eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics

“Play Wisteria for Me”: Poetry as an Augury of Tropical Future(s)

2025-04-21T14:06:22+10:00

Set within diverse milieus of tropical, coastal India—in Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh—this suite of poems joins personal narratives to wider contexts, exploring everyday perspectives and experiences that reflect or hold the potential to shape futures in regions where tradition intersects with contemporary concerns. Drawing on social and political complexities as well as poetic realism, the poems emphasise speculative elements of physical and ecological precarity and the unfixedness of the self (Barron, 2019). Alluding to public health crises, environmental shifts and the psychological impacts of rapid development, the poems also address technological engagement and multispecies vitalities through depictions of changing urban and natural landscapes. With interlinking themes of solitude, longing/belonging and community, the poems navigate the liminal spaces between utopian desires and dystopian realities, mediated through personal and cultural interactions. Collectively, the poems speculate on tropical futurisms grounded in locally-rooted thermal and ecological experiences, while challenging conventions of the “futuristic” according to regional specificities. This paper moreover adds to the ongoing discussion regarding the role of creative practice as research, offering a poetry-led perspective on the potential trajectories of coastal Indian communities.

Decolonial Exhumation, or the Future Where No One Is Home: Writing Abuse at the Trans-Queer-Feminist Intersection of Tropical Archipelagic Thinking

2025-04-21T14:06:17+10:00

These poems are taken from an autobiographical book project on same-sex intimate partner abuse entitled SUNNY that interrogates how the conjoint forces of heterosexualism, racial classification, and capitalism—understood as Eurocentric—position the lives of queer people at the margins, or what Maria Lugones calls “coloniality of gender.” In these poems, the future is maternal, “the streaming touch of oil on burnt skin,” hopeful, yet is “still about our body, except only its ruination” or “a hill’s destruction.” Written at the trans-queer-feminist intersection of tropical archipelagic thinking, the future here is a metaphor of “elsewhere” or, in the words of Paul Carter, “a place not here but consisting of many (incommensurable) places reached from here…in the archipelago” (2019, p. 117; 2013). By interweaving a fictionalised version of my own victimisation and that of other victims of gendered violence, this archipelagic poetics of wounding not only carves out a space for a queer narrative of victimisation that is systematically erased and insufficiently represented in mainstream analyses of gender-based violence, but also maps out linkages of grief and solidarity amongst tropical bodies at the margins. In writing these poems, I framed a method of writing called “decolonial exhumation,” which is a creative practice of writing and experimentation that struggles for a narration of the pained and miserable present, but one that does not evade histories of multiple and intersectional oppressions. Inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulation” and also informed by the work of plant evolutionary biologist Banu Subramaniam, decolonial exhumation is a creative mission to develop an epistemology and aesthetics that celebrates the fragmentary, lost, partial, incomplete, and perpetually unrecoverable. It is a trans-queer-feminist political response to the legacies of colonialism and empire, and the durable inequalities that cannot otherwise be fully understood without any reckoning of the colonial past and striving for a tropical future “elsewhere.”

The Flower of Heidelberg

2025-04-21T14:06:14+10:00

Set in the year 2577, this short story imagines a dystopic future where all languages—except for five from the imperial temperate world—have been almost wiped out by five homogenous global capitalist entities, each known as Corporation (according to each corporation’s home language). In this bleak future, linguists exist not as scholars but as peddlers of languages, particularly endangered ones, including the various Filipino vernaculars. The lives of linguists are made precarious by the Corporation, with its clear intention to monopolize power over human communication by homogenizing language, making the marginal ones, along with their peddlers, extinct. The short story unfolds as a diary entry of an unnamed linguist of Tagalog, a Filipino vernacular, as they ruminate on the 1886 poem “A las flores del Heidelberg” by the Filipino patriot José Rizal. After receiving an offer from the German Koerperschaft, which they cannot refuse, the linguist attempts to imagine a way through the hegemony, even if it takes the bending of time itself. Accompanying the story is a short translator’s note which contextualizes the translation process, and draws a preliminary parallel between the narrative translated and the practice of translation itself in the midst of the turbulent present.

Straddling the South China Sea: Tropical Speculative Futures of Borneo and Malaysia

2025-01-09T18:46:27+10:00

In the year 2119, two sisters, Jules and Nina, live in a nation divided by the South China Sea, struggling to survive tropical environmental disasters unleashed by human-induced climate change that have exacerbated tensions between the federal government and Bornean states. Sarawak has declared independence from Malaysia and, together with Sabah, Brunei, and Kalimantan, has formed the Borneo Treaty Organisation to keep safe from other nations greedy for their natural resources and plentiful land fortified against the rising seas. The West Malaysians call this a “Civil War”; the Sabahans and Sarawakians call it the “War of Independence”. During a negotiated ceasefire, Malaysia, Sabah, and Sarawak each welcome their people home; in the case of the once Bornean Malaysian states, people return to embrace citizenship of the newly independent Sabah and Sarawak. In Sarawak, Jules asks her sister, Nina, to come home, away from the new Malaysia that has absorbed Singapore in exchange for land as the island nation submerges. Sarawak is willing to accept West Malaysian spouses and children of native Sarawakians, but West Malaysians are reluctant to move as they are fearful of never being trusted and of being thought of as spies. Then in Malaysia, Nina’s 15-year-old daughter receives an official letter from the Ministry of Defence to report for National Service.

Water Fights Back in Lagos: A Performance Reading of Aqua-Terrestrial Futures in Ojo Bakare’s “Ekun Omi”

2025-04-21T14:06:12+10:00

The Nigerian tropics is home to diverse ecosystems and rich cultural traditions. Taking up water as a material and symbolic force in relation to urbanisation, ecological deterioration, and colonial history, this work analyses Ojo Bakare's play “Ekun Omi” [When Water Cries] in a performative reading of Lagos' aqua-terrestrial futures. Through metaphor, the African theatre production examines the complex interaction between the city's aquatic systems and its human residents in light of flooding, climate change, overpopulation, and the socio-political marginalisation of Indigenous knowledge. Drawing on ecocriticism and the blue humanities, this paper takes a multifaceted approach to understanding water as a victim and agent of ecological retribution. It highlights the transformative power of Bakare’s work in depicting the ecological crisis in Lagos, while engaging the audience in collective responsibility for the future. “Ekun Omi” provides a critical and speculative analysis of Lagos' trajectory, showcasing how any viable future for the city must acknowledge the intricate bond between humans and the natural world—especially watery domains.

Protopian African Futures: Demas Nwoko’s Tropical Architecture, Natural Synthesis—and Solarpunk

2025-04-21T14:06:07+10:00

Pioneering Nigerian artist, architect, and master builder Demas Nwoko’s post-independence practice embodies a synthesis of knowledge systems that transcend the ‘Western’ versus Indigenous knowledge dichotomy typically attached to decolonial readings of African creative and cultural output. This paper argues that Nwoko’s cultural philosophy and metadesign approach, by virtue of the evidence displayed in his tropical African architecture and cultural and intellectual output over seven decades, prefigured solarpunk ideals in very concrete ways, thereby providing a profound case for how the ‘Natural Synthesis’ approach, which his ‘New Culture’ ideology evolved with, finds relevance outside the African context from which it emerged. By referencing key projects and the foundational philosophy, design, and construction methods Nwoko adopted and evolved in responding to architectural needs for a climate-responsive and culturally sensitive approach to architectural problem-solving in the African tropical region in his country of birth—Nigeria, the paper draws parallels between the ecological and sustainability-based concerns that drive the synergistic worldview behind his creative vision with the emerging solarpunk protopian ethos.

