Of Animacy reconvenes for the first time in 2020 to discuss urban and global flows of waste and the establishment of these flows in the Western colonial enterprise.

In her 2019 essay ‘Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender’, feminist activist and scholar Françoise Vergès maps how the labour of cleaning and caring is racialised and gendered. Vergès argues that this perpetuates the exclusive access of white bodies to clean spaces in which to perform professional success and economic growth.

Vergès unpacks the binary of ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ geographical zones constructed in the Global North, where the image of ‘cleanliness’ is maintained with the present-day colonialism of shipping waste to the Global South. Vergès looks to the potential of cleaning and caring as emancipatory practices that could manifest as forms of collective responsibility to repair social and ecological damage.

Under discussion:


For access to the text and further information on the reading group, please email nella@nellaaarne.art.

Reading the selected text in advance is recommended but not necessary. Printed copies will be available at the gathering and excerpts of the text will be read together to support open discussion.

Of Animacy meets every month at the ICA and is always open to all.