Ballast Flora, Plants and the Politics of Colonial Memory in France

This thesis looks at the contemporary French state’s official position on the collective memory of colonial history, examining the relationship between republican universalism and a generalised erasure of the colonial past. It argues that this erasure has two main repercussions. Firstly, colonial violence is upheld and its existence simultaneously denied. Secondly, in the face of increasing concern for environmental disaster, an occlusion of the colonial root of the problem naturalises and thus perpetuates the ongoing extractive mode of inhabiting the Earth. This thesis argues, however, that much like the “nature” that the colonial project so wished to master, memory cannot be entirely dominated. It explores the persistence of memory in the environment: through the plants, seeds, soil, and land that they are a part of.

Part I – Aphasia, provides an overview of the contours of the present-day relationship to colonial history via official policy. It also analyses the practice of imperial botany; the economic and epistemological rationale that rendered it once central to the colonial project, and now central to a technocratic approach to climate science. Part II – Recollection, looks at the persistence and recuperation of collective memory. It offers a close reading of the artwork Seeds of Change (1999–ongoing) by Maria Thereza Alves, which posits plants and seeds as “silent witnesses” to imperial histories, tracing the genealogies of seeds in port cities across Europe and North America. This thesis considers how practices such as Alves’ provide a methodological model for engaging plants and seeds to respond to the systematic silences produced by official narratives, scientific obfuscations, or absent evidence. Extending this investigation, the final chapter draws on philosophies of memory, forensic aesthetics, plant science, and agro-ecological practices to propose a framework for thinking counter-hegemonic memory practices, which might account for colonial history, the environment, and marginalised knowledge.