Can Trees Speak? Decolonizing Amazonian Imaginaries

Abstract

By shifting focus away from the humans in the Amazon to the nonhuman, I seek to address the question: Can trees speak? Using Spivak’s famous essay, “Can the Subaltern speak?” to address subaltern identities in the region, I propose that trees themselves can be considered a form of subaltern. As a result of the continuing exploitation and destruction of the forest, the chapters explore the role of trees in a variety of ethnographies and “ficciones de la selva” in order to deconstruct the lingering colonialist legacies that limit non-indigenous perceptions and understandings of the nonhuman in the rainforest. The question whether trees can speak more fundamentally poses the question: are we willing to listen to the other voices in the Amazon in order to understand a more complete story of the land? In both factual and fictional accounts, analyzing the role of trees in the Amazonian imagination allows us to better be able to deconstruct our “imperial eyes” and reconstruct a more extensive picture of environmental and cultural consciousness.