Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘end’ of ‘the world’: white apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820948936 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820948936
International Relations
2020, Vol. 34(3) 309 –332
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820948936
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Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘end’
of ‘the world’: white
apocalyptic visions and
BIPOC futurisms
Audra Mitchell
Balsillie School of International Affairs
Aadita Chaudhury
York University – Keele Campus
Abstract
We often hear that the ‘end of the world’ is approaching – but whose world, exactly, is expected
to end? Over the last several decades, a popular and influential literature has emerged, in
International Relations (IR), social sciences, and in popular culture, on subjects such as ‘human
extinction’, ‘global catastrophic risks’, and eco-apocalypse. Written by scientists, political
scientists, and journalists for wide public audiences,1 this genre diagnoses what it considers the
most serious global threats and offers strategies to protect the future of ‘humanity’. This article
will critically engage this genre to two ends: first, we aim to show that the present apocalyptic
narratives embed a series of problematic assumptions which reveal that they are motivated not
by a general concern with futures but rather with the task of securing white futures. Second,
we seek to highlight how visions drawn from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC)
futurisms reimagine more just and vibrant futures.
Keywords
apocalypse, humanity, Black and Afro-futurism, desi-futurism, Indigenous futurism, racialization,
whiteness
Corresponding author:
Audra Mitchell, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L3C5,
Canada.
Email: amitchell@wlu.ca
948936IRE0010.1177/0047117820948936International RelationsMitchell and Chaudhury
research-article2020
Article
310 International Relations 34(3)
Introduction
It is often said that the ‘end of the world’ is approaching – but whose world, exactly, is
expected to end? Over the last several decades, a popular and increasingly influential
literature on ‘human extinction’, ‘global catastrophic risks’, and eco-apocalypse has
emerged in the social sciences and popular culture. This rapidly growing body of knowl-
edge is produced by scientists, science journalists, policy-analysts, and scholars of global
affairs, all seeking to reach broad audiences and influence international policy-making.
Their central aim is to diagnose the gravest global threats and to offer strategies to protect
the future of what they regard as ‘humanity’. Yet, despite their claims to universality, we
argue that these ‘end of the world’ discourses are more specifically concerned about
protecting the future of whiteness. Although our primary aim in this article is to diagnose
these potentially destructive narratives, we also engage with the rich and varied sphere
of BIPOC2 (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) futurisms. These contributions
challenge the perception that there is no alternative to the apocalyptic futures imagined
by white scholars. They work to create plural worlds that vastly exceed white visions of
‘the’ end of ‘the world’, embodying much wider, diverse, and transformative concepts
of, and beyond, ‘humanity’, ‘nature’, and ‘the planet’. We view this article as a call for
IR scholars to recognize and engage these plural imaginaries, which contest and perfo-
rate the boundaries of mainstream IR concepts such as ‘humanity’, ‘agency’, ‘govern-
ance’, ‘threat’, and ‘harm’. As Amy Niang’s contribution to this special issue shows,3
those concepts are too often constructed through forms of power that negate, oppress,
and super-exploit particular human bodies, societies, and ways of being.
Our analysis takes seriously this special issue’s efforts toward ‘thinking IR into the
future’, but with several important caveats. First, we reject the Euro-centric notion that
there is ‘a’ or ‘the’ single future – just as we reject the notion of a single world, now or
ever. Such assumptions are at the core of the mainstream apocalyptic visions (and their
linear temporalities) that are increasing integral to IR imaginaries at the ‘turn’ of the dis-
cipline’s ‘first century’. We contend that the foundational and generative role of such
imaginaries in global power structures does not receive adequate attention in the field of
IR or in the broader social and natural sciences. As a result, their tendency to narrow and
homogenize the futures of worlds, plural, goes largely unchecked within the discipline
and its discourses. Yet the white futurist discourses we discuss are influential: they aim to
bring about major shifts in global public consciousness and policy-making and strategy.
They are often accorded validation by the scientific credentials of their authors and their
embeddedness in large-scale data and modeling processes. Through these means of public
persuasion, such discourses have the potential to shape concepts that are, and will likely
continue to be, foundational to IR: how threats are understood; the boundaries of ‘human-
ity’ and ‘nonhumanity’, and the distributions of harm across and beyond these structures;
and the forms of agency and governance demanded by, and deemed acceptable within, a
context of global crises. An interdisciplinary IR concerned with interconnected global
challenges – the aspiration of this special issue – needs to attend to how dominant narra-
tives and futural imaginaries cut off and sideline the concrete presents and possible futures
of plural Others. Second, where this special issue asks ‘how we should hold things
together, conceptually, empirically and disciplinarily’ (see introduction, italics ours),
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