SYLLABI
A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds
In this syllabus, we use plantations—and the worlds and configurations of life they have engendered—as the main mode of organizing time, space, and knowledge under extractive capitalism.We also intend this syllabus as a point of departure for readers who seek to understand the many different ways in which plantations, past and present, anchor the relations of power that sustain projects of colonialism, capitalism, and empire. We envision this syllabus as a means to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of plantation worlds by foregrounding the ways of knowing and being that racial capitalism silences. Through a collection of readings, we interrogate how plantation worlds have been constantly made and unmade, and how these opposing processes have structured understandings of and ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans. This syllabus destabilizes imaginaries of the Plantationocene that anchor “the plantation” in linear time and space. Instead, we want to account for the dynamic and contextually contingent processes of making and unmaking of plantation worlds, past and present.
Citation:
Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie.“A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds” Edge Effects, May 2021
This syllabus is concludes an essay series on the Plantationocene published by Edge Effects as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar ”Interrogating the Plantationocene” at UW-Madison (2019-2021). You can access the Plantationocene Series here.
In this syllabus, we use plantations—and the worlds and configurations of life they have engendered—as the main mode of organizing time, space, and knowledge under extractive capitalism.We also intend this syllabus as a point of departure for readers who seek to understand the many different ways in which plantations, past and present, anchor the relations of power that sustain projects of colonialism, capitalism, and empire. We envision this syllabus as a means to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of plantation worlds by foregrounding the ways of knowing and being that racial capitalism silences. Through a collection of readings, we interrogate how plantation worlds have been constantly made and unmade, and how these opposing processes have structured understandings of and ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans. This syllabus destabilizes imaginaries of the Plantationocene that anchor “the plantation” in linear time and space. Instead, we want to account for the dynamic and contextually contingent processes of making and unmaking of plantation worlds, past and present.
Citation:
Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie.“A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds” Edge Effects, May 2021
This syllabus is concludes an essay series on the Plantationocene published by Edge Effects as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar ”Interrogating the Plantationocene” at UW-Madison (2019-2021). You can access the Plantationocene Series here.