Ecologies of Waste in Contemporary Arts And
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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School DECOLONIZING REFUSE: ECOLOGIES OF WASTE IN CONTEMPORARY ARTS AND LITERATURES A Dissertation in Comparative Literature by Aurélie Matheron © 2020 Aurélie Matheron Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2020 ii The dissertation of Aurélie Matheron was reviewed and approved* by the following: Jonathan P. Eburne Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French and Francophone Studies Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Charlotte Eubanks Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies Head of the Department of Comparative Literature Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François Marian Trygve Freed Early Career Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, and Comparative Literature Jennifer Boittin Associate Professor of French, Francophone Studies, and History iii ABSTRACT Decolonizing Refuse: Ecologies of Waste in Contemporary Arts and Literatures explores how literary, visual, and plastic artworks use waste to address issues of ecology, environmental justice, and human rights violations in environments ravaged by colonization, neocolonization, and globalization. From the earliest period of colonization throughout the Global South, extractive economies have relied on human trafficking in the form of slavery and indentured labor; they have also left in their wake the toxic remnants of massive deforestation, intensive industrial agriculture, or of the petroleum industry, all of which have used up natural resources without replenishing them. Such extractive economies have been sustaining and sustained by imaginaries in which subaltern populations and environments become disposable, as resources to be used, exhausted, and discarded. In environments exploited for the military, economic, and cultural expansion of Western imperialism, the populations who still live under devastating extractive economies are subjected to displacement, unregulated labor conditions, and the contamination of their own resources. Decolonizing Refuse investigates how visual and literary artists from the Francophone Global South as well as from European sites of colonial struggles both face up to this history of human and ecological waste and reclaim the objects, histories, and living systems it has ravaged. As they reclaim waste in its literal and metaphorical forms, they envision it as an aesthetic medium and practice through which alternative epistemologies of the environment emerge. These epistemologies put in relation what global capitalism separates – the human and the non-human (understood here as populations and environments made disposable). This project features the photographic images of Senegalese artist Fabrice Monteiro, the paintings of Mauritian artist Nirveda Alleck, the writings of Malagasy novelist Jean-Luc Raharimanana and Spanish novelist Andrés Sorel, the imprints of Danish visual artist E.B. Itso iv and the street art of French visual artist Mathieu Tremblin. Their works address climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, the environmental militarization of the Indian Ocean, the current trans- Mediterranean refugee “crisis,” and banlieue uprisings in France. In their artworks, waste is one of the living and ever-changing sets of organic and inorganic materials through which indigenous environments and populations rendered disposable by colonial modernity and contemporary global capitalism regain agency, sovereignty, and self-determination. What links the artists’ projects is less their critiques of the ongoing impact of French colonization alone than their creation of what I term “decolonial ecologies of waste.” These decolonial ecologies of waste are the discursive and aesthetic processes through which artists recast waste – what global capitalism has considered as inherently disposable through global industrialization, environmental militarization, and cultural assimilation – to form visions of the world that challenge extractive economies. The extractive economies of global capitalism have created their own ecologies, ones that consider waste as the end product of a production-consumption pattern. The decolonial ecologies of waste I look at reverse such teleological understandings of waste as valueless residue. Rather, they envision waste as part of a larger network of subaltern histories, cosmologies, and epistemologies of the environment. What connects these histories, cosmologies, and epistemologies is a shared appeal for imagining futures that are more equitable. The works create collective memories, demystify the Global South as a space of suffering, pollution, and poverty, and call for transnational solidarity in the face of ongoing extractions. Grounded in the speculative, the abstract, and the mystical, the ecologies of waste I study are all geopolitically situated but intersect through their interests in addressing and redressing the historical erasures of French imperialism. v I ground my project at the intersection of decolonial theories and ecocriticism, two frameworks which investigate the formation of identity, history, and memory across a joint study of literature and the environment. Looking at Francophone productions from an ecocritical and decolonial angle, I explore how literary and visual arts question, create alternatives to, and sometimes perpetuate the legacies of modern/colonial structures of power. More particularly, I challenge the misconception that a decolonial art, and in turn a decolonial ecology, emerges from and circulates across the Global South only. Decolonizing Refuse demonstrates how decoloniality addresses the concern of any society living under or perpetuating the extractive economies of Western colonial modernity. Most of the artists whose works I explore were born in former colonial spaces from Sub-Saharan Africa. However, they are nevertheless outsiders to the situations they address. Living and working in Western Europe, they enjoy economic, social, and cultural privilege. At the same time, their works have been subjected to the racialized and racializing politics of museums, galleries, and publishing houses. Decolonizing Refuse addresses how the positionality of these outsiders – at the intersection of the local contexts they address and the global circulation of their works – has entailed forms of negotiations which, at times, have erased the decolonial and ecological nature of their works. Ultimately, Decolonizing Refuse seeks to dis-essentialize “the” decolonial project as a project unifying nations of the Global South towards a joint resistance to histories of imperialism. Instead, it demonstrates how “decoloniality” is a process of constant negotiation at the intersection of local contexts and the exigencies of global markets. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 Decolonizing Refuse: Ecologies of Waste in Contemporary Arts and Literatures ..................... 1 Waste, Coloniality, and Decolonization ...................................................................................... 8 Decolonizing Ecological Imaginaries ....................................................................................... 16 AestheSis as Reconnection........................................................................................................ 27 Towards a Decolonial Ecocriticism .......................................................................................... 32 Outline of the Dissertation ........................................................................................................ 37 CHAPTER ONE: DECOLONIZING CLIMATE CHANGE: THE PROPHECY AND FABRICE MONTEIRO’S VISIONARY ECOLOGY ................................................................................... 44 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 44 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 46 The Prophecy: Aesthetic, Political, and Humanitarian Responses to Climate Change ........... 54 Creating Local Alternatives to Global Capitalism: the Baye Fall Sect ..................................... 69 The Prophecy’s Visionary Ecology and Afrofuturism .............................................................. 76 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 83 CHAPTER TWO: ECOLOGY AS HISTORY-MAKING PRACTICES IN INDIAN OCEAN IMAGINARIES ............................................................................................................................ 86 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 86 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 88 Female Bodies and Militarization in Nirveda Alleck’s Continuum Chagos ............................. 95 Land, Motherhood, and Indigenous Ecologies in Nour, 1947 ................................................ 115 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................