Visioning Tropical Cities of the Future: Case Studies Using the Literary Method of Urban Design

2025-04-21T14:19:56+10:00

This essay applies the Literary Method of Urban Design to forecast the futures of three tropical urban spaces through scenario art inspired by novels set in these cities. Bangkok, Thailand, is envisioned through Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind-Up Girl as a city grappling with rising seas, precarious governance, and environmental degradation. Aracataca, Colombia, inspired by Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, is envisioned as a fleetingly successful theme park—before succumbing to economic decline and environmental catastrophe. Bhopal, India, re-visioned via Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, is portrayed as a slowly healing landscape where humans and animals coexist amid ongoing recovery from the gigantic industrial disaster. These case studies illustrate the Literary Method’s power to synthesize literature and urbanism to yield insights into future social, ecological, and cultural challenges. While tailored to specific urban contexts in this article, the approach may hold broader applicability, enabling cities and citizens across the tropics and beyond to reimagine their futures through the unique creative and critical perspectives that their own local and regional literature may provide.

Tropical Futurism Aesthetics: The Impact of Latin American Women's Urban Art on Social Change

2025-04-21T14:06:19+10:00

This article examines the impact of women’s urban art of Latin America, emphasizing how artists have utilized public spaces to construct visual discourses that challenge sociocultural norms and promote gender justice. By integrating elements of popular culture, advertising visual language, and plural feminist thought, these artists transform their work into aesthetic tools of cultural resistance. The analysis explores how feminist visual narratives are enriched through decolonial, tropicalizing, rhizomatic, and tropical futurism aesthetic approaches, enabling diverse interpretations that challenge traditional visual paradigms. In countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, and Puerto Rico, as well as their diasporas, artistic interventions have sparked discussions on women’s rights and directly confronted patriarchal structures. These practices democratize access to art, strengthen cultural identity, and embody a futuristic re-imagination of tropical spaces as inclusive, resilient, and transformative. Women’s urban art reconfigures cultural urban landscapes, fostering social activism, strengthening the social fabric, and reshaping public perceptions of gender and equality. Ultimately, this movement serves not only as a form of artistic expression but also as a catalyst for sociocultural change, a defense of women’s rights, and a vision of a more equitable and dynamic tropical future.

Lost Specimens from Neotropical Futures: Evolutionary Species of another Place and Time

2025-04-21T14:06:10+10:00

Anthropogenic pressures are impacting our planet with increasingly dramatic effect, especially here in the Tropics, where even the boundaries of the region itself are under threat. Evolutionary developments in all facets of life, from the physical and environmental to the digital and intellectual, unleash profound issues that affect us all. “Lost Specimens” is a result of my research and deep reflection on humans’ pervasive influence on all aspects of life, inspiring me to create hybridized species that are rooted in our planet but exist in parallel realities of an alternative space-time. The specimens presented in this paper come to us from a neotropics of the far future. Crafted from forest detritus, these meticulous artworks—a form of vegan taxidermy—are a satirical comment on the profound impact and environmental degradation our actions are having on biodiversity; so too are they intended to highlight the Age of Blur we currently find ourselves in, where once distinct binary distinctions such as true/false, analogue/digital, science/faith and now tropical/temperate are being provoked into redefinitions which reveal new interrelations.

Plant-Human Futurisms in the Australian Tropics: Native Grasses and the Carbon_Dating Art Project

2025-04-21T14:06:21+10:00

The tropics have been first to suffer from the effects of unsustainable practices on land and sea. The Carbon_Dating project (2019 to 2025)—an artwork and cultural campaign designed to provoke a re-imagining of human-grass futures that builds relationships with native grasses—has worked in Far North Queensland, Australia, with two First Nations participants: Mbabaram Elder, knowledge-holder, and ethnobotanist Gerry Turpin, and Kuku Yalanji Master Weaver and artist Delissa Walker Ngadijina. Using traditional knowledge and creative works to forge new imaginaries that selectively choose or refuse those of the coloniser, the contributions of these two participants are an assertion of Indigenous relationalities in the tropics, and offer others a way of re-imagining plant-human futures in the wider world.

