Rundale

By Kathleen Stokes

This month’s articles share a common theme of unexpected connections and common ground. 

This collage (and indeed all those we’ve posted thus far) were assembled in recent years, rather than specifically for Rundale. Despite the passage of time, they continue to hit upon many of the challenges that have been permeating our screens and consciousness of late, yet also are by no means new, recent, or exceptional. 

Instead of talking about unprecedented events, we might instead speak of shifts or variations in intensity. Or perhaps it is more helpful to imagine an unveiling or demystification. Killed by the system we’re told protects us is not simply about military attacks or direct violence. It applies to our economies, social structures, political institutions – sometimes for all, and more often for some. It can be overt and calculated, or mundane and accidental. 

This month, Louise Fitzgerald and Maedhbh Nic Lochlainn review Cannibal Capitalism, Nancy Fraser’s latest book. In it, Fraser offers a critical political economy for the twenty-first century, and outlines how capitalism is cannibalising the social, natural, and political structures that it requires to sustain it.

Fiadh Tubridy illustrates how exposure to climate risks and instances of ‘strategic managed retreat’ reflect wider land and housing inequalities. Reflecting on the Shannon Valley Flood Relief Scheme and associated land reforms, she argues that a just response to such risks and inequalities must confront private property rights and land reform.

Bana Abu Zuluf, Patrick Bresnihan, and Rory Rowan situate environmental injustices underway in Gaza within the longer history of ecocide and environmental control experienced by Palestinians under occupation. They emphasise how land is reframed, controlled, degraded, and instrumentalised under settler colonial regimes, and call for the pursuit of decolonial environmental justice.

We offer two questions for thinking across April’s pieces: How do we recognise and make sense of seemingly continuous, yet constantly fluctuating struggles – many of which are deeply entangled? Further, what does it mean to seek justice in the face of normalised violence and oppression?