An Erotic Re-Imagination of Human/Nature Relationality

Ecosexuality and the Legacies of Coloniality in Love and Sex

Abstract

In this paper, I set out to uncover the legacies of coloniality in our understandings of love and sex by looking at ecosexuality as a conceptual framework. I argue that sex and love as defined and categorized by the logic of Western modernity stand in the way of imagining a manner of otherwise relating to others (both humans and non-human beings or matter). To imagine love and sex differently and to uncover their intertwined complexity within the pervasive discourses of coloniality, I base my approach on trans-corporeality, which problematizes ‘relation’ as understood in terms of subject/object binary. Attempting to expose the anthropocentricism in our understanding of sex acts, I engage with the implication of ‘likeness’ to dissect the ecosexual idea of ‘having sex with nature.’ Finally, in a discussion of the entanglement of sex and love and their rootedness in modernity, I bring forth both the pitfalls and the potentialities of ecosexuality for a re-imagining of love and relationality.