Exploring the Plantationocene Through Works by Otobong Nkanga

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_18208
dc.contributor.author	Öhrström Kann Rebecka
dc.title	Exploring the Plantationocene Through Works by Otobong Nkanga
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	This paper engages Otobong Nkanga’s work In Pursuit of Bling, The Weight of Scars, as well as Anamnesis through the Lens of the Plantationocene. Coined by cultural theorist Donna Haraway and anthropologist Anna Tsing, the theory of the Plantationocene positions the emergence of extractive agricultural and natural resource withdrawal systems that are dependent on precarious racialised labour developed during the colonisation of the new world, as a defining point in our relationship with land and landscape. Nkanga’s work examines the relationship between land, body, and labour through the colonial history of mineral mining in Namibia and Nigeria, the displacement and transportation of plants and people as commodities in racial capitalism, and the act of reconstructing a fractured landscape. Through the use of haptic means, such as bringing material from the landscape into the gallery, Nkanga explores alternative ways of knowing and thinking about ecological and colonial histories but also how ideas of blackness emerged intertwined with the materials of the plantation through forced racialised labour. Drawing on Katherine McKittrick’s exploration of Plantation Futures, Krista Thompson’s analysis of the ʻpolitics of Bling’, and Kathryn Yusoff’s scholarship on the colonial history of geology, I consider how Nkanga’s work disrupts the traditional narrative around the Anthropocene to show historical environmental inequalities and the scars of colonialism in the present-day landscape.
dc.relation.ispartof	The Future Contemporary
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2023-12-14
dc.dateAccepted	2023-08-09
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-07-11
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-756-2/exploring-the-plantationocene-through-works-by-oto/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-756-2/009
dc.identifier.issn	2785-1613
dc.identifier.eissn	2785-0986
dc.identifier.isbn
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-756-2
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Anthropocene
dc.subject	Environment
dc.subject	Extraction
dc.subject	Materiality
dc.subject	Plantationocene
dc.subject	Racialized labour

Chapter
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Exploring the Plantationocene Through Works by Otobong Nkanga

Rebecka Öhrström Kann Art photographer and art historian

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abstract

This paper engages Otobong Nkanga’s work In Pursuit of Bling, The Weight of Scars, as well as Anamnesis through the Lens of the Plantationocene. Coined by cultural theorist Donna Haraway and anthropologist Anna Tsing, the theory of the Plantationocene positions the emergence of extractive agricultural and natural resource withdrawal systems that are dependent on precarious racialised labour developed during the colonisation of the new world, as a defining point in our relationship with land and landscape. Nkanga’s work examines the relationship between land, body, and labour through the colonial history of mineral mining in Namibia and Nigeria, the displacement and transportation of plants and people as commodities in racial capitalism, and the act of reconstructing a fractured landscape. Through the use of haptic means, such as bringing material from the landscape into the gallery, Nkanga explores alternative ways of knowing and thinking about ecological and colonial histories but also how ideas of blackness emerged intertwined with the materials of the plantation through forced racialised labour. Drawing on Katherine McKittrick’s exploration of Plantation Futures, Krista Thompson’s analysis of the ʻpolitics of Bling’, and Kathryn Yusoff’s scholarship on the colonial history of geology, I consider how Nkanga’s work disrupts the traditional narrative around the Anthropocene to show historical environmental inequalities and the scars of colonialism in the present-day landscape.

Published

Dec. 14, 2023

Accepted

Aug. 9, 2023

Submitted

July 11, 2023

Language

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-756-2

Keywords: Environment • Extraction • Plantationocene • Racialized labour • Anthropocene • Materiality

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-756-2/009

Copyright: © 2023 Rebecka Öhrström Kann. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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