加勒比海文學中的墾殖世寓言

Allegories of the Plantationocene in Caribbean Literature

相對於學界普遍以「人類世」作為當前地質年代的命名，思考人類必須共同面對的全球環境危機，環境人文研究學者提出「墾殖世」一詞，挑戰人類世中的「人類」作為一共同物種的預設。學者引述過去針對加勒比海與美洲地區的歷史研究，指出墾殖園經濟的殖民擴張、黑奴貿易、多物種的勞役系統等，構成西方現代性的關鍵推動力，並主張以另類的地理敘事，重新想像多物種的異質親屬連結。然而，墾殖世雖改寫人類世的普世性論述，為人類世的起源提供一個新的參照點，但這對於許多後殖民作家與全球南方學者而言其實是一種遲來的反思。相對於宏觀的墾殖世論述，本文主張以微觀的在地向度與寓言思考，閱讀加勒比海文學中的墾殖園敘事，藉此強調持續思考權力關係、差異政治，以及解殖想像的必要性。本文共分三部分：第一部分討論人類世一詞的命名政治，思考當前墾殖世多物種論述的可能侷限；第二部分聚焦於十八世紀蘇格蘭詩人葛雷傑的西印度農事詩，分析作品中的殖民地景想像與綠色帝國主義；第三部分探討自國族主義傳統以來的加勒比海作家，包括海地作家羅曼、來自牙買加的作家麥凱，以及出生於多米尼克的作家瑞斯等，如何透過書寫抗拒墾殖園的資本邏輯，挑戰人類物種的社會階序差異。透過微觀的角度閱讀加勒比海文學中的墾殖園寓言，本文強調以後殖民方法介入當前多物種環境正義的必要性，藉此重啟後殖民文學與環境人文研究之間的連結與對話。

As an alternative designation of our current geological epoch, the term“Plantationocene”has been proposed by scholars in the environmental humanities to challenge the undifferentiated conception of humanity in the discourse of the Anthropocene. Drawing on the studies of plantation legacies in the Caribbean and the Americas, scholars have identified the colonial expansion of monocropping and the transatlantic trade of enslaved people as the driving force of Western modernity and called for a rethinking of environmental justice from a multispecies perspective. However, while the concept of the Plantationocene has productively complicated the universal narrative of the Anthropocene, this intervention is long overdue for many postcolonial writers and scholars from the global south. Foregrounding the contribution of Caribbean literature to the current conversation in the environmental humanities, this essay proposes to theorize the Plantationocene from below through an allegorical reading of plantation narratives and affirms the need to continue to invest in questions of power relations, the politics of difference, and the possibility of the decolonial imagination. Focusing on James Grainger’s eighteenth-century West Indian georgics The Sugar Cane, this essay will first address the issues of colonial landscaping and green imperialism before turning to Caribbean writings by Jacques Roumain, Claude McKay, and Jean Rhys to explore how the long histories of the plantation complex have produced alternative narratives at the micro-level, narratives that resist the logic of capital accumulation and unsettle the social stratification of the Anthropos in the Anthropocene. Reading Caribbean literature as allegories of the Plantationocene, this essay emphasizes the urgency of taking a postcolonial approach to the multispecies perspective of environmental justice and opens up the possibilities of conversations between postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities.