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In 2009, Ambikasuthan Mangad published Enmakaje, a novel based on the experiences of the inhabitants of Enmakaje, a village in Kerala, who were adversely affected by the aerial spraying of the pesticide Endosulfan, by the Plantation Corporation of Kerala, the state's largest public sector plantation company. The novel, translated into English by J. Devika as Swarga in 2017, has since then established itself as a narrative of toxicity, offering “transnational visibility and audibility” (Nixon 37) to those victimized by the slow violence of multigenerational toxic exposure. Even though state-owned cashew plantations constitute a significant portion of the novel's toxic-scape, Swarga has rarely been regarded as a ‘plantation narrative’. This chapter will analyze how the novel responds to the ‘Plantationocene’ by mobilizing a new form of pastoral, namely the ‘mythic pastoral’, casting Swarga as an ‘earthly paradise’ which has now fallen into decadence. The idyllic charm of this pastoral past is placed in opposition to the bleak, anti-pastoral vision of the ‘lifeless’ plantations inhabited by poisoned plants. The chapter looks at how arboreal tropes and botanical imagery are interwoven into the narrative to construe the mythic pastoral and the anti-pastoral. In doing so, we recontextualize Swarga as an exemplar of contemporary plantation fiction that situates its environmental politics at the intersections of social and ecological justice struggles in post-colonial societies.

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“When the Black Half of the Kunni Seed Whitens”: Plant-Lore and the Plantationocene in Ambikasuthan Mangad’s Swarga

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Varna Venugopal,
  • Swarnalatha Rangarajan

摘要

In 2009, Ambikasuthan Mangad published Enmakaje, a novel based on the experiences of the inhabitants of Enmakaje, a village in Kerala, who were adversely affected by the aerial spraying of the pesticide Endosulfan, by the Plantation Corporation of Kerala, the state's largest public sector plantation company. The novel, translated into English by J. Devika as Swarga in 2017, has since then established itself as a narrative of toxicity, offering “transnational visibility and audibility” (Nixon 37) to those victimized by the slow violence of multigenerational toxic exposure. Even though state-owned cashew plantations constitute a significant portion of the novel's toxic-scape, Swarga has rarely been regarded as a ‘plantation narrative’. This chapter will analyze how the novel responds to the ‘Plantationocene’ by mobilizing a new form of pastoral, namely the ‘mythic pastoral’, casting Swarga as an ‘earthly paradise’ which has now fallen into decadence. The idyllic charm of this pastoral past is placed in opposition to the bleak, anti-pastoral vision of the ‘lifeless’ plantations inhabited by poisoned plants. The chapter looks at how arboreal tropes and botanical imagery are interwoven into the narrative to construe the mythic pastoral and the anti-pastoral. In doing so, we recontextualize Swarga as an exemplar of contemporary plantation fiction that situates its environmental politics at the intersections of social and ecological justice struggles in post-colonial societies.