Fran oise Verg s is a Paris-based political scientist, activist in the global anti-racist struggle, historian, film producer, public educator, and the Chair of Global South(s) (Fondation Maison des Sciences de lHomme, Paris). She is the author of several books about slavery, colonialism, imperialism, decolonial feminism, and new politics of dispossession and racialization.
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"Dalit women in India remove human excreta by hand from sewers. In the United States most cleaners are Black and brown women. In one angry, fell swoop Making the World Clean shows such phenomena to be neither accidental nor unintentional but the conscious product of racial capitalism. Francoise Verges uncovers the violent, colonial social relations that make certain people cleaners of waste, while capitalism continues to waste lives and ecosystems. Capitalism wont clean up its act, with the help of this book we can cleanse the world of capitalism." -Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of South Asian History, Purdue University
"Capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy are all forms of power that survive by monopolising our imaginary of how to cure ourselves of the very problems that they create and disseminate among us. They cause war, misery, and environmental disasters and colonise the way we think of peace, happiness, and sustainability. In the same vein, and as Francoise Verges shows so well in this book, they cause waste, dirt, and toxicity and shape our imaginary of cleaning and cleanliness. Her differentiation between "cleaning up" and "cleaning" grounds a powerful critique of this colonised imaginary. It should be said that in this environment of intellectual pollution reading Verges is itself a form of decolonial cleaning of the mind."-Ghassan Hage, Professor of Anthropology, University of Melbourne
"Capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy are all forms of power that survive by monopolising our imaginary of how to cure ourselves of the very problems that they create and disseminate among us. They cause war, misery, and environmental disasters and colonise the way we think of peace, happiness, and sustainability. In the same vein, and as Francoise Verges shows so well in this book, they cause waste, dirt, and toxicity and shape our imaginary of cleaning and cleanliness. Her differentiation between "cleaning up" and "cleaning" grounds a powerful critique of this colonised imaginary. It should be said that in this environment of intellectual pollution reading Verges is itself a form of decolonial cleaning of the mind."-Ghassan Hage, Professor of Anthropology, University of Melbourne