Una botánica de conquista: hojas y nervaduras en el archivo vivo

Martin De Mauro Rucovsky

Authors

Martin De Mauro Rucovsky National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Institute of Humanities, FemGes, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (FFyH), National University of Córdoba (UNC) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9423-9474

Keywords:

vegetal biopower, modest witness, plant awareness disparity, epistemicide

Abstract

Following the pulse of veins entails retracing the narrative of the Rio Negro Expedition (1879) to uncover, amidst pressed specimens and military journals, the threads of a violence that was both territorial and epistemic. This study explores the work of naturalists Paul Lorentz and Gustav Niederlein not as modest witnesses of an inert nature, but as agents of an "anti-conquest" that, under the veil of objective science, systematized dispossession. Through the notion of plant awareness disparity I underline the blindness that reduced flora to a passive backdrop, concealing the epistemicide of Indigenous knowledge. Finally, I proposesvegetalizing the museum: transforming the botanical archive —a biodegradable matter of paper and time— into a living interface that learns from the metabolic rhythms of plants to release memories and futures that official historiography sought to desiccate.

Author Biography

Martin De Mauro Rucovsky, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Institute of Humanities, FemGes, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (FFyH), National University of Córdoba (UNC)

A researcher and educator from Córdoba, specializing in biopolitics, animality, precarity, and Latin American gender, feminist, and cultural studies. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the National University of Córdoba (UNC). He undertook doctoral research stays at BUAP (Mexico) and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Research and Studies (CIEG) at UNAM (Mexico). He currently co-directs the PICT project "Bio/Geo/Cosmopolitics: Planetary Imaginaries from Latin America (1990–2020)" and is a member of the team behind "KURTZ 139: An Immense Region of Rocks and Inhospitable Pampas? Images, Narratives, and Experiences in the Sierras of Córdoba." He is the author of the books "Fugarse de época: Cultura y precariedad en México" (published in Argentina in 2025 and Mexico in 2026); "Bios precario: Cultura y precariedad en Latinoamérica" (2023, editions in Spain and Mexico); and "Cuerpos en escena: Materialidad y cuerpo sexuado en Judith Butler y Paul B. Preciado" (2016, with a Portuguese edition in 2024); he has also edited collective volumes such as "Metafísicas sexuales" and "Cuerpos prescindibles". He serves as a visiting professor in doctoral and master’s programs at both national universities (UNTREF, UNR, UNSAM) and international ones (UNAM, Universidad Iberoamericana, BUAP). He is an active member of LASA and the Latin American Interdisciplinary Gender Network (Yale-UNAM). His work combines cultural criticism and the environmental humanities with rigorous reflection on precarious modes of life under contemporary capitalism.

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