Surplus, Mobility, and Resistance: The Literary Forms of Psychoactive Plants
Publication Date
2-26-2025
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts
Keywords
Jane Austen, Amitav Ghosh, Mansfield Park, Sea of Poppies, Plant life
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This article revises the existing Marxist accounts of plantation capitalism by exploring how literary forms of nineteenth-century psychoactive plants (i.e., plants that are used to make alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opium, etc.) could conversely contain agency and resistance. Putting Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008) in dialogue, I look for moments when plant life acquires agency and transgresses the system of exchange in the exact contexts where mass production and wide circulation of psychoactive products endow their plants with exchangeability and logistical mobility. While ecocritical accounts often observe a parallel between environmental degradation in the Anthropocene and capitalism’s suicidal tendency, my reading shows that anti-colonial resistance can also emerge from the vitality—rather than the destruction—of the more-than-human world, which capitalism unexpectedly promotes but is not able to incorporate.
Copyright Date
2-26-2025
Rights Holder
Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of North Texas
Provenance
Received from author
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of North Texas. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:
Gao, M. (2025). Surplus, mobility, and resistance: The literary forms of psychoactive plants. Studies in the Novel, 57(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2025.a952388
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
25 pgs
File Size
2.4 MB
Publication Title
Studies in the Novel
Volume
57
First Page
1
Issue
1
Last Page
25
ISSN
0039–3827
Recommended Citation
Gao, M. (2025). Surplus, mobility, and resistance: The literary forms of psychoactive plants. Studies in the Novel, 57(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2025.a952388