Abstract

The essay departs from Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence to consider the strategic repertoire of eco-resistance. The fundamental question that it addresses is how far the paradigm of resistance is appropriate for understanding and imaging the practice of radical environmentalism. Along the way it confronts the thanatopolitical assumptions of theories of resistance, asking whether the forms of reactive violence proper to resistance are appropriate for environmental action, but nevertheless attempts to detect an affirmative moment in the non-state future-oriented action. The essay concludes by asking whether the theory and practice of bioregional and other expressions of grass roots environmentalism point to an enhancement of the theory of resistance or to new forms of oppositional environmental action.