Parse Journal (May 2023)
Naturecultural Permutations
Abstract
The greedy and unstoppable bulldozer of runaway globalisation has led to unprecedented economic growth in the world since the 1990s, but at a cost. Local realities, practices and knowledges are being smothered, and ecosystems worldwide are becoming more homogeneous, less unique, less diverse. This story can be told in many ways, and the author studies it using tools from globalisation theory, anthropology and biosemiotics to understand the loss of biological and cultural diversity simultaneously, seeing them as two sides of the same coin. This ethnographic fiction tells a version of this story from the perspective of Tommy, a research fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study (STIAS), who grapples with the issue and its paradoxes through his encounters with the Stellenbosch botanical garden, the fraught and conflictual realities of post-apartheid South Africa and—not least—a younger fellow at the Institute with whom he develops an uneasy relationship. Through her personal war against boundaries and purity, Serenity (formerly known as Karin) challenges Tommy’s views on diversity, arguing that mixing and volatility can be a creative force in promoting new forms of diversity. The celebration of tradition and uncontaminated ecosystems can resemble apartheid, and Serenity prefers “staying with the trouble”, as Donna Haraway puts it. The dilemmas remain unsolved, but Tommy grudgingly has to concede that Serenity, who has reinvented herself as a coloured woman, may represent a healthy and realistic form of contamination that builds bridges rather than blowing them up.
