Anticipatory ruination

Anticipatory ruination is a mode of prefigurative governance in anticipation of the real and perceived threats of climate change. The concept draws our attention to the ways in which climate crisis is not inevitable, but is produced historically and through contemporary relations of power. In this brief piece, I examine the concept in relation to recent trends in critical agrarian studies that examine how narratives about climate crisis shape contemporary responses and their impacts in ways that entrench and reconfigure inequalities in the agrarian world. I conclude with a discussion of visions for agrarian climate justice as alternatives to the telos of anticipatory ruination.