Forthcoming
Research Articles

An Archaeology of Ruderal Futurism

PDF HTML
  • Alex Young
Alex Young
Carnegie Mellon University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63845494909731

Published 2024-09-29

Keywords

  • post-capitalism,
  • futurism,
  • agriculture,
  • ruderal,
  • weeds,
  • Decolonisation
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Young, Alex. 2024. “An Archaeology of Ruderal Futurism”. Plant Perspectives, September. https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63845494909731.

Copyright (c) 2024 Alex Young

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Language used to describe plant life and their environments is shaped by how plants are perceived. In turn this language reproduces how plants continue to be perceived and contributes to the further shaping of attitudes toward them. This essay presents the ruderal as a framework for understanding and envisioning being-with more-than-human others in a world altered by colonial and capitalist exploitation, extraction and expansion. Enacting an archaeological tracing of language and cultural thought towards ruderal plant species, consideration is given to: vernacular language applied to vegetal beings; identities of belonging applied to the movement of vegetation at a planetary scale; and decolonial modes of thinking-with and being-with vegetal others in the aftermath of colonialism and capitalism. Particular consideration here is given to the classification systems of botanist Albert Thellung, the thought of gardener and landscape architect Gilles Clément and the work of artist Andrea Callar. This paper extends an ongoing area of research I have previously examined in the curatorial research project Ruderal Futures (2022) for SixtyEight Art Institute and the essay ‘A brief constellation towards a ruderal futurism’ (2020).

