Plantations have served as ‘the engine of European expansion’ and resembled the archetypes of industrial capitalism, where disciplinary labour regimes have been first established in the ... read more
Plantations have served as ‘the engine of European expansion’ and resembled the archetypes of industrial capitalism, where disciplinary labour regimes have been first established in the merger of field and factory. The idea of the plantation and its affirmation of European superiority and modernity had global repercussions, and gave rise to an emergent scholarship on the concept of a plantationocene that seeks to highlight relations of control over people, land, and resources as the premise from which the modern era is constituted and unfolds. In this seminar, we will aim to gain an understanding of the particular relations of life and land within and around plantations - both in relation to the colonial enterprise of making plantations worlds, and the contemporary significance of the plantation as a motor of neoliberal agrarian capitalism. Connecting these discussions to the idea of the commodity frontier as a "space-of-flows" and a "space of places" will help to place the plantation at the core for the study of world capitalist expansion. In the seminar, we will look closely at both the conceptual apparatus of the plantationocene and commodity frontiers, and strive for a better understanding about the historical emergence and current trajectories of specific plantation worlds in various parts of the planet.
