[-empyre-] AMAZON IS BURNING

Thu Sep 19 01:17:55 AEST 2019

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.
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
See here =>http://www.oliverk.org/node/174
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 *by their very existence* 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.
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?
http://www.oliverk.org/node/177
(Money Laundering and the Arts)

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 8:22 AM margaretha haughwout <
margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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.
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

-- 
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