cultural geographies 0(0) 1–15 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1474474013486067 cgj.sagepub.com Decolonizing posthumanist geographies Juanita Sundberg University of British Columbia, Canada Abstract This paper engages my struggles to craft geo-graphs or earth writings that also further broaden political goals of decolonizing the discipline of geography. To this end, I address a body of literature roughly termed ‘posthumanism’ because it offers powerful tools to identify and critique dualist constructions of nature and culture that work to uphold Eurocentric knowledge and the colonial present. However, I am discomforted by the ways in which geographical engagements with posthumanism tend to reproduce colonial ways of knowing and being by enacting universalizing claims and, consequently, further subordinating other ontologies. Building from this discomfort, I elaborate a critique of geographical-posthumanist engagements. Taking direction from Indigenous and decolonial theorizing, the paper identifies two Eurocentric performances common in posthumanist geographies and analyzes their implications. I then conclude with some thoughts about steps to decolonize geo-graphs. To this end, I take up learnings offered by the Zapatistas. My goal is to foster geographical engagements open to conversing with and walking alongside other epistemic worlds. Keywords decolonizing, Eurocentrism, Indigenous geographies, ontology, posthumanism Introduction This paper engages my struggles to craft geo-graphs or earth writings that also further broaden political goals of decolonizing the discipline of geography. To this end, I address a body of litera- ture broadly termed ‘posthumanist’ because it offers powerful tools to identify and critique dualist constructions of nature and culture that work to uphold Eurocentric knowledge and the colonial present. 1 Geographers have taken up posthumanist approaches in various ways, producing a sig- nificant body of work that contests dualist ontologies in Anglo/European political philosophy by showing how a multiplicity of beings cast as human and nonhuman – people, plants, animals, ener- gies, technological objects – participate in the coproduction of socio-political collectives. 2 In so doing, geographers also point to the epistemological, political, and ethical limitations of on-going Corresponding author: Juanita Sundberg, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada. Email: juanita.sundberg@ubc.ca 486067 CGJ 0 0 10.1177/1474474013486067Cultural GeographiesSundberg 2013 Article