Botanical imaginary of indigeneity and rhizomatic sustainability in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

Abstract

Abstract This article explores a botanical imaginary in A Mercy (2008), the ninth narrative by African American writer and critic Toni Morrison. Arguably, A Mercy features the botanical design of the rhizome to activate a revisionary model of sustainability. In particular, the narrative’s imaginary suggests a synergy that liberates the restrictive root of Indigeneity as a precondition to reconcile a tension of rigid binaries with the customary routes that lead to closure. This reconciliation will enunciate a radical break with the limited sustainability paradigms that are still constitutive of colonial modernity. Arguably, A Mercy features a transgressive array of journeys whose rhizomatic root of biodiversity transcends what is cultivated in the colonial American soil and mobilizes symbiotic and liberatory sustainability for humans and non-humans. Deleuze and Guattari’s principles of the “rhizome” philosophy contribute a main theoretical framework for construing the narrative’s botanical composition that suspends the inequitable realization of sustainability.