Unreliable Narratives and Social-Ecological Memory in Kara Walker’s ‘A Subtlety’

Ever since they have become a numerous species, humans have enormously affected the environment often led by a conception of nature as something to exploit for their benefit. Colonialism has largely contributed to reshaping the ‘con-vironment’ through the transplantation of animals, people and crops and has been responsible for the development of a pseudoscientific discourse seeking to associate colonized people with animals and the natural world as an attempt to justify forms of violence, domination and exploitation. Drawing on Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, this chapter aims to explore the emergence of a social-ecological memory in Kara Walker’s monumental installation A Subtlety (2014, USA) which uses recyclable materials (sugar, with a clear reference to colonial history; wood; cork; and jesmonite) and, in contrast with usual monuments, is not permanent/invasive but offers a counter-discourse to colonial/environmental history pointing at a different understanding of the human relationship with the con-Vironment.