This chapter explores how Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2021) poses a question that most justice-oriented ELA educators are afraid to ask: namely, Is violence justified to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change?  The chapter discusses contested definitions of “violence,” disagreements about whether violence is effective as a form of collective action, and moral frameworks for justifying (or not) uses of violence.

Additional Content for my chapter:

1. Link to online PDF copy of The Ministry for the Future, full text file:///Users/todddestigter/Desktop/9780316300131.pdf

2. Link to Study Guide for teaching The Ministry for the Future, Ch. 1

https://subjecttoclimate.org/resource/the-ministry-for-the-future-chapter-1

3. Link to Andreas Malm’s How To Blow Up a Pipeline

https://howtoblowupapipeline.film/ebook

4. Link to website of film version of How To Blow Up a Pipeline, including links to the trailer and a map of pipeline spills:

https://howtoblowupapipeline.film/

5. Link to Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”

https://criticaltheoryconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Benjamin-Critique-of-Violence-1.pdf

6.Link to article about violent resistance during the Indian Independence Movement:

McQuade, J. (2016). “The Forgotten Violence that Helped India Break Free from Colonial Rule,” The Conversation, Cambridge University.

https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-violence-that-helped-india-break-free-from-colonial-rule-57904

7. Link to article about violent resistance during the Indian Independence Movement:

Kumar, A. (2022). “The Myth of India’s Non-violent Freedom Struggle,” India Currents.

https://indiacurrents.com/the-myth-of-indias-non-violent-freedom-struggle/

8. Link to article about Black people’s armed resistance to Ku Klux Klan violence during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

Austin, C. (2002). “On Violence and Nonviolence: The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.” Mississippi History Now.

https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-civil-rights-movement-in-mississippi-on-violence-and-nonviolence