Files
Abstract
This dissertation centers agrarian racism and resistance in the chemical intensification of cotton plantations in the 20th century Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. While scholarly and popular discourse often point to the unintended consequences of pesticides, this dissertation emphasizes that the harmful effects of pesticides were both part and product of a racist regime of plantation agriculture. A racialized labor regime, and disregard for human lives, shaped toxic exposure in the Deltaand provided the conditions through which the Delta could become one of the most pesticide-intensive regions of the U.S. by the mid-20th century. In this dissertation, I trace the development of plantation agriculture in the Delta as a simultaneously environmental and racial formation, analyzing pesticide intensification as an outcome of a system of the monocultural production of cotton built upon a racial regime of land monopolization and coerced labor. I argue that 1) the 20th century chemical intensification of cotton plantation agriculture represented a reconfiguration (rather than endpoint) of racial capitalism; that 2) the destructive effects of pesticides were themselves crucial to the reproduction of plantation power; and that 3) the engineering of fields through chemicals was also a symbolic and material process of resignifying and reorganizing the racial regime of plantation production. In highlighting the centrality of racism in pesticide intensification, this study contributes to a better understanding of the actual social and political dynamics underpinning pesticide development and use. By situating the historic production and contemporary politics of toxic environments in the Delta, this dissertation has relevance to understandings of the contested production of toxic agrarian environments globally, as well as the relationship between toxic injustice and racialized enclosure.