5. The Orchid’s Wet Dreams: Sex Told, Untold, Retold

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Epigraphs vii
3. Contents ix
4. Prologue: Telling History xi
5. Introduction: Through Linnaean Labyrinths. A Botanical Colonization 1
6. Part I: Rootings
7. Introduction 23
8. 1. The Botanical Sublime: Affective Ecologies and Plant Life 25
9. 2. The Coloniality of Botany: Reckonings with the History of Science 49
10. Interlude: Fables for the Mis-Anthropocene—Chirp, Play, Love 60
11. Interlude: Revisiting the “Women in Science” Question: Diversity, Gender, and the Coloniality of Science 65
12. Part II: Kinship Dreams: Classifying Plant Systematics
13. Introduction 75
14. 3. Categorical Impurative: Names, Norms, Normings 77
15. 4. Perhaps the World Ends Here: Spicy Embranglements in the Postcolony 103
16. Interlude: Fables for the Mis-Anthropocene: Making a Little Trouble Everywhere 124
17. Interlude: An Ordinary Botany: Haunted Archives of Livingness 127
18. Part III: Floral Dreams. Sexing Reproductive Biology
19. Introduction 131
20. 5. The Orchid’s Wet Dreams: Sex Told, Untold, Retold 133
21. 6. In the Dark Shadows of the Tree of Life: Sex, Race, and Reproduction 153
22. Interlude: Fables for the Mis-Anthropocene – The Queer Vegennials 170
23. Interlude: International Council for Queer Planetarity: The Botanical Debates 174
24. Part IV: Pangaean Dreams. Mapping Biogeography
25. Introduction 181
26. 7. Botanical Amnesia: Colonial Hauntings in Plant Biogeography 183
27. 8. Like a Tumbleweed in Eden: Diasporic Lives of Empire 199
28. Interlude: Fables for the Mis-Anthropocene – Love the Dandelion 213
29. Interlude: A Cosmopolitan Botany: Tagore’s Vision for Santiniketan 218
30. Part V: Uprootings
31. Introduction 225
32. 9. Vegetal Sublimations: Cartographies for Adisciplinary Sciences 227
33. 10. Dreams of a Lively Planet 236
34. Interlude: Fables for the Mis-Anthropocene – The Memory Gardens 239
35. Interlude: Against Eden 243
36. Interlude: Abolitionist Futures: A Manifesto for Scientists 247
37. Acknowledgments 253
38. Notes 257
39. Index 303
40. Feminist Technosciences 314