The Unlively : Protesting Fossil Fuel Pollution with David Buckel

Sofia Varino

ISBN 10: 1032861614 / ISBN 13: 9781032861616

Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd Sep 2026, 2026

About this Item

Neuware - The Unlively: Protesting Fossil Fuel Pollution with David Buckel examines air pollution and extinction by looking into how they might contribute, conceptually and politically, to a queer ecopolitics of death. It focuses on the figure of David Buckel, an American LGBT rights lawyer and environmentalist, who self-immolated to protest fossil fuel pollution in 2018. The author considers Buckel's death as an act of political protest, whereby a (singular) living body attacks itself as a response to the (collective) extinction of non/human life forms. The book mobilizes the materiality of death and non/human extinction, proposing the concept of the 'unlively' as that which negates life or is incapable of vitality, to account for Buckel's self-immolation as well as the deadly effects of fossil fuel air pollution.Part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, the book will be indispensable for students and researchers of political ecology, environmental humanities, gender studies, and queer theory, alongside the emerging fields of queer death studies, discard studies, and critical breath studies.

Seller Inventory # 9781032861616

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Unlively : Protesting Fossil Fuel Pollution with David Buckel
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd Sep 2026
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032861614
• ISBN 13: 9781032861616
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 234W x 156H x 8D millimeters 234 millimeters width by 156 millimeters height by 8 millimeters depth
• Weight: 390 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The Unlively: Protesting Fossil Fuel Pollution with David Buckel examines air pollution and extinction by looking into how they might contribute, conceptually and politically, to a queer ecopolitics of death. It focuses on the figure of David Buckel, an American LGBT rights lawyer and environmentalist, who self-immolated to protest fossil fuel pollution in 2018. The author considers Buckel’s death as an act of political protest, whereby a (singular) living body attacks itself as a response to the (collective) extinction of non/human life forms. The book mobilizes the materiality of death and non/human extinction, proposing the concept of the “unlively” as that which negates life or is incapable of vitality, to account for Buckel’s self-immolation as well as the deadly effects of fossil fuel air pollution.

Part of the Routledge Critical Perspectives on Breath and Breathing series, the book will be indispensable for students and researchers of political ecology, environmental humanities, gender studies, and queer theory, alongside the emerging fields of queer death studies, discard studies, and critical breath studies.

About the Author

Sofia Varino, PhD, is co-author of Aquatopia: Climate Interventions (2023) and co-editor of a special issue of Somatechnics (2019). Varino's research interests span political ecology, feminist science studies, and American studies. They teach at Humboldt University of Berlin in Germany.