Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago explores the legacies of colonial science in Southeast Asia, asking how to meaningfully re-calibrate the natural histories of the Malay Archipelago in our
era, which some have called the “Plantationocene.” In dealing with various natural history collections from Indonesia, this book has become its own singular collection. It gathers a series of contributions into a novel constellation that reflects on the Malay region and concepts of its “nature” within the context of the birth of modern biology and tropical agriculture, as well as colonial resource extraction and the collection of scientific specimens.
I contributed a chapter to the book entitled "Worlds After Wallace" which can be read here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317581157_Worlds_after_Wallace
The book editors describe my contribution as follows: "Entomologist George Beccaloni, Director of the A.R. Wallace Correspondence Project, paints a picture of Wallace’s atypical persona while illuminating the historical circumstances of the naturalist’s Malay expedition and the resulting formation of evolutionary biology as a scientific field. Wallace once suggested 'that in all tropical countries colonised by Europeans the most perfect collections possible in every branch of natural history should be made and deposited in national museums,' as a means to secure scientific knowledge of nature against its annihilation by those same colonial governments. In contrast, Beccaloni discusses the challenges of doing scientific field work in our current epoch, which he calls the 'Destructocene.'"
Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago can be ordered here: http://www.anagrambooks.com/reverse-hallucinations-in-the-archipelago