Envisioning Multispecies Tropical Futurity: Image-Making in North Maluku’s Frontier Zone

2025-04-21T14:06:06+10:00

In recent years, the name Alfred Russel Wallace, the 19^th-century British naturalist who co-conceptualized the theory of natural selection and authored the book documenting species diversity throughout Indonesia, titled The Malay Archipelago (1859), has regained significance in the place where he did his research: Ternate, North Maluku (the Moluccas), Eastern Indonesia. His legacy and icon are being reclaimed by local communities, inserting themselves as authors of the region’s future, one that is centered on multispecies stewardship. Based on visual anthropology ethnographic fieldwork spanning over 15 months since the beginning of 2021, the materials presented in this article explore the perspectives of local cultural activists/practitioners in making visible their concerns, advocating for the rich multispecies existence on their island acknowledged globally since Wallace. Working with a team of university students, photography clubs, journalists, and heritage and environmental activists based in Ternate, I engage with everyday socio-cultural and visual media practices that treat images as modes of address/redress mobilizing affective engagement and political effects (Spyer & Steedly, 2013), contesting possible tropical futurities. Discussing three sites of image-making—a mural, wildlife photography, and drone-afforded reportage—I argue that these practices play a crucial role in intervening in and shaping how this tropical region is imagined at various scales, globally and nationally. Oscillating between utopian and dystopian scenarios, the images produced make a demand for a more just and livable future across species.

Indigenous Futurity in the Living Root Bridges of the Khasi-Jaiñtia Hills of India: A Documentary Essay

2025-04-21T14:06:15+10:00

The Living Root Bridges found in the southern valleys of the Khasi-Jaiñtia Hills of Meghalaya, India, attract tourists from all over the world to admire nature’s extravagance. Apart from the attraction of these natural entities, the underlying values and principles that nature has to offer lays out a comprehensive understanding of an Indigenous futurism in the mountainous landscape of this wet tropical region. This paper is based on the documentary film Ki Thied Ka Lawei (Roots of Sustainability), directed by the author. The documentary depicts the ongoing practice of constructing and reconstructing a bamboo bridge in the village of Shiliang Jashar yearly since 1988. The bamboo bridge is used by locals to commute over the Wah Jashar river, and simultaneously acts as a scaffold for the formation of a living root bridge into the future. Another semi-formed root bridge in a neighbouring village of Mawkyrnot, gives a clear insight into the growth of these root bridge formations. This essay exhibits stills from the documentary and describes and analyses the ensuing bridge-making, rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems of nature-culture relationality passed on by the Khasi ancestors in an act of Indigenous futurity.

Tropical Futurisms: Making Futures

2025-04-21T14:06:04+10:00

Tropical Futurisms situates the making of futures in the geo-climatic zone of the tropics with its shared—yet always specific—histories of colonialism(s) and ecological biodiversities. At the same time, this special issue acknowledges the pluralities of tropical cultures and their cosmological insights, technological imaginings, and multispecies vitalities. This second part of the double Special Issue on Tropical Futurisms emphasises creative practices of future-making. It recognises the diverse ways of making futures by positioning them back in tropical material experiences in this time of escalating climate crisis. As with the previous issue on Thinking Futures, this second issue on Making Futures seeks solidarity in the tropics via imagining the future together in plural forms through creative practices. This issue offers insights from theatre performance, architecture, urban planning, street art, arts-nature exhibition, ethnography, photography, activism, film documentary, poetry, translation, and storytelling. It includes works from Tropical Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, Tropical Australia, India, and the Southeast Asia countries of Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Sarawak on the island of Borneo. We are interested in the ways these creative works intersect across the pan-tropics, creating new rich and complex forms of future-making.