Recasting the Plantationocene in Czech Forests: In Defense of the Public Value of Plantations

This article tests the limits and usefulness of the Plantationocene concept in the temperate zone of central Europe. It draws on ethnographic research on Czech forests, which since the nineteenth century have been managed as plantations, and explores Plantationocene genealogies that have developed beyond the colonial and capitalist histories of the West and its colonies. The article examines the public use of forests and the processes of “commoning,” where people and other species appropriate the forests; “parasitizing,” which enacts economies that deflect the plantation logic of production; and “suffering-with,” which includes polysemic multispecies violence and compassion. In conclusion, it spells out the challenges that these three particular features of Czech forests present for current plantation theory. It argues that plantation production does not necessarily imply a “de-soilization of Earth” (Latour) and plantations can be conceived, studied, and enacted as specific locales of public value, creating a substrate for multispecies livelihood.