[-empyre-] AMAZON IS BURNING

Wed Sep 18 22:05:05 AEST 2019

Dear All,

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: https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/

>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).

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 Jason Moore <https://jasonwmoore.com/> 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 Elaine Gan <https://elainegan.com/>'s important work on rice:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689859/pdf

According to Haraway, "The capacity to love and care for place is radically
incompatible with the plantation."

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.

-M

--
beforebefore.net
--

> 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.
>

...

>  “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, ‘Illness will overtake the people moving about on the earth, and
> these will always be there for their assistance.
> <https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ik5K7h-H1/>’ And he left on the earth all
> the different medicines to assist us in the future.”
>

> 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 Pebble Labs and Trait Biosciences in
> Los Alamos <https://www.pebblelabs.com/>, 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
> just opened white-owned ‘hip-hop and fried chicken joint’ down the street
> from a recently forced out Black-owned music venue
> <https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/05/the-new-urban-fried-chicken-crisis/526050/>,
> 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.
>
>

> ... 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).
>
> Indeed, techne - a tool - whether art, food or knowledge, can and should
> be wielded as a weapon of defense and resistance, in turn:
>
> SOUP
>
> From Entering Onondaga
> Joesph Bruchac (AKA Planting Moon), 1977
>
> One time Coyote
> drank soup from
> Turtle’s pot
>
> Turtle wasn’t home
>
> Coyote stepped
> behind a pine
> to take a leak
> trickle became a river
>
> Help me, I can’t stop
>
> river turned into flood
> covered the land
> swept Coyote’s people away
>
> Don’t mess around
> with other people’s things
>
> ~~~~~
>
> “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”
> <https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ilQ4whkhJ/> (Khalid Daraghmeh, Conflict
> Kitchen label on olive oil products from the Daraghmeh Family Farm, 2014).
>
> ~~~~~
>

let me bring up this recent (2019) post-

  Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway
  and Anna Tsing
https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/

a good pot-mix.
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