Short abstract:

Chlordecone is a chemical compound that was extensively utilized in Martinique’s banana plantations between 1973 and 1993. Considering its prolonged presence in the soil and its toxicity, this paper investigates the hauntological manifestations of this pesticide and explores their significance.

Long abstract:

Since 1973, chlordecone has been extensively used in the banana plantations of Martinique, a French overseas department in the Caribbean region, to eradicate banana borer weevils. Following its ban in 1993, numerous environmental studies have confirmed the pesticide’s long-term persistence in the island’s environment and have suggested that it could be responsible for many health and environmental problems. At a symbolic level, Martinican independence groups and critical French public figures have associated the use of the pesticide with colonialism, slavery, and land dispossession by European and French authorities. Seen as a tangible legacy of traumatic and violent histories, chlordecone has been more recently detected in soil analyses conducted by a regional Martinican agency focused on environmental protection. Furthermore, the pesticide has been identified through the “chlordéconémie”, a blood test designed to detect the pesticide in the human body. Using the theoretical framework of “hauntology” (Good, Chiovenda, and Rahimi 2022) and examining two ethnographic cases, this paper explores the multiple socio-cultural, political, and affective manifestations of this chemical compound in Martinican human and more-than-human worlds. The article’s ethnographic insights shed light on the complex relationship between the history of chlordecone and Martinican society, emphasizing practices of resistance to its toxicity amid tensions between the French central government and the island’s independence movements. Ultimately, the ethnographic evidence demonstrates how the presence and absence of this substance are intertwined with the rediscovery of alternative epistemologies and practices, envisioned as pathways to environmental justice and decolonial liberation.