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Title
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Dryland : afforestation and the politics of plant life
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Author
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Abstract
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| Dryland elevates the aliveness of plants by exploring afforestation, the practice of planting trees in otherwise treeless environments. By surveying the connection between ecology as a twentieth century science and plants as living organisms, the loss of global diversity is examined in order to recognize the challenges of conservation. Chapters address the overlooked tradition of dryland afforestation through the rise of scientific forestry in the American Prairies, the control of colonial holdings in Sub-Sahelian Africa, and the spread of environmental decline in hyper-arid China. Including plant life as a political subject not only problemizes practices such as tree planting, it expands what usually counts as politics. Thus conceived, Dryland suggests that planting a tree can either be one of the ultimate offerings to thriving on this planet, or one of the most extreme perversions of human agency over it. Afforestation is the deliberate planting of trees in an otherwise treeless environment. Another dictum could be the deliberate insertion of a forest in a grassland or desert biome. There is nothing “natural” or restorative about the procedure. As a specific form of anthropogenic disturbance, afforestation is an intensely political maneuver. Dryland explores the politics of tree planting by indexing afforestation through the rise of scientific forestry in the United States, the control of colonial holdings in Africa, and the spread of environmental decline in China. The argument culminates in critique of global tree planting as a means to offset extreme deforestation. Projects are situated across the 20th century in order to resist the categories of specific intervals, movements or historical versus contemporary labels, relying on precedent to substantiate afforestation as a global practice. The term plant life is used to help us help us think about how we might organize our transactions differently and more carefully, when the concept of planting is replaced with the aliveness of plants. This gives agency to the plant and distributes it away from the human. Expanding the terms of plant life beyond professional operations makes it possible to take account of how plant science is appropriated as a means to further global development, confusing knowledge and politics by conflating speculation with certainty. It further argues that these assumptions continue to ripple through novel discourses including the ‘stuff’ of social theory, the monolithic concept of nature proposed by the Anthropocene and the challenge of a rapidly warming climate. Therefore, one of the central agendas is to distinguish between the plant as a sessile tool and its actual aliveness, in order to explore the connection between ecology as a twentieth century science and plants as living organisms. |
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Language
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English
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Publication
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Antwerp
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University of Antwerp, Faculty of Arts, Department of History Urban Studies Institute
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2019
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Note
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De Block, Greet [Supervisor]
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Swyngedouw, Erik [Supervisor]
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Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
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