“Resistance Agriculture from the Rustbelt to Palestine: Memory and futurity in seeds as abolitionist praxis”

• In Event: Carceral Violence, the Land, and the Expansion of Abolition Ecologies

Abstract

For decades during the 20th century, millions of Black Americans were displaced from the largely rural American South in the hopes of a better/safer life in northern states. Overlapping with this Great Black Migration, the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine in 1947-48 catalyzed the Nakba – or catastrophe – the forcible displacement of between 750,000 and 900,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and the death of tens of thousands more. In both instances of induced and forced displacement, rural and agrarian livelihoods had been central to the culture and traditions of those who were displaced. For many Black growers, food production today represents a pathway toward self-determination and even liberation through food. Many descendants of those who migrated north are urgently trying to preserve the agrarian knowledge of their elders. In Palestine/Israel and for diaspora Palestinians, ongoing ethnic cleansing, genocide, and displacement has similarly catalyzed a need to preserve and to continue to practice and share Palestinian agrifood knowledge. This paper examines the role that seeds and seed saving play as both memory – representing past agrarian livelihoods, connection to land, and embodied knowledge – and futurity for Black and Palestinian growers, expanding upon historical political solidarity to offer the potential for solidarity in agrarian praxis. I argue that traditional and indigenous agrarianism constitute a form of resistance against the violence enacted through corporate and state control of agrifood systems, ongoing land theft, and the criminalization of traditional and indigenous knowledge, including around seeds. I draw upon lessons from seed saving traditions and practices among Black and Palestinian growers, redefining seed saving as an abolitionist practice of looking back to look forward in the creation of alternative future worlds.

Author

• Justine Lindemann, Penn State University