The Ecological Class: Rethinking Hegemony through Indigenous Struggle and Settler Colonialism

Abstract

This article asks what kind of political subject is capable of confronting the ecological crisis. I argue that answering this question requires more than a new environmental politics. It demands a rethinking of hegemony. Engaging Latour and Schultz’s call for an “ecological class,” I show that their proposal fails to explain who can lead such a movement or who the antagonist is. Drawing on theories of hegemony and Indigenous studies, I illustrate that Indigenous peoples are uniquely positioned to perform this work against American settler colonialism. The latter is a national and global structure that shapes the ecological order on a planetary scale such that Indigenous self-liberation in the United States is linked to collective-liberation beyond. Through articulations that connect Indigenous struggles with workers, anti-racists, and feminists (mediated by land theft, speciesism, and heteropatriarchy, respectively), I develop a nonanthropocentric theory of hegemony adequate to the age of ecological crisis.