‘A Sea of Dark Green Plants’. Rereading Joseph Conrad’s The Planter of Malata in the Plantationocene

• Authors: Asia Battiloro

Title variants

PL

„Na morzu ciemnozielonego listowia”. Powrót do Plantatora z Malaty Josepha Conrada w epoce plantacjocenu

Abstracts

PL

Niniejsza praca wykorzystuje systemową koncepcję „plantacjocenu” w analizie Plantatora z Malaty (PzM) (2012 [1914]) Josepha Conrada, ukazując przy tym autora jako pisarza obecnej epoki geologicznej, w której niszczycielska działalność człowieka doprowadziła do nieodwracalnych zmian na Ziemi. W przyjętym w niniejszym artykule ujęciu czas w PzM nabiera podwójnego, analitycznego znaczenia. Pomimo że praca skupia się na historycznych powiązaniach ekonomicznych inwestycji z imperialnym zamiarem kolonialnego zarządzania naukowego, analizuje ona również PzM z biokolonialnej perspektywy. Perspektywa ta podkreśla rolę przesiedlonego życia roślinnego jako niezwykle istotnego dla ontologicznie pluralistycznej kontekstualizacji PzM jako przykładu plantacjoceńskiej narracji. Z analizy wynika, że PzM zapewnia dostęp do tego, co można nazwać w rozumienia Marka Boulda plantacjonoceńską „nieświadomością”, ponieważ opowiadanie to ukazuje współczesnemu czytelnikowi realia ludzkiej oraz „nie-ludzkiej” (tj. np. roślinnej), dyslokacji, relokacji i ich wyzysku na królewskiej plantacji na początku XX w.

EN

In this paper I use the systemic concept of ‘Plantationocene’ to map out my reading of Joseph Conrad’s short story ‘The Planter of Malata’ (TPM) (1914), reframing Conrad as a writer of the current geological age, where human activity has induced devastating alterations to the Earth. In my ecoreading of TPM, time acquires a double analytical meaning. While I focus on the historical entanglements between capital investment and imperial goals of colonial scientific management mirrored in TPM, I also look at this short story from a biocolonial perspective, foregrounding the role of displaced plant life as extremely relevant for an ontologically plural contextual understanding of TPM as a narrative of the Plantationocene. Ultimately, I argue that TPM gives access to what could be termed the Plantationocene ‘unconscious’, in Mark Bould’s sense of the term, as it portrays for a contemporary readership the realities of human and nonhuman dislocation, relocation and exploitation unfolding in the context of the imperial plantation at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Keywords

PL

plantacjocen; Joseph Conrad; biokolonializm; nie-ludzie; ekokrytycyzm

EN

Plantationocene; Conrad; biocolonialism; nonhuman; ecocriticism

• Publisher: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
• Journal: Perspektywy Kultury
• Year: 2024
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 51-64

Dates

published

2024

Contributors

author

Asia Battiloro

• Sapienza University of Rome
• University of Silesia in Katowice

• https://orcid.org/0000000336572716

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Identifiers

DOI

10.35765/pk.2024.4502.05

Biblioteka Nauki

37547394