ABSTRACT
Radical environmental change raises questions not only about health, but also about healing. What does it mean to heal in a world made increasingly toxic by the (by)products of industrial capitalism? This chapter explores a new mode of plant therapy in Tanzania emerging in response to popular critiques of toxicity as the condition of modern life. Producers explicitly grapple with how to navigate toxins (sumu) as the very substances extending (biological, economic, and social) life today. Working through this double bind, contemporary herbal therapies decenter the anthropos. Practices reveal a rethinking of the lived worlds of plants and people. Therapeutic plants are not only raw materials for medicines, but also co-creators of the physical and conceptual spaces in which all life is lived. Plants labor around, with, and through humans. People intervene in, extend, and shape plant life. The chapter focuses on a particularly charismatic tree, mlonge, as it works with people to foster the vitality of plants and people, environments, and communities. As mlonge therapies challenge boundaries between food and medicine, traditional and modern, gift and commodity, they suggest the sorts of worldings that are critical to healing in the Anthropocene.
