Zakaria, Faizah. “Juno Salazar Parreñas, ‘Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation.’” New Books in Southeast Asian Studies, March 15, 2021. Mp3, 45:35.
Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke University Press, 2018) presents a multi-species ethnography of orangutans and humans that probes the shared susceptibilities of both species in the face of future extinction. In a series of provocative chapters, the book interweaves intimate entanglements in the workings of an orangutan rehabilitation centre with reflection on the work of care that draws on queer theory and feminist conceptions of welfare. By centralizing such rehabilitation efforts, the book reveals the contradictions inherent in such a system. The practice of rehabilitation, it shows, is underpinned by violence. Parreñas demonstrates the colonial origins of such an approach to conservation biology and how care within enclosures traps both humans and endangered primates alike. As such, we should urgently question how we could divest ourselves from the need for security that is dependent on cruelty and seek instead a decolonial era of co-existence which welcomes and finds joy in our moments of brief, mutual vulnerability. (Source: New Books Network)
In this episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies, Faizah Zakaria interviews Juno Salazar Parreñas, author of Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature.
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