On Refusing Solidarity: Environmental Catastrophes, Ontological Loss, and the Ethics of Epistemic Withdrawal

Abstract This article offers critique of Pascoe and Stripling’s The Epistemology of Disaster and Social Change, which frames environmental disasters as a site of ethical and epistemic openness that enable social transformation. Although sympathetic to their justice-oriented framework, I argue that it implicitly relies on the continued epistemic labor of the most structurally marginalized. Drawing centrally on the work of Maria Lugones and Sara Ahmed, I argue that there is potentially catastrophic loses in the wake of environmental crisis that justify refusing epistemic solidarity with more privileged members of society. I contend that the ambiguity about refusal highlights a potential for Pascoe and Stripling’s framework to unintentionally be epistemically exploitative.