Abstract: In Western culture, the garden has traditionally been conceived as a utopian space embodying classical mythology and religious ideals. Its aesthetic studies has long revolved around Western ideologies such as theological conceptions, moral principles and national spirit, while overlooking the power dynamics between the Global North and South underlying horticulture featured by landscape control, ecological justice, and the exploitation of plants. As a Caribbean horticulturist and writer, Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid once undertook botanical expeditions to places such as Yunnan in China and Nepal on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Her non-fiction garden writing, rooted in a Global South perspective, frames garden aesthetics and botanical science as battlegrounds for discourse within the political and intellectual metaphorical spaces of the North-South divide. This article focuses on Kincaid’s garden writing and horticultural practices, revealing in it the historical connection between European garden aesthetic traditions and the colonial history of the Global South by examining how the Caribbean islands become a terrestrial Eden and how their tropical plants start a global diaspora. In response to the systematic exclusion of Southern discourses and the erasure of its knowledge within Western garden culture, Kincaid seeks in her writing to construct a Global South garden aesthetics: a resistant aesthetics rooted in local culture and traditional botanical memory, with the Caribbean serving as its exemplar.

Key words: the Caribbean, Global South, garden aesthetics, Jamaica Kincaid, garden writing

摘要： 花园在西方文化中惯常以承载古典神话与宗教理想的乌托邦形式出现,其美学研究长期围绕神学经典、德性象征与民族精神等西方意识形态展开,而忽视了园艺文化背后的景观控制、生态正义、植物剥削等全球南北方权力结构问题。安提瓜和巴布达裔美国作家牙买加·金凯德作为一位来自加勒比地区的园艺家,其植物狩猎旅行曾抵达中国云南、喜马拉雅山脉南麓的尼泊尔等地,以此为题材的非虚构花园写作根植于全球南方立场,把花园美学与植物科学视作南北政治与知识隐喻空间的话语争夺场。本文聚焦金凯德的花园书写与园艺实践,以加勒比群岛成为人间伊甸园及其热带植物的全球流散现象为线索,考察欧洲花园审美传统与全球南方被殖民史之间的历史关联。针对西方花园文化对南方话语的系统性排斥与知识擦除,金凯德在其写作中试图构建一种全球南方花园美学,它是以加勒比为典型的、根植于在地文化与传统植物记忆的抵抗式美学。

关键词: 加勒比, 全球南方, 花园美学, 牙买加·金凯德, 花园书写