Event

May 5, 2025 3:00 PM 315 Haskell Hall ‘A Conspiracy of Industry and Violence’: Caribbean plantations and the (un)making of the plantationocene Dr. Khadene Harris Rice University

ABSTRACT: This talk considers the theoretical potential of the plantationocene when viewed from the perspective of Dominica’s historical archaeology. Coined just over a decade ago, the term ‘plantationocene’ was an attempt to characterize more precisely the devastating transformation of diverse ecologies into enclosed plantations that relied on coerced labor. Despite the compelling premise of the concept, it has been criticized for advancing a view of the plantation that obscures the racialization of power and the laboring class’s socio-economic response. Drawing on archival and archaeological research, this talk narrates the formation of the plantationocene on Dominica and elaborates on the network of objects, people, and ideas that the working agricultural class mobilized in response. 

BIOGRAPHY: Khadene Harris is a historical archaeologist of slavery and capitalism in the Caribbean. She is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology also appointed to the Center for African and African American Studies at Rice University.

Please join us for a reception on Haskell’s mezzanine immediately following Dr. Harris’s talk.