Botany of Empire

"Provocative. . . The book challenges plant science to better see the ways in which it has been profoundly shaped by European colonialism and how imperial attitudes, theories and practices endure."

"The field of plant-humanities includes botany, taxonomy and plant evolution on the one hand, and literature, law and the arts on the other. Recent publications have covered botanical histories, imperialist plant-collecting fervor, queer botany, botanical art and Indigenous methodologies associated with botany, to name just a few. What comes as a huge relief is a book weaving together these interconnected tendrils, while also blooming with personal anecdotes and even fictional stories."

"Botany of Empire will prove to be a valuable read for scholars and students of critical plant studies, postcolonial ecocriticism, ecofeminism, queer ecology and indigenous studies."

"Written by a leading scholar in the field of anticolonial feminist STS, Botany of Empire offers a beautiful guide that teaches the layers of anticolonial feminist approaches to science through the specificities of plants and botany. Combining a breadth of ambition with accessible, gorgeous writing, this book invites us to imagine a more just science in thought and feeling."

"Banu Subramaniam leads the reader on a lively trek across a historical landscape of colonial botany, narrating the ‘great men of science’ as not only relentlessly curious but conditioned by violent expansionism and misogyny. Botany of Empire is a compelling read for this Indigenous science studies scholar who stands on Linnaeus’s grave every time I am in Uppsala. My aim, like Subramaniam’s, is not to ‘cancel’ a revered European scientist who regretfully broke relations into taxa, but to stand against colonial ideas of universal knowledge and progressivism co-constituted with the elimination of diverse peoples, knowledges, and moral orders."

"Dwelling on the expansive field of botany, Banu Subramaniam imagines ecologies, biodiversity, and extra-human taxonomies as tethered to empire and open to decolonial revision. Botany of Empire is an exciting text that draws on and entwines feminist studies, science studies, queer studies, disability studies, and studies of colonialism in order to imagine both plant life and our collective livingness anew."

"Botany of Empire is an absorbing account of the many ways in which race, class, gender, and colonialism have shaped, and continue to influence, the plant sciences. This book will change the way you think about plants."