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Alexander Dunlap and Jostein Jakobsen, The Violent Technologies of Extraction: Political Ecology, Critical Agrarian Studies and the Capitalist Worldeater Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot, 2020; 164pp; ISBN 9783030268510
A giant monster with vicious claws and pointy teeth, poised to swallow everything in its path, to create its body out of every living thing, until the world is completely consumed ... This is the 'Worldeater', and it manifests as all the metaphorical spirits, worms, and octopuses that human communities around the world have associated with techno-capitalist development's unnaturally swift destruction of local ecosystems and traditional ways of life. The Worldeater is the spirit that animates total extractivism, defined as 'the imperative driving the global capitalist economy, centred on the deployment of violent technologies aiming at integrating and reconfiguring the earth and absorbing its inhabitants, meanwhile normalising its logics, apparatuses and subjectivities, as it violently colonises and pacifies various natures' (p6). The Hydra, viruses, and all other manner of out- of-control monsters mentioned in this book paint a colourful picture of what advocates of total liberation against total extractivism are up against. Though monsters may be capable of enchanting their prey for a time, they are visible (legible) threats that can be monitored and contained, maintaining the potential for human agency and intervention. According to Dunlap and Jakobsen, this beast can only be stopped...