The Mythical Forest, the Becoming-Desert: Environmental Knowledge Production and the Iconography of Destruction in the Gran Sabana, Venezuela

Abstract

Landscape managers increasingly draw on indigenous practices of controlled burning to develop vegetation heterogeneity and reduce fuel loads, thereby avoiding extensive and destructive fires. However, anthropogenic fire is also commonly represented as a primary driver of environmental change, which in some places has led to an emphasis on heavy-handed fire suppression rather than fire management. These contradictions in global fire management are an example of the complex articulations between the social production of tropical landscapes and the processes of environmental knowledge production. This article draws on constructivist approaches in political ecology and Lacanian psychoanalysis to analyze a conflict between state agencies and indigenous people surrounding fire management in the Gran Sabana, Venezuela. Iconic features of this cultural landscape operate as signifiers in institutional discourse, informing the ways in which environmental knowledge is appropriated and produced and in turn shaping the subjectivities and practices of state fire managers.