Un-Bordering the Species: Plantationocene Counter-Epistemologies in Sleep Dealer and Maquilapolis

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Borderlands film has traced throughlines from (neo)colonial regimes of coerced labor and ecocide to modern day, extractive industries like the US/Mexico maquila industry. This essay analyzes two films from distinct generic traditions, the sci-fi film Sleep Dealer (2008) and the documentary Maquilapolis (2006), to explicate how scale and framing in each depict and construct counter-epistemologies for surviving the Plantationocene and its logic of division, separation, and domination. Sleep Dealer utilizes bird's-eye-views and endoscopic camera scales to link a dammed river system to protagonist Memo's Cruz's body, which is similarly drained of its labor-power in an infomaquila , a futuristic cybernetic maquila factory. Maquilapolis captures haunting, timelapse shots of workers and slow-pan, bird's-eye view shots of toxified landscapes to link the back-breaking and dehumanizing labor of the factory with the chemical pollution that transfers invisibly from the maquila to the river and into people's bodies. Yet, the body, as a site of toxification and racial violence, inspires unique forms of coalition between the laborer and the ecosystem as laborers uncover connections between their oppression and the river system's degradation. As a result, both films capture new alliances between self and landscape, including the milpa , a biodiverse dryland farm; the cartolandia , informal housing structures made up of salvaged organic and inorganic materials recycled from river pollution; "aquaterrorism," acts of postcolonial violence against mega dams; and alternative narrative forms that center the river as being, friend, and subject. The essay concludes that being and feeling with the ecosystem is one way to counteract and survive the permanent damages that the plantation has incurred to the individual, the community, and the world's ecosystem.