My PhD journey — Golden Thread
Plant Agency — my Golden Thread. As my supervisors emphasise … stay with your golden thread and do not roam too far from it!
I want to just download some thoughts here for my own reflection.
Agency is the ability to effect change in the environment and change on a structural level. What I mean by this is that agency can actually change societies and in time civilisation as a whole. The agency of plants and fungi is about their abilities to effect change. Cotton, tobacco, coffee beans, sugar cane, tea, cocoa all have an undeniable potent agency that was weaponised and exploited by humans for imperialism and white settler colonialism (Kew Gardens and all the many gardens of the stately homes scattered across the UK figure in there somehow too). Some plants have such potent agency that governments have had wars over them and prohibited humans having relationships with them. A criminal record and in some countries, the death penalty, is the consequence for having clandestine relations with certain plants — Cannabis, Psilocybin mushrooms, Papaver somniferum (opium poppy) and the Coca leaf spring to mind.
Consent is another thing I have been thinking about. Whilst this is an abstract concept when considering non-humans I think it is worthy of mentioning. Humans do not even consider the consent of non-humans. Is this how we know it is exploitation? I can hear the cynics in my ear … ‘How would you even ask a chicken, or a carrot for consent’? Well once again our indigenous brothers, sisters and non-binary folk may have something to say about this that doesn’t fit neatly into a Western ontology.
Commons — a space to experiment. This is essential. How else are we going to develop another world. A better world. I am thinking specifically about space/land in the material world (as opposed to digital commons). Space to build relationships of solidarity. But there is no space. There is not one single square centimetre of common land in the UK. When I say commons I mean in the true sense. Land that no-one owns. So every square centimetre of this island has been privatised, monetized and enclosed. There is nothing left. This is a problem.
The laws created by violent land robbing hegemonies from William the Bastard up until the final enclosures in the 1850s resulted in common folk having their relationship with the land severed over hundreds of years… slow and incremental separation. This has had a profound impact. Read Silvia Federici — Caliban and The Witch. A sort of PTSD haunts us, evident in how we respond to continued state sponsored violence here in the UK and elsewhere on our beautiful planet. When I say land I am implicitly talking about human-plant relationships. One could argue that the prohibition of certain plants alongside the the fact that there is no common land, was intentional. For example, how would the agency of cannabis impact structural systems if folks just grew it on their local commons for communal medicines? Just a thought. Imagine disenfranchised youth and young adults learning about the cultivation of cannabis as an entry point into growing food. Teaching about connection, mindfulness and care through the plant’s growth. Only then being able to enjoy its fruits. It’s going to hit different. Dangerous idea.
Elinor Ostrom’s work around the commons is a good place for me to start.
I am joining countless others who have gone before me by problematizing the lack of access to land. Without true common land we have very little to work with when considering alternative and diverse economies. Rewilding could be considered a move in the right direction. I need to look more closely at this.
One last consideration on my mind today is the privatisation of seed banks by the likes of Monsanto. Neoliberal capitalism is not content to just enclose land it also wants complete control over what plants can be grown down to the specific seed — this is to maximise their profits by legislating to ensure the growers have to buy their patented seeds, bred specifically to profit the corporation by making the seeds sterile … so the farmer has to keep coming back each year to buy those patented seeds or risk being criminalised.
I am not absolutely sure how these themes connect but they do feel like they hang from the same golden thread … plant agency.
I now have a dedicated PhD journey tik tok …. I posted me reading this blog…
