Exhaustion. What a perfect and powerful word to describe our times. Exhausted bodies—over-worked, over-productive, over-stretched. Bodies pushed to their limits, treated like machines whose sole existence is to produce profit. Exhausted ecosystems—extracted, ruined, plundered. Viewed as nothing but raw material for the ceaseless flow of capital accumulation. Exhausted minds—hurried and harried, no time for joy, for introspection, for pondering the cosmos. Our minds are tethered to an orbit delineated by distraction, denial, and despair. Exhaustion.
2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record—and unless you've been consciously avoiding it you've probably seen the videos of the devastating floods, wildfires, and "once in a thousand years" storms that are increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives. The reality of climate change is no longer one of the future, one that can be framed in a discussion about coming generations—it's here already. And it's not even a question anymore of capitalism being the driving factor—that's an old conversation. The question now is: what are we going to do about it? How do we respond, right now?
Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and core faculty member specializing in social and political theory and author of The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World, published by Repeater Books.
In this episode, we analyze and unpack the many forms of exhaustion that shape us and our world today. We explore the politics of climate change, from right-wing climate responses to those coming from the left, we explore the extractive circuit of capitalism as it stretches its tentacles from lithium mines in The DRC to Doordash drivers in the suburbs of the West. We explore imperialism, Marxist theory, revolutionary classes, revolutionary strategies, and why the "exhausted of the earth" are the mass political subject of our times.
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Intermission music: "Non-Metaphorical Decolonization" by Mount Eerie
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