The Black ecological practices highlighted in this essay offer guidance for constructing an ethico‐political vision that addresses the multiple global crises of the plantation present. These practices are founded upon a basic understanding that ecological care, multispecies kinship, and social justice are fundamental to the development of a human praxis that promotes well‐being. As such, they go beyond theorization and provide some of the “how to's” for realizing this vision. As outlined by authors in Black studies, these practices illuminate the critical role of racial struggle, borne on colonial plantations, in producing a more relational world. Hence, we are dissatisfied with theorizations of the Plantationocene that minimize the ways in which racial politics structure plantation life (both human and nonhuman). Such approaches limit a more nuanced and grounded understanding of the ways that the plantation inflicts socioecological violence as it simultaneously prompts differentiated, multifaceted, and relational ways of being. Sustained attention to race in Plantationocene scholarship is therefore crucial to the conception and practice of socioecological justice and multispecies kinship.
Thus, we acknowledge the need for a radical awareness of the plantation's role in producing global environmental change. However, an interest in ecological ethics must not overshadow attention to the dynamics of power (racial, gender, sexual, or otherwise). The destructive impacts of these processes stem, in no small part, from nature‐society dualisms. In the quest to dismantle this binary logic, we must recognize the numerous Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples who have, for many years, advanced non‐binary conceptions of the human–nonhuman relationship.
Authors in nature‐society disciplines would do well to seek guidance from scholars and organic intellectuals from these groups in finding alternative ways of living in relation. For example, scholarship in Black studies shows that fostering relational modes of being demands that narratives of social and ecological death, decay, and destruction must be emphasized and also further understood as fertile ground containing possibilities for life, wellness, and wholeness emerging from collective struggle. Moreover, an examination of Black plantation ecologies reveals the necessity of vision (or theorization) as well as everyday practice (e.g., reflexivity, self‐discovery, creativity, solidarity work, etc.) in making kin. This often involves breeches of power as norms, rules, and law must be transgressed. Thus, taking risks and striving collectively is necessary for cultivating relationships across difference.
Janae Davis, Alex Moulton, Levi Van Sant, and Brian Williams, "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises" (scihub)
