Extractivism identifies a political economy premised on the withdrawal of value without corresponding deposit: resources are removed from the Earth, profits from labor, and commodifiable data from plants, bodies, and information systems. Returned to their place is waste, toxicity, disease, exhaustion, and death. Comprising a fundamental logic of advanced global capitalism that is now evident worldwide, extractivism has long been recognized as a fundamental form of colonialism as well: “[E]xtracting is stealing—it is taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge of the impacts that extraction has on the other living things in that environment,” notes Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. “That’s always been a part of colonialism and conquest. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous.” […] Extraction increasingly includes digital appropriation, relating to social media and surveillance-based data mining, IT processing, and algorithmic capture, expanding the extractive zone to the techno- and info-spheres.
T.-J.Demos, The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, 2021Do we live in an economy of theft?
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- The fear is related to the forest, not the plants. This feeling is very old, it goes back to Roman civilization. For the Romans, the forest was the place of the “stranger”: It was in the forest that the barbarians hid. Moreover, the French word “forêt” [forest] comes from the Latin foris, which mea …
Cross Idea
For centuries, the struggle for equality has focused primarily on relations among human beings. Here, the question of equality is extended to include nature and matter. The perspectives look at the question from different perspectives, yet, the view of extraction—whether of raw materials or data—as a form of theft, and the one that challenges the ownership of land and natural resources, complement each other. Both positions advocate for recognizing nature and matter as entities with their own rights and emphasize the need for equity.
Moreover, it is not just a claim for an extension of rights: These perspectives do more than that; the example of extractivism demonstrates that equality among humans is interconnected with our treatment of nature. Achieving equality with nature and matter requires us to consider the needs of those with whom we interact and this is also a valid issue in our relations with humans. This approach to equality can thus, in turn, foster greater equality among humans.
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