<div dir="ltr"><div>I've been remiss in acknowledging I am writing from the unceded territories of the Lenape people on what was once a lovely tidal swamp and is now Loisaida on the island of Manhattan. It may soon be a tidal swamp again, due to climate change and sea level rising. </div>Regarding Tsing/Haraway's excellent use of the term 'Plantationocene', I wrote an article in the early 90's on the use of deforestation as a kind of propaganda in Canada<div>See here =><a href="http://www.oliverk.org/node/174">http://www.oliverk.org/node/174</a></div><div>By propaganda, I mean propaganda for capitalism. Forest ecosystems as stewarded by First Nations tended to be less about property and more of a complex mosaic of rights to harvest resources from a commons. Primary forests <i>by their very existence</i> threaten the notion of property as they preexist it and thus are outside the capitalist object. So there is a semiotic requirement by capitalism to transform primary ecosystems and non-capitalist/indigenous cultures into tree farms/plantations so as to obliterate anything outside the expanding capitalist hyperobject. It's not just about profit but about obliterating the cultural memory of lifeways outside of property and capital. I think this is what accounts for some of the ferocity of the deforestation in Amazonia but also in British Columbia and elsewhere. It is profoundly ideological – a hate crime. Capitalism cannot tolerate anything outside itself as it is the ultimate invasive species. The art system is deeply engrained in the capitalist machine (as we all know) and functions as a kind of image laundering mechanism. Some self-criticism is always in order.</div><div>Appropos this => Another old article from what seems a thousand years ago (1989) but the situation is now so much worse with the likes of the Sackler family. What are the alternatives to complete subsumption? How do we create permacultures of resistance and alterity?</div><div><a href="http://www.oliverk.org/node/177">http://www.oliverk.org/node/177</a><br></div><div>(Money Laundering and the Arts)</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 8:22 AM margaretha haughwout <<a href="mailto:margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com">margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Dear All,</div><div><br></div><div>It seems a good place to draw from the excellent link Shu Lea posted early on -- a discussion between Haraway and Tsing on the Plantationocene. Here it is again: <a href="https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/" target="_blank">https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/</a></div><div><br></div><div>From Haraway and Tsing's discussion we can understand that the Plantationocene (as opposed to the Anthropocene) is a "situated, historical set of conjunctures" that dramatically reduces species diversity, requires forced labor (of a local labor force or one brought in from outside -- " through indenture, unequal contract, or out-and-out slavery"), is often genocidal, exhausts its own base (exhausts soils, water, people, plants, etc.), and it unleashes pathogens due to the disruption/ removal of habitats and species (as Oliver pointed out in a recent conversation, viruses don't give up if their normal host goes missing). <br></div><div><br></div><div>Tsing recognizes too that the factory labor system emerges out of the plantation, through its model of discipline and alienation. And Haraway argues that forced labor isn't exclusive to humans in the Plantationocene (we can draw from <a href="https://jasonwmoore.com/" target="_blank">Jason Moore</a> here too); she urges us to recognize the forced labor of other species including machines. Also the temporalities of these simplified ecologies and the laborers are speeded up -- the "generation times" accelerate. Here we might also think of <a href="https://elainegan.com/" target="_blank">Elaine Gan</a>'s important work on rice: <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689859/pdf" target="_blank">https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689859/pdf</a></div><div><br></div><div>According to Haraway, "The capacity to love and care for place is radically incompatible with the plantation."</div><div><br></div><div>A final point I'll mention here is one that Tsing brings up -- that the conjuncture between disciplined plants and disciplined humans is one we as inheritors of Plantationocene legacies now equate completely with agriculture, with the totality of growing food. But there are many ways to grow food. The Amazon is after all, a garden.</div><div><br></div><div>-M</div><div><br></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail-m_-549966641632966145gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>--<br></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(204,204,204)"><a href="http://beforebefore.net" target="_blank">beforebefore.net</a></span><br><div>--</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br>I thank Fabi and Sergio for their latest comments, as for shifts to happen in our current state of entropy, it must come from those most marginalized and disenfranchised. Food grown, harvested and processed when just, cooperative and intrapersonal labor is closest to the biological and psychological technologies of the farm / garden / meal / hospitality, is the most resource-full. <br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>...<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"> “THE PLANTS And now this [sic] what the Creator did. He decided, ‘There will be plants growing on the earth. Indeed, all of them will have names, as many plants as will be growing on the earth. At a certain time they will emerge from the earth and mature of their own accord. They will be available in abundance as medicines to the people moving about on the earth.’ That is what he intended. And it is true: we have been using them up the present time, the medicines which the Creator made. He decided that it would be thus: that people would be obtaining them from the earth, where the medicines would be distributed. And this [sic] what the Creator did: He decided, ‘<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ik5K7h-H1/" target="_blank">Illness will overtake the people moving about on the earth, and these will always be there for their assistance.</a>’ And he left on the earth all the different medicines to assist us in the future.”<br></div></blockquote><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Whether in New York State, Brazil, DR Congo, or western China, we can always count on these technologies and those who sustain them, to be reframed as oppositional weapons by those in power. While cooking in Conflict Kitchen’s kitchen with Culinary Director Robert Sayre whose father is the co-founder and scientist at <a href="https://www.pebblelabs.com/" target="_blank">Pebble Labs and Trait Biosciences in Los Alamos</a>, our conversations would inevitably converge between “science for whom” with Richard’s newest cassava research in West Africa, the ongoing conflict in Syria on the morning radio, yet another customer at the window who wanted our menu to be solely vegan, clogged grease traps and overstacked dishes, continued gentrification in one of Pittsburgh predominant Black neighborhoods with a<a href="https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/05/the-new-urban-fried-chicken-crisis/526050/" target="_blank"> just opened white-owned ‘hip-hop and fried chicken joint’ down the street from a recently forced out Black-owned music venue</a>, international reporters who wanted only the most superficial story of artists challenging Trump, our newly formed staff union (I was management), or the death threat that we received during our Palestinian iteration.<br><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div></div><div>... Not being able to live off the land, not understanding that you have to make money to pay for that electric bill or food at the grocery store in town instead of hunting: it was a big transition for many of the families there. … That land was Native people’s home. It was a third of the Seneca Nation’s territory. It was the richest, most arable farmland near the water. And now it’s completely destroyed” (Anonymous, Conflict Kitchen Haudenosaunee food wrapper interviewee, 2016).<br><br>Indeed, techne - a tool - whether art, food or knowledge, can and should be wielded as a weapon of defense and resistance, in turn:<br><br>SOUP<br><br>From Entering Onondaga<br>Joesph Bruchac (AKA Planting Moon), 1977<br><br>One time Coyote<br>drank soup from<br>Turtle’s pot<br><br>Turtle wasn’t home<br> <br>Coyote stepped<br>behind a pine<br>to take a leak<br>trickle became a river<br><br>Help me, I can’t stop<br><br>river turned into flood<br>covered the land<br>swept Coyote’s people away<br><br>Don’t mess around<br>with other people’s things<br><br>~~~~~</div><div><br><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ilQ4whkhJ/" target="_blank">“I am challenging the occupation by living only off the fruits of my land. In this way, the land itself is empowering me to resist”</a> (Khalid Daraghmeh, Conflict Kitchen label on olive oil products from the Daraghmeh Family Farm, 2014).<br><br>~~~~~<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><br><pre>let me bring up this recent (2019) post-
Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway
and Anna Tsing
<a href="https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/" target="_blank">https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/</a>
a good pot-mix.</pre></div></div>
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