This research aims at crafting an interdisciplinary and holistic environmental history of profusion and foraging in Central Africa between 1920 and 1960.
Equatorial latitudes display exceptional biodiversity, a profusion of life forms with which autochthonous human communities interacted, among others to sustain themselves. Foraging encompasses these non-agricultural food-related practices. Profusion conditions foraging, as much as colonial policies designed to manage humans and non-humans alike.
I will document these interactions following a more-than-human approach. Indeed, the history of colonial Central Africa could be investigated as multispecies entanglements, ranging from viruses to wild hogs. Furthermore, non-living entities, from rivers to climatic events also influenced historical dynamics. These interactions are thus to be understood in changing material contexts. They are also socially constructed, embedded in both representations and institutions. A symmetrical approach to these techniques, knowledges and powers from both the colonial and the autochthonous perspectives, allows to properly grasp their ideal and material realities.
Foraging and profusion participate in defining how capitalistic production relations tend to dominate everyday life. Furthermore, both condition the metabolic rift in the material lives of these territories. My research lies at the crossroads of an institutional approach, a consideration for the expanding dynamic of capitalism, and a more-than-human perspective. The explored case-studies will provide insights into mundane yet fundamental aspects of the colonial past of the Congo Basin.
Photo credits: Man holding a giant fruit bat, AP.0.0.5062-3, collectie KMMA Tervuren; foto A. Mahieu, 1905