‘The European Way of Life’ as a nightmare for others in the ‘Anthropocene’

This chapter considers the actuality of Europe's colonial legacies in the context of ‘The European Way of Life’. It argues that how the European way of life is conceived, and in many ways also practiced, is an Imperial Way of Living, a form of living that can sustain itself only as long as an ‘outside’ on which to impose its costs is available. It starts by addressing the actuality of the thesis from Aimé Césaire, who argued in the 1950s that colonialism worked to decivilize the colonizers, and crucially preceded fascism and Nazism in Europe. A second, related dimension of a colonial lens is that it can help understand the ecological dimensions of the ‘Imperial Mode of Living’. It ends with a brief reflection on how we could understand, critique, expose and transform contemporary colonial patterns in Europe.