SPEAKER: Fernando González Rodríguez, KU Leuven
DISCUSSANT: Tinde van Andel, Naturalis – Leiden University
DATE: 15 November 2024
TIME: 15:30-17:00
ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE: VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, Amsterdam
Ever since the encounter between the so-called Old and New Worlds, there has been an exchange of pharmacological knowledge across the Atlantic. Both materially and figuratively, the application of natural precursors native to the Americas have become part of the Western therapeutic landscape. ‘Exotic’ curative plants from far away places retain their place as a reference in contemporary cultural repertoires, but as I show, in the process, important contributions of medicinal Indigenous expertise to modern science have been overlooked. Focusing on the linguistic and visual aspect of pharmacological epistemic transfers across time, I ask: Whose nature and knowledge is it?