Latin American Indigenous Knowledge, Exoticism and Pharmacy in European Cultural Repertoires

SPEAKER: Fernando González Rodríguez, KU Leuven

DISCUSSANT: Tinde van Andel, Naturalis - Leiden University

DATE: 15 November 2024

ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE

Ever since the encounter between the so-called Old and New Worlds, there has been an exchange of pharmacological knowledge across the Atlantic. Both materially and figuratively, the application of natural precursors native to the Americas have become part of the Western therapeutic landscape. ‘Exotic’ curative plants from far away places retain their place as a reference in contemporary cultural repertoires, but as I show, in the process, important contributions of medicinal Indigenous expertise to modern science have been overlooked. Focusing on the linguistic and visual aspect of pharmacological epistemic transfers across time, I ask: Whose nature and knowledge is it?