Life Is Not Useful

by Krenak, Ailton; Brostoff, Alex; Dias, Jamille Pinheiro

• ISBN13: 9781509554058
• ISBN10: 150955405X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781509554065
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-05-08
• Publisher: Polity
• More Book Details
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Summary

Indigenous leader and activist Ailton Krenak reminds us that we must awaken from the comatose senselessness we have been immersed in since the beginning of the modern colonial project, where order, progress, development, consumerism, and capitalism have taken over our entire existence, leaving us only very partially alive, and, in fact, almost dead. To awaken from the coma of modernity is, for Krenak, to awaken to the possibility of becoming attuned to “the cosmic sense of life.” He points out that the COVID-19 pandemic affects all so-called “human” lives and that the time is ripe for us all to reflect on and undo the exclusivity and distinction that have characterized the concept of humanity throughout Western modernity.

Author Biography

Ailton Krenak was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in the Doce River Valley region which has been severely affected by mining. A leading environmental activist and campaigner for Indigenous rights, he organized the Alliance of Forest Peoples, which unites riverine and Indigenous communities throughout the Amazon. He has consistently been one of the best-known campaigners in the movement set in motion by the Indigenous Awakening in the 1970s and was a key figure in the formation of the Union of Indigenous Nations (UIN), which brought together 180 different Indigenous groups across the country in a unified front to push for rights. He was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the President of the Republic in 2016, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. His previous book, Ideas to Postpone the End of the World, was an international bestseller, with more than 50,000 copies sold in Brazil alone.

Table of Contents

About the author

About this book

Acknowledgements

Introduction – Natalia Brizuela



You Can’t Eat Money

Dreams to Postpone the End of the World

The Thing-Making Machine

Tomorrow is Not for Sale

Life is Not Useful