The Multiplying Worlds of Ma Joie

Abstract

This essay explores the environmental and spatial afterlives of plantation colonialism in the Seychelles through an ecofeminist auto-theoretical approach. Drawing on family archives and field philosophical research, the author reflects on her position as the granddaughter of a former plantation owner while tracing the material and spatial legacies of the Plantationocene. Rather than reconstructing a linear historical narrative, the essay unfolds as a series of temporal and spatial folds through which plantation infrastructures, creole domestic architectures, and provision gardens emerge as sites of both domination and creative resistance. Attention to minor architectures and everyday spatial practices reveals the entangled histories of plantocracy, enslaved and indentured labour, and creole cultural formation. Through a process of “re-membering” informed by critical fabulation, the essay examines how plantation landscapes persist in contemporary environmental and social relations, from migrant domestic spaces to postcolonial land redistribution and blue-economy development. The multiplying environmental worlds of Ma Joie demonstrate how plantation histories continue to shape ecological practices and spatial imaginaries while opening possibilities for reparative engagement with creole material knowledge.