For several decades, botanist and feminist scholar Banu Subramaniam has been investigating the intersection of plant science and colonial culture, and now she has a new book out: Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism. Published by the University of Washington Press here in Seattle, this book is part of UW Press’ series on Feminist Technosciences.
While plants seem to exist outside history and culture, Subramaniam points out how 18th-century European scientists supported the project of imperialism by using a Latin-based naming system and discussing plants on other continents the same way that they categorized people on those continents. Likewise, the drive to survey and collect plant specimens worldwide mirrored the ambitions to map and dominate global lands.
Born in India, Subramaniam’s fascination with plants has been lifelong. “A plant that intrigued and fascinated me as a child was what we called the touch-me-not plant which I later came to know as Mimosa pudica,” she recalled. “Despite its name we touched it a lot!”
But she also observed it too. “It was fascinating to see its leaves fold and droop and then reopen a few minutes later,” Subramaniam remembered. “Was it just an instinctive response?”
Her curiosity didn’t stop there. “I loved that they moved and responded so immediately, quite different than my textbooks taught me about plants,” she said. “I also remember at one time recognizing that perhaps I was tormenting the plant, or why else would it shrink away, and that I should respect the plant. After that, I stopped touching it needlessly.”
Studying plant science in college came next, and then, when Subramanian earned her Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics, she also pursued a graduate certificate in women’s studies, where she learned about Feminist Science Studies. “It was only through this work, I came to understand my own sense of alienation in the sciences and that the issue was not a problem with me, but with science,” she said. “My most important discovery in doing interdisciplinary work is how many barriers there are in doing such work!”
But those barriers served as inspiration rather than obstacles. “The sciences developed in David Noble’s memorable phrase as ‘a world without women,’ and I discovered that feminist studies developed as ‘a world without science!’” she said. “Ever since, my work has been about building bridges and forging institutional and intellectual connections between these fields.”
In 2014, Subramanian published Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation & the Politics of Diversity, and then Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism in 2019. “While I had read many non-fiction books, I had never appreciated the power of the genre and the form of a monograph,” she said. “It allows you to develop a larger meta-narrative even while each chapter develops a particular point or argument.”
But her books begin to shape themselves before she intends to write them. “I’m always working on multiple projects and at some point, I begin to see that there is a larger point to be made that an individual essay or article cannot tackle,” she explained. “So I’m well into the project before I recognize it as a book.”
With Ghost Stories for Darwin, Subramanian came to recognize that “variation” in evolutionary biology was closely related to “diversity” in cultural studies. “Nature and culture are not separate, we only separate them in academic disciplines,” she said. “The three case studies in the book were ongoing projects that I came to see as linked through the book.”
Later, Holy Science developed out of Subramanian’s observations of the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and its particular engagement with the sciences. “With time, I saw many cases where science and religion cohered, each in a different way,” she said. “So, the book came together with the larger argument of the nationalist imagination of India as an archaic modernity and I explored their different manifestations through five case studies.”
While Subramanian’s analyses benefit from her interdisciplinary focus, it doesn’t always translate easily in a discipline-bound academic world. “I’m weaving many disciplines and that is always worrying,” she said. “I’m always grateful to many generous colleagues and friends from other fields who read my work and give me feedback.”
Subramanian views her latest work, Botany of Empire, as part of a life-long project on re-imagining the biological sciences. “At least for me, and I suspect for most, academic work always opens up more questions!” she enthused. “There is both material I did not include, and also the book raised questions I want to explore further.”
Recently serving as Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Subramanian has just joined Wellesley College’s Women’s and Gender Studies Department. “My favorite aspect of this role is meeting students from across the academy and introducing them to feminist work and the many connections between disciplines,” she shared. “That ‘aha’ moment when they see the connections is one of the most pleasurable moments of my work life.”
Subramanian believes that students are eager to understand the world in more complex terms than most disciplines offer them. “By now on most campuses there are many colleagues in the sciences who are allies, so collaborations are wonderful,” she elaborated. “In Wellesley we have wonderful botanical gardens and greenhouses and great people to think with.”
And she has many thoughts to share with whoever is interested. “The separation of nature and culture is at heart of a colonial ideology and a critical problem with modernity,” she said. “There is no nature and culture, only naturecultures.”
It is this foundational separation in academic knowledge that Subramanian argues has carved up an interconnected world into disciplinary silos. “We need to weave the world back together,” she urged, “and for that we need interdisciplinary tools to understand how everything is connected.”
She also laments that scholars and society in general valorize the sciences and diminish the humanities. “We constantly want to solve technological problems with new technology, rather than standing back to understand why and how we failed,” she admonished. “This is why, I believe, we find ourselves in a world with the specter of climate change.”
Our future as a species, she insists, depends on incorporating what has been dismissed. “The heart of colonialism is that it marginalized and excluded rich indigenous knowledges and cultures from across the world,” Subramanian summarized. “I believe within these histories lie the hopes and tools of planetary survival.”
Ultimately, Subramaniam aims to transform the colonial foundations of botany and biology by using feminist thought to direct the sciences away from racism and toward a more inclusive scientific practice. “This is an urgent moment where we need to reevaluate the legacies that have brought us here,” she advised, “and chart a different path forward.”
