Short biography: Pascal Menoret is the director of the Center for Economic, Legal, and Social Studies and Documentation in Cairo (CEDEJ) and the Renée and Lester Crown Professor of Modern Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, where he teaches in the Department of Anthropology. His research interests include infrastructure, urban planning, ecology, and energy. He has conducted field research in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. He is the author of Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt (Cambridge University Press 2014) and of Graveyard of Clerics: Everyday Activism in Saudi Arabia (Stanford University Press 2020). He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Provence and a PhD in history from the University of Paris.

Abstract: Eichhornia Crassipes, also known as Water Hyacinth or ward el-Nil (Nile rose), is a free floating plant native to the Amazon basin that became invasive in Egypt in the late 19th century. This talk retraces the introduction of the plant during the colonial period and shows the many ways Water Hyacinth, after being acclimatized as an ornamental, became feral. The plant thrives in highly anthropic environments and feeds off agricultural runoff and industrial pollution. It changed some of its habits and adapted rapidly to a new environment, where waterways are perennial, winters are cooler, and water is often brackish. I examine how botanists and ecologists construct their knowledge of the plant, and how the plant itself appears to people who interact with it. This study of an invasive weed leads me to the following questions: who has the right to inhabit a ruined landscape? How might invasive species, these monsters of the anthropocene, become analyzers of our ruined present, and point to alternative futures?