Amazonia as pharmacopia

This article analyzes the commonly deployed imaginary of the Amazon as a pharmacopia – a cornucopia of ethnomedicinal cures unheard of in the West. Using several fictional narratives (two novels and a film) as a starting point, I explore how the Western imaginary of the Amazon as a pharmacopia is a discursive variation on the environmental imaginary of the Amazon as the “lungs of world” – a vulnerable entity of high import and in need of protection. Both the “lungs of the world” and the “pharmacopia” imaginaries construct the Amazon as a global commons. But I argue that while the “lungs of the world” narrative is conceptually anti-extractivist, as within it the Amazon’s value is attributed to its containment and intactness, which needs to be salvaged, the “pharmacopia” narrative legitimates certain contemporary forms of extraction in the Amazon, such as bioprospecting. Finally, I analyze the dislocations of indigenous ethnobotanical knowledge practices within these representational geographies, and connec...