Description
Is this our final century? Scholars and popular writers are increasingly engaged in debates on the potential collapse of human civilisation due to crises such as climate change, advanced artificial intelligence, and nuclear threats. Yet these debates often overlook the tensions between universalist approaches to catastrophic and even existential risk and the diverse lived experiences that shape our understanding of catastrophe. This article brings the concept of Negritude from Black intellectual thought—through a reading of Aimé Césaire's writings—into existentialist literature within International Relations (IR) to critique the intergenerational turn in climate governance by exposing its limits in building genuine global solidarity. I argue that Negritude's emphasis on subjectivity challenges the universalist claims of liberalism that dominate climate politics, particularly given that half of this century's future generations will come from Africa. By foregrounding Negritude, the article underscores the need to broaden perspectives in developing a truly global response to catastrophic risks. Such a shift entails going beyond the limitations of multilateral cooperation anchored in the collapsing liberal international order (LIO), pointing towards more inclusive approaches to global governance grounded in intergenerational solidarity.
