Medusa’s Lament: Class solidarity on the brink of ecological collapse

This creative and critical intervention instigates a call for solidarity among those humans from whose labour and enslavement capitalist imperialism was forged. It offers a choric poem for performance in which the mythical figure of Medusa has turned herself to stone and speaks in the voice of all of those humans that capitalism has appropriated or exploited along with the more-than-human world. The poem questions the validity of the label ‘Anthropocene’, which holds all humans in common as responsible for the climate crisis and rather seeks to distinguish the historical oppressors from the historically oppressed. The poem also seeks to challenge class-based condemnation of those who may not be able to afford the latest environmentally-conscious choices, but whose lifestyles have had a much lower carbon footprint than the more affluent, yet ostensibly environmentally-aware consumer. A critical reflection on the poem identifies the theoretical starting points for its thinking: the common history of exploitation shared in the time of Empire by the poor of the Industrial North and the enslaved of the Global South; and the need to resist the calls from the right that would divide the working class into different racial appellations in order to deflect from their common enemy.