Precarious Lives, Precarious Epistemologies: Deliberations On Grievability

Abstract

The modern – era geo – political climate of the world – order is grappling with a colossal challenge of mitigating accelerated biodiversity extinctions and jeopardized climate futurities. The ongoing climate crises of the planet Earth has endangered the entirety of the human, sub – human, non – human, animal and natural communities of the Anthropocene. The ontological crises of the human race is reflected in the epistemologies of crises, which thwart the ethical appraisal of the moral signification of all human, non – human, sub – human and animal lives. This paper seeks to contextualize the quagmire of ethical conundrums that enshroud the notions of ‘grievable’ and ‘lose – able’ lives adumbrated by Judith Pamela Butler in her books Precarious Life (2004) and Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (2009). In the present era of ecological grief, the notion of vulnerability and precariousness is impacted by the partisan consideration of certain target populations as being undeserving of socio – political recognisability.