Desiring the Other and Decolonizing Global Solidarity: Time and Space in the Anti-Vedanta Campaign

Abstract: This paper considers a case study of Survival International’s campaign in support of the Dongria Kondh adivasi community of Odisha, India, and that community’s ultimately successful struggle to prevent mining company Vedanta from acquiring their sacred mountain, Niyamgiri. I argue this case presents an ethical conundrum for those of us interested in decolonizing solidarity: politically effective work rewards relationships and representations that shore up the making of radical Otherness, its valorization, and desires to know and help the radical Other. Rather than simply condemn or applaud Survival’s problematic work, I explore the role of scale and temporalities to better understand the ethical terrain in which they operated.

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