Abstract
Human sign production and exchange is shaped by biological factors, such as our mutualistic relationship with food plants. This chapter investigates the relation between the semiotic acceleration typical of Modernity, the development of industrial-colonial capitalism, and sugarcane cultivation by European planters, resulting in the growing importance of sugar in the Western diet, with its impact on global health and the environment. How did sugarcane cultivation contribute to the modern intensification of production and consumption? Should we consider plants that associate with humans as shapers of our semiosis? And how do the arts, and more specifically literature, function within this complex biosemiotic system? In this chapter, I speculate on the interrelations between the life of signs and the life of plants, in the context of the colonial, industrial and neurophysiological history of sugar, using Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) as an example of the pharmacological role literature and the arts can play in the context of ecological and world health crises.
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Patoine, PL. (2021). How Sugarcane Accelerated Semiosis During Industrial Modernity, and How We Can Slow Down with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In: Hendlin, Y.H., Hope, J. (eds) Food and Medicine . Biosemiotics, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67115-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67115-0_4
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