
DTEND:20260224T140000Z
UID:TALK243352@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ben Platt
DESCRIPTION:‘Climate apartheid’ advocacy and scholarship critiques how
  the climate actions of privileged individuals and groups (re)produce inju
 stice. Despite apartheid’s South African origins\, climate apartheid deb
 ates are overwhelmingly led by global North scholarship\, and the term is 
 rarely used in South Africa\, where attempts to reappropriate the aparthei
 d lexicon beyond its historical context are politically and emotionally co
 mplex. ‘Apartheid’ is a term that cannot be applied lightly.  This pap
 er explores how climate apartheid discourse is emerging through a review o
 f existing scholarship\, critically reflecting on the epistemic violence o
 f reappropriating southern linguistics in (largely western-led) knowledge 
 production. Language matters. Apartheid is a provocative term with a speci
 fic history and meaning. It is particularly striking that new adaptations 
 often place less emphasis on race\, instead highlighting other axes of neo
 liberal exploitation\, oppression and inequality. Furthermore\, contempora
 ry appropriations often overlook apartheid’s origins as a deliberate and
  planned political system that was explicitly justified through racist ass
 umptions of superiority. While recognising that the language of apartheid 
 has already been used in new ways\, I argue that any re-appropriation requ
 ires sensitive recognition of apartheid’s historic origin and the distre
 ss generated by redeployment. I conclude by critically reflecting on how d
 eploying the climate apartheid label in South Africa and beyond is simulta
 neously powerful\, for raising attention to the injustices of the climate 
 transition\, and problematic\, for diluting the racialised devastation tha
 t apartheid embedded in South Africa and misdirecting attention away from 
 the contemporary specificities of climate injustices.
LOCATION:Department of Geography\, Small Lecture Theatre
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