PDF HTML

References

  1. Ahmed, S. 2000. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-coloniality. London & New York: Routledge.
  2. Anderson, E. and R.E. Woodson. 1935. The Species of Tradescantia Indigenous to the United States. Jamaica Plain: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.153160
  3. Baker, H.G. 1965. ‘Characteristics and modes of origin of weeds’. In H.G. Baker and L. Stebbins (eds), The Genetics of Colonizing Species, pp. 147–68. New York: Academic Press, Inc.
  4. Bataille, G. 1985 [1936]. ‘The sacred conspiracy’. In A. Stoekl (ed.), A. Stoekl, C.R. Lovitt, and D.M. Leslie Jr (trans.). Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, pp. 178–81. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. First published in 1936 as La conjuration sacrée in Acephalé.
  5. Beal, W.J. 1910. ‘Seeds of Michigan Weeds’. Bulletin 260, Michigan State Agricultural College Experiment Station, Division of Botany, March 1910, pp. 101–83.
  6. Blanchot, M. 1986. The Writing of the Disaster. A. Smock (trans.). Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. First published in 1980 as L’Ecriture du désatre by Gallimard.
  7. Callard, A. 1976. Flora funera (for Battery Park City) [Super 8mm sound film, preserved on 16mm and digitally]. Available at: https://archive.org/details/Flora_Funera (accessed 10 September 2022).
  8. Callard, A. 1976. Lost Shoe Blues [Super 8mm sound film, preserved on 16mm and digitally]. Available at: https://archive.org/details/Lost_Shoe_Blues (accessed 10 September 2022).
  9. Chew, M.K. 2011. ‘Anekeitaxonomy: botany, place and belonging’. In I.D. Rotherham and R.A. Lambert (eds), Invasive and Introduced Plants and Animals: Human Perceptions, Attitudes and Approaches to Management, pp. 137–51. London & Washington DC: Earthscan.
  10. Clément, G. 2011. ‘In praise of vagabonds’. J. Skinner (trans.). Qui Parle 19 (2): 275–97. First published in 2002 as Éloge des vagabondes by NiL Éditions. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0275
  11. Clément, G. 2005. ‘The planetary garden’. In M. Ohanian and J.C. Royoux (eds), Cosmograms, pp. 127–35. New York: Lukas & Sternberg.
  12. Denes, A. 1987. ‘Wheatfield: a confrontation’. In A.C. Bozzo (ed.), The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger, pp. 84–87. New York: Artists to End Hunger.
  13. Engels, F. 1845. Die lage der arbeitenden klasse in England. Leipzig: Otto Wigand.
  14. Engels, F. 1926. The Peasant War in Germany. M.J. Olgin (trans.). New York: International Publishers Company, Inc. First published in 1870 in the author’s preface to the second edition of Der deutsche bauernkrieg by Verlag der Expedition des Volkstaat.
  15. Frenkel, R.E. 1977. ‘Ruderal vegetation along some California roadsides’, University of California Publications in Geography, Volume 20. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, California Library Reprint Series Edition. First published in 1970 by University of California Press.
  16. Gaskell, E. 1906. Mary Barton. New York: The Century Co. First published in 1848 by Chapman and Hall, 186, Strand.
  17. Gissen, D. 2009. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
  18. Grime, J.P. 1979. Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
  19. Holzner, W. 1982. ‘Concepts, categories and characteristics of weeds’. In M. Holzner and W. Numata (eds), Geobotany 2: Biology and Ecology of Weeds, pp. 3–20. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0916-3_1
  20. Howard, L. 1985. ‘Plant colonization on an abandoned, elevated highway in New York City’, Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 47: 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1353/pcg.1985.0001
  21. Liboiron, M. 2021. Pollution is Colonialism. Durham and London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478021445
  22. Loudon J.C. 1835. An Encyclopædia of gardening: Comprising the theory and practice of horticulture, floriculture, arboriculture, and landscape gardening; including all the latest improvements; a general history of gardening in all countries; and a statistical view of its present state, with suggestions for its future progress in the British Isles. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman.
  23. Kopenawa, D. and B. Albert, 2013. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674726116
  24. Mabey, R. 2010. Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
  25. Marder, M. 2011. ‘Plant-soul: The elusive meanings of vegetative life’, Environmental Philosophy 8 (1): 83–100. https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil2011815
  26. Marx, K. 1952. The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850. Moscow: Progress Publishers. First published in 1850 in Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue.
  27. Marx, K. 1906. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. D. De Leon (trans.). Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company. First published in 1852 in Die revolution.
  28. Mayhew, H. 1968. London Labour and the London Poor, Volume I. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. First published in 1851 by Office, 16, Upper Wellington Street, Strand.
  29. Murphy, M. 2018. ‘Against population, towards alterlife’. In A. Clark and D. Haraway (eds), Making Kin Not Population, pp. 101–24. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
  30. Naegeli, O. and A. Thellung. 1905. ‘Die flora des kantons Zürich’, Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft Zürich 50: 225–305.
  31. Numata, M. 1982. ‘A methodology for the study of weed vegetation’. In M. Holzner and W. Numata (eds), Geobotany 2: Biology and Ecology of Weeds, pp. 21–34. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0916-3_2
  32. Oxford English Dictionary. 2022. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/276667 (accessed 11 September 2022).
  33. PDA. 2022. Controlled Plants and Noxious Weeds. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. https://www.agriculture.pa.gov/Plants_Land_Water/PlantIndustry/NIPPP/Pages/Controlled-Plant-Noxious-Weed.aspx (accessed 11 September 2022).
  34. Reo, N.J. and L.A. Ogden. 2018. ‘Anishnaabe Aki: An indigenous perspective on the global threat of invasive species’. Sustainability Science 13: 1443–452. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0571-4
  35. Salisbury, E. 1961. Weeds and Aliens. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press.
  36. Shaw I. and M. Waterstone. 2019. Wageless Life: A Manifesto for a Future beyond Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvwrm615
  37. Thellung, A. 1912. La flore adventice de Montpellier. Cherbourg, Imprimerie Emile Le Maout.
  38. Thellung, A. 1915. ‘Pflanzenwanderungen unter dem Einfluß des Menschen’, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 53: 37–66.
  39. Thellung, A. 1917. ‘Stratiobotanik’, Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft Zurich 62: 327–35.
  40. Thellung, A. 1918-19. ‘Zur terminologie der adventiv- und ruderalfloristik’, Allgemeine Botanische Zeitschrift für Systematik, Floristik, Pflanzengeographie 24/25: 36–42.
  41. Uexküll, J. 1957. ‘A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: a picture book of invisible worlds’. In C.H. Schiller (ed.), Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept, pp. 5–80. New York: International Universities Press.
  42. Wood, E.M. 2002. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London & New York: Verso.
  43. Young, A. 2020. ‘A brief constellation towards a ruderal futurism’, Technoetic Arts 18 (2/3): 125–134. https://doi.org/10.1386/tear_00032_1