Arguments of green colonialism: a post-dialectical reading of extractivism in the Americas

Abstract

ABSTRACT Through two of the largest mining companies in the world, Rio Tinto and BHP, this article traces arguments of green colonialism that use techno-determinist environmental rhetoric for extraction purposes. Contributing to environmental communication, de/coloniality studies, and Indigenous research, I argue for a more expansive approach to argument that accounts for situated knowledge, place, and affect as ontological argumentative forces. I introduce a series of case studies on Rio Tinto’s and BHP’s resource colonialisms at different sites of extraction throughout the Americas, particularly in South America, to show how “good” arguments are determined by the modern/colonial matrix power and how decolonial actors speak back. The Argumentation Network of the Americas (ANA) is in a unique position to resist argumentative logics of resource colonialism in the Americas, but argumentation must first address its own extractive models rooted in European ideals of modernism/colonialism.