This session is facilitated by Anaïs Berck
About this session
Wikified Colonial Botany is a proposal to look for otherness in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and its structural referent Wikidata. The otherness in this work is represented by trees. These other-than-human beings are an essential part of colonial histories, as there existed an intimate relationship between botanical science, commerce and state politics. As Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan state in their book ‘Colonial Botany’, colonial endeavours moved plants and knowledge of plants promiscuously around the world.
Non-western trees were also renamed by Europeans, using Linnaeus’ classification system. These Latin names are still the global standard today. Their medicinal, edible and material uses were commodified. Botanical gardens were created worldwide as part of the colonial economic exploration policy.
Wikipedia is multilingual, daily updated and freely available. Its pages are analysed and added as structural data in Wikidata. This data and all Wikipedia texts are worldwide an important source for training new softwares that co-shape our world.
By choosing 4 languages of former colonial powers and showing trees with significant colonial histories, Wikified Colonial Botany hopes to give a sense of how the public knowledge about these other-than-human beings remains dependent on perspectives and global relationships.