Allison Young

This book project in development examines contemporary art, public history, and material culture in Louisiana through the lens of the Plantationocene, a framework that places racial and environmental (in)justice at the heart of climate discourse. As a subset of the oft-cited Anthropocene theory, which suggests that human activity is now the primary factor impacting the Earth’s geology and environment, the Plantationocene acknowledges that the extractive logic of the Middle Passage and plantation agriculture is deeply connected to that of modern petrochemical and mining industries. It seems, at times, that no place embodies this correlation more aptly than Southern Louisiana, where Indigenous, settler-colonial, and Black Atlantic histories are overlaid with contemporary calls for racial and environmental justice, and efforts to preserve culture and collective memory are complicated by the threat of land loss and climate volatility. In turn, artists have used creative methods to address the fragility and trauma of the region’s past and future, utilizing symbolically charged materials and potent imagery: swamp rattan and sugar bagasse, monument plinths and petrochemical runoff, mud and soil, and flood-damaged photographs. 

Centering a materialist perspective, the book considers works of contemporary art alongside public history initiatives such as Paper Monuments (a transient, community-engaged response to the 2017 dismantling of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans), the Decolonized Walk of Bulbancha (a series of activist-led walking tours of New Orleans that highlighted sites significant to the history of Indigenous peoples prior to European colonization), and the Whitney Plantation (the only plantation museum in the country dedicated to memorializing the lives of enslaved individuals). Through a range of diverse artistic, historical, and visual culture case studies, Paper Trails parses the nuances of art, public memory, grassroots activism, and preservation efforts in a locale that is threatened to disappear within our lifetimes.