Gardening is a Kind of Colonialism | Writer Jamaica Kincaid | Louisiana Channel
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
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The Antiguan-American writer Jamaica Kincaid speaks about her relationship to gardening. “The naming of plants means the possession, which leads me to Christopher Columbus and the naming of the world. You possess the world by putting a name on it, and then you begin to understand it.”
Jamaica Kincaid got her interest in gardening from her mother. She started to plant things, “and nothing would grow” when she had children.
“Nothing is more inspiring than failure. When I fail at something, I keep doing it. So, I kept gardening. And it became an obsession, it was very hard on my family because I could abandon everything for the garden.”
But Kincaid became interested in plants and how they got their names:
“Understanding the naming of plants led me to Linnea’s understanding that naming means the possession, which leads me to Christopher Columbus and the naming of the world. You possess the world by putting a name on it, and then you begin to understand it. But you begin the understand the terms you entered into a relationship with it, which is possession. You almost never ever have any respect for the thing you have named in a sense looking at it, it might have something other than your use for it.”
“So, if I would do anything in the garden, I would naturally write about it. It led me to ideas of conquest. The role plants have played in various empires, for instance, plants played a bigger role in the economic development in the British Empire than the Spanish empire or even the French Empire, and why is that?”
Jamaica Kincaid (born 1949) is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. Johns, Antigua, in the Caribbean. At 16, she settled in New York after leaving Antigua to work as an au pair, then studied photography at the New York School for Social Research and attended Franconia College in New Hampshire. Around 1973 she changed her name from Elaine Potter Richardson to Jamaica Kincaid, partly because she wanted anonymity for her writing. She was a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine from 1974-to 96. Kincaid published her first book ‘At the Bottom of the River’, a collection of short stories, in 1983. Her first novel ‘Annie John’ appeared in 1985 - the story of a 10-year-old growing up in Antigua. The novel ’Lucy’ came in 1990. ‘The Autobiography of my Mother’ (1996) is a novel set in Dominica and told by a 70-year-old woman looking back on her life. ‘A Small Place’ (1988) is a short book about the effects of colonialism. Kincaid published more books about gardening, including ‘My Garden (2000). Her novel ‘See Now Then’ (2013) won the Before Columbus Foundation America Book Award in 2014. Jamaica Kincaid is often mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Jamaica Kincaid was interviewed by Danish writer Merete Pryds Helle in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival in August 2021 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.
Cameras: Rasmus Quistgaard
Edit: Jarl Kaldan
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022.
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling.
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Watching Kincaid search for words then speak so eloquently is so comforting. She has a grace about her. Her writing has this same quality of precision
her words on naming and possession of the world as reflective of colonial thought are important, love this
Esta señora es tan parecida a mi difunta madre..q' Di-s la tenga en Su Santa Gloria!
Mi madre era hija de jamaiquina....y esta señora se le parece mucho.Saludos desde München 💐
Makes sense to me - I often think gardening and the whole battle with weeds, with maintaining a green lawn as a territorial instinct. Some people - old ladies even - are as territorial about the very corner of their lawn as the utility pole your dog peed on this morning. I’m not talking vegetable gardening so much.
Thanks God we such Role modelin our society
💖💖💖💖
Reducto ad Absurdum HOKUM POKUM
I don't get the link between gardening and colonialism. Seems to be trying a bit too hard...
control over land
It’s _Woke-bait_ because everything is rooted in their Anti-White racism. I’ve had this author’s videos incessantly recommended. I guess I’ll check out the long form conversation but I find it strange that so many from her perspective are almost completely ignorant of science.
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@@sbiusanae but humans are always going to have some control over the land, gardening or not, people are going to harvest and use natural resources.
Her whole line of thought is a bit tenuous and incoherent from the start. She says her mother treated her plants the way she treated all her ‘creations’ including her children and then describes how she’d set fire to, chop down or otherwise destroy trees for no apparent reason. Was she revealing more here than she intended, I wonder?
What are we supposed to do with this? --- Repent? ---What must we do to be saved? --- Or are we damned by original sins for all time? And who do we mean when we say "we"? ---Just a "not you"? "Not the blasphemers"?
What must we do to be saved? I ask, because , finally, this is religion/literary theory just as much as queer theory and Butlers gender theories and Intersectionalities. It dwindles into anecdotes.
@Marshall Smith , I'm not an upper middle class twit. I don't exist outside of class and money and actual power. I'm not feeling a lot of what I'm supposed to feel--- guilt and helplessness --- because I grew up in fundamentalism and I dislike new revelations when they are thrust upon us like the new-new-new, x-tra cotton with elastic support words from on high. EVERYONE now believes all this. No nuance is so large it can't be ignored. What she is saying is mostly unexamined dogma. And it's a very welcome "personal sin and responsibility" kind of dogma that our neo-lib billionaire lords (who benefit from this interpretation of the world, cause it won't cost them a penny), really, really love. ----It's mush.
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Pretentious - Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
Aaaaand.....you sound pretentious. Nice work.
@@robertpalmer3166 I think thats just citing the dictionary. . .
You are making slaves of your plants.
Louisiana channel took interviews of Sally Rooney and I thought this channel introduces great writers and I books of Sally Rooney and all her novels are trash ......
@Marshall Smith I wrote this message for Louisiana channel and it gives frustration when you buy novels and find that they are all trash and Louisiana channel uploaded lot of stuff about Sally Rooney ......
@Marshall Smith I have right to comment if I find something annoying and who are you to lecture me.....You are not my professor and do your work and don't give free lectures.....
They may not all be to your liking or mine but they feature some very good writers along side some who are not… it’s a bit unrealistic to assume the world is only going to produce literature that meets your criteria.
Well, this was painful to watch. If she writes the way she speaks, reading her would be torture. And connecting "gardening" to colonialism is a biiiig stretch! I think Ms.Kincaid needs to read a whole lot more deep history, maybe take a few classes on the scientific method, and put aside the tired old post-modernist way of thinking of the world.
I could not have said it better.
This interview was wonderful. Jamaica's mind and storytelling abilities are brilliant. Perhaps, visiting another video would have been a kinder solution for yourself instead of writing this judgemental view..eh?
her word is her art; not everything has to be so cut and dry. if you don't agree with her then don't read it. she writes about what she has experienced while living through British colonized Antigua(which gained independence in 1981), I don't think she necessarily has to read it when she had experienced it herself lol
Show us better then. YOU write something and becpme famous like her. I'll wait. 😒🙄