| dc.description.abstract | Chlordecone, a toxic pesticide introduced in the 1970s in Martinique to combat the banana weevil, was deployed under the pretext of preserving the economic value of banana crops. Although classified as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organisation in 1979 and banned in metropolitan France in 1990, a ministerial exemption allowed its continued use in Martinique and Guadeloupe – French overseas territories – until 1993. Reports highlight the high levels of contamination in Martinique’s soils, water sources, and ecosystems, as well as its severe health impacts, including rising rates of prostate cancer. While the Chlordecone crisis is increasingly recognised as a socio-ecological crisis, dominant narratives – especially within the natural sciences – often neglect its entanglement with the
colonial and capitalist histories of Martinique. This thesis draws on decolonial, feminist, and emancipatory ecologies to: 1) broaden and trace submerged and emergent narratives surrounding the crisis, by analysing its entanglement with colonial and capitalist systems of extraction; and 2) investigate everyday imaginaries, practices, and forms of resistance through which Martiniquais make sense of, and deal with, the Chlordecone crisis. Using feminist and decolonial ethnographic methods, this research combines multimodal document analysis of various textual sources with four series of artworks by Martiniquais artists, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. The inclusion of artwork is central to the methodology, offering rich, situated insights into the crisis and representing generative ways of knowing and being that think from the Caribbean. Findings show that
the crisis is deeply entangled with colonial and capitalist systems of extraction, where at its core lies the logic of the plantation, understood as a migratory and entangled assemblage. The extractive plantation manifests beyond structural and ecological violence, embedding itself at the molecular level of both human and (other-than-)human bodies, where it inhibits socio-ecological reproduction and materialises differently in women’s embodied experiences of toxicity. Amidst contamination, these histories are also disrupted and retold through emergent practices of resistance, with Créole gardens revealed as vital spaces of cultural and ecological resurgence, enabling food self-sufficiency, memory work, and the creation of life-affirming worlds. This thesis pluralises the ongoing histories surrounding the Chlordecone crisis and critically engages with dominant discourses in Martinique,
contributing to broader struggles for active responses embedded in justice. It also emphasises art and ecological practices as forms of resistance and advocates for further research on (other-than-)human agency and other forms of contamination in Martinique, addressing France’s ongoing relationship with its overseas territories. | |
