What is the Plantationocene?
The Plantationocene is a proposed alternate name for the epoch often called the Anthropocene. Inspired by the scholars, artists, and activists visiting University of Wisconsin–Madison as part of the 2019-2020 Sawyer Seminar “Interrogating the Plantationocene,” this Edge Effects series aims to foster conversations that address multiple forms of plantations, past and present, as well as the ways that plantation logics organize modern economies, environments, bodies, and social relations. For an introduction to the term and the questions surrounding it, read the essay that begins the series: “Plantation Legacies” by Sophie Sapp Moore, Monique Allewaert, Pablo F. Gómez, and Gregg Mitman.
Series editors: Laura Perry and Addie Hopes
Plantation Legacies
The Anthropocene gives a name to human-caused environmental change. The Plantationocene puts colonialism, capitalism, and enduring racial hierarchies at the center of the conversation and asks what past and future modes of resistance might emerge.
A Search for Repair in the Wake of the Plantation
An audio-visual essay by Deborah A. Thomas responds to the 2010 state of emergency in West Kingston, Jamaica, known as the "Tivoli Incursion" and asks how archiving affects—not just events—might be a way to re-imagine justice, politics, and repair.
How the Soil Remembers Plantation Slavery
What haunts the land? Artists R.L. Martens and Bii Robertson dig up the tangled history of "the vampire crop," slavery, and soil exhaustion in Maryland, revealing that the past is more present than you might think.
Plantation Housing Isn’t the Answer to Homelessness in HawaiÊ»i
A "plantation-style community" might ease houselessness in Hawaiʻi. But it also erases violent histories of labor exploitation and Native dispossession. Leanne Day and Rebecca Hogue discuss Kahauiki Village and the dangers of plantation nostalgia.
Excavating Haitian Histories
Haitian political history, TaÃno artifacts, colonial plantations, and even cholera bacteria leave their marks on the land in Kwynn Johnson's 30-foot panoramic drawing of Cap Haitien.
Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing
Plantations discipline both plants and people. Two scholars reckon with the Plantationocene to develop a shared vision of multispecies justice.
How Rubber Plantations Reshaped Vietnam: A Conversation with Michitake Aso
An environmental historian explains why, for Vietnam’s rubber plantations and plantation workers, the specifics of colonialism, geography, and ecology matter.
Phosphate Mining and the Paradox of Abundance
Phosphorus fertilizes the land. Phosphate mining poisons it. Artist Christian Danielewitz visits sites of extraction in western Senegal and considers the Plantationocene.
In Hawaiʻi, Plantation Tourism Tastes Like Pineapple
The Dole pineapple plantation has a destructive history of transforming the Hawaiian Islands. Mallory Huard describes how that continues today in the tourism industry.
What Is Land? A Conversation with Tania Murray Li, Rafael Marquese, and Monica White
Land is the scene of a crime and a site of liberation. Tania Murray Li, Rafael Marquese, and Monica White discuss land and the Plantationocene with Elizabeth Hennessy.
Can Small-Scale Farming Save Oil Palm?
Drawing from her fieldwork with small-scale oil palm growers and plantation workers in Colombia, Angela Serrano describes a smaller way to farm oil palm.
Fugitive Seeds
Christian Brooks Keeve traces how fugitive seeds and seed stories are deeply entangled with the stories and legacies of the Black diaspora.
Keeping Time with Colombian Plantation Calendars
Timothy Lorek compares two calendars from Colombia that offer competing visions of plantation presents and agricultural futures.
Picturing the Plantation as a Site of Displacement
A photo essay by Christine Horn from her fieldwork in Sarawak, Borneo, shows how oil palm plantations rearrange and displace communities and landscapes.
Fermentation, Rot, and Power in the Early Modern Atlantic
The histories of fermentation and its unruly twin, rot, provide key insights into race, power, and resistance on plantations in the Caribbean.
A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds
Drawing from postcolonial, Caribbean, Black, and Indigenous Studies, Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie curate a reading list that highlights the complex dynamics of plantation worlds, past and present. Their syllabus is the perfect end to our series on the Plantationocene.
