Nemsie Gonzalez | 2026 I.S. Symposium

Name: Nemsie Gonzalez
Title: A Joint Struggle Against Oppression: Liberation and the Environment
Major: Environmental Studies; Philosophy
Advisor: Lee McBride

The aim of this project is to explore the concepts of oppression and the environment, in doing so I aim to prove that the manipulation and exploitation of the environment and oppressed people are constitutive of one another. My central claim being that the subordination of oppressed people and the environment are facilitated by the same mechanisms, namely dualistic logic and the episteme and social structures that come about as a result of corresponding hierarchical value systems. In evaluating the relationship between oppression and environmental degradation I provide methods of resistance and liberation that exist outside of the dualistic logic of of oppression. In changing our environmental ethics to utilize principles of care and respect we can find, develop and establish new resistant ways of being and relating to one another. Changing our relations to one another and the environment necessitates the destruction of all forms of oppression all at once, thus beginning the process of liberation and revolution. These ideas can thus take us out of the oppressive episteme we find ourselves in allowing us to create new and imaginative futures.

Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.