Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 5-1-2025
Abstract
This article examines the ecological sublime in its relationship to the history of colonial aesthetics, anticolonial thought, and contemporary colonialism. It argues that, while Edmund Burke utilized the sublime in support of colonialism (including settler colonialism) in North America and colonial slavery, Samson Occom and Ottobah Cugoano developed versions of the sublime to contest British colonialism in the Americas. The history of this aesthetic contestation has not been represented in scholarship on the ecological sublime, which, this article shows, has a vexed relationship with historical and contemporary colonialism. The article argues that the ecological sublime exhibits the “double fracture” of modernity in its inadequate handling of the history of colonialism and environmentalism. It concludes by evaluating the potential of the ecological sublime for anticolonial uses by Indigenous and Black thinkers.
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, African American Studies Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Political Theory Commons
