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The Earth Is Sweet. On Cottica Ndyuka (De)compositions.

Authors :
da Cunha, Olívia Maria Gomes
Source :
Comparative Studies in Society & History. Apr2024, Vol. 66 Issue 2, p242-266. 25p.
Publication Year :
2024

Abstract

How can we remain attentive to the scale of the environmental damage caused in traditional Maroon territories by the effects of the Plantationocene and the material vestiges of colonial and racial violence left by capitalism? Dwelling on conversations held with Maroon Cottica Ndyuka women living in Moengo, a small town established on the Cottica River in Eastern Suriname to support a bauxite industrial plant in the early twentieth century, this text seeks to illuminate what Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2021) calls "elemental affinities," relationships in which humans and more-than-humans interact in composing body and earth through refractive and diffractive effects. The paper observes how the women mixed and modeled clay, turning it into sculpted balls known as pemba or pemba doti , frequently used as a therapeutical and spiritual substance, and as food. In so doing, the text deals with processes such as creating, composing, undoing, decomposing, and perishing once the earth—as soil—takes part in and renders possible the existence of diverse creatures. This is a contribution toward an ethnography of (de)compositions of the earth that sets out from the affinities between earth and bodies, attentive to certain metamorphic possibilities, the multiplicities of relations in which soils act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00104175
Volume :
66
Issue :
2
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Comparative Studies in Society & History
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
176579995
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1017/S001041752300049X