CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES IN/OF THE PLANTATIONOCENE

Abstract

The climate change socioenvironmental crisis has impelled human sciences to reflect upon the experiential conditions of the multiplying and intensified catastrophes. Thus, they question the generic character of humanity implicit in the “Anthropos” of Anthropocene and highlight the explicative potential of Plantationocene as its conceptual alternative. It presents an in-depth way to comprehend the present assemblages of precarity by situating the dystopias of this epoch as consequences of the plantation system. This essay aims to problematize the Plantationocene’s apocalyptical geographical realities and how cultural geographies have been answering the call evoked by its consequences. To do so, it employs a bibliographical investigation that articulates Geography, Anthropology and Philosophy. It considers that facing the conditions of co-vulnerability of this epoch involves the valorisation of geographical imaginaries of multispecies’ intersubjectivity and intercorporeality. The intertwining of human and non-human experiences, senses and practices enables one to comprehend cohabitational earthy dynamics that foregrounds kaleidoscopic views that contrapose the anthropocentric hegemony of plantation reverberations. It concludes that transcending the ruining and precarities of survival in the Plantationocene solicits the constitution of cultural geographies that touch upon the conviviality of pluritopic and heterogeneous geographical imaginations.