Zappa la terra!

Summer gardening in the Bay Area means two things: clay soil and foxtails. The foxtails are all dried out, so it seems like an ideal time, at least from their point of view, for me to come by and spread their seed by getting in amongst them and thrashing about in the summer heat (the resilience of plants to extremes in temperature has always impressed me).

Of course, my intention is not to spread the seeds of the foxtail plants, but to prepare the earth for the planting of some nice silvery green ground cover (and to think I am so critical of others doing the same!),

While I was on my front patch with rake, hoe, fork and pick, it struck me that nothing seems more human to me than tilling the earth. Yes, I can look at Otzi and relate; it would be quite exciting to have been a roaming Neolithic hunter/gatherer/herder/farmer. But nothing says human to me more than the steady labor of the settled agriculturalist, which in my case takes the form of minor puttering in the front yard.

Still, the puttering is quite hard. Clay soil is difficult to work, being very dense and hard and containing little organic matter that would keep it looser. The stationary stoop with implement grasped in both hands feels iconic to me; proto homo, or at least proto homo habilis, or proto homo agriculturalist. Otzi with bow and quiver seems a bit distant, but put a hoe in his hand and he becomes much more familiar, much closer to our time, even a contemporary.

Is industrial culture to blame?

I wonder if the appeal of artisanal activities within industrial economies lies partly in the human tendency to see spirits in objects. I don't think I would be as likely to see an industrially made table or bench as a person as I do in the case of my homemade benches and table. Their irregularities, and the intimacy with them that I developed while making them, accommodating myself to and appreciating their imperfections, caused me to form a bond with them. The surfaces of factory made goods are too slippery to allow such a ready purchase. I do think, however, that over time, one can develop this kind of attachment to an industrial product, it just takes more time for the bond to form. I recently put a dent in the fender of my previously dentless car; it is mine now in a way that it wasn't previously.

Given the easy way I ascribe personhood to nonhuman objects, I wonder if humans are not like baby ducks, ready to imprint onto whatever they see first. Maybe the desire to ascribe personhood to inanimate things (I use nonhuman and inanimate here indiscriminately to cast a wide and varying net) expresses itself to neurotic degrees in some people as a way to counteract the depersonalizing effects of industrial culture, a kind of allergic reaction to the alienating character of a society in which bonds of this kind have been stripped away, or are highly stressed by the demands of daily living in an economy and culture that does not privilege them. Or maybe it is merely adaptive, meaning that human beings have always included the nonhuman and inanimate into their social lives, and to do so is vital to human life. I can think of no better approach to one's environment than to relate to it intimately, and with mutuality and compassion, both for the welfare of the nonhuman and inanimate as well as for the sake of other humans. Adopting an animist or neo-animist approach to human-environmental relations could be the best prescription for healthy living in the future, first and foremost with respect to adapting to or mitigating the effects of climate change.

A Compositional Approach to Personhood?

I suppose where I am now is to think about personhood in compositional terms. By this I mean that personhood derives from an accretion of form, and maybe also complexity and function, to the point that is acquires an 'anima'. Anything can have an anima, or spirit, which I use in an Aristotelian rather than Christian sense, although the two versions of the concept are obviously similar and related. A stone can have an anima, and while the process that made it probably occurred long ago and at a great distance (deep underground, beneath the sea, in a river bed, on a mountain top, on a windswept plain . . . ), it must be perceived at least intuitively, if not seen directly and understood explicitly. But I think maybe an understanding of the composition of a thing is not necessary for an observer to imbue it with a spirit and thereby confer personhood upon it. Only an appreciation for its composition, and not necessarily the process by which a thing was composed, so therefore an appreciation for its form, is needed. And I am not sure that even discretion, in material terms, perhaps delineation is a better word, is required. After all, what is a sky god if not a person? And what could be less bounded than the sky? Or a god? Or, walking it back, a person?

How easy and obvious is the leap from here to the idea of the personhood of plants, then, with their opening and closing flowers, their creeping roots, and other manifestations of spirit, and agenda?

Inanimate Personhood

I recently made a table and two benches out of wood from some old planter boxes that I tore down. For the most part, the tops are made from fir 2x12s and the legs from either redwood 2x4s (in the case of the benches) or 4x4s (in the case of the table). It has given me a case study in the development of inanimate personhood, as over the few days that it took me to dismantle the boxes and clean, sand, cut and assemble the pieces, not to mention the physically idle time spent designing them in my head, I came to regard each one as a person. Not as a human being, of course, nor as an animal, nor as a plant, although of course the last would be the most likely candidate for ascription.

As I moved through the process, making the benches first and then the table, I made some changes so that the benches were not really long enough for the table, unless I were to disassemble them and cut them down so that they could be used on the shorter ends of the table rather than on its longer sides.

Of course, that is now unthinkable. It would cause me real pain to unscrew the legs and cut the bench top to the proper size. I would be killing the old benches and by now they are really a part of the family.

Did I feel a similar twinge of reluctance when dismantling the planter boxes? No, not really, and I am not sure why. Maybe it is a matter of dimension, although I think by now my house is a person to me. Neither could it be the fact that the boxes were made of mixed material, the wood but also of course the soil, not to mention the plants that were growing in them. Maybe it is the fact that they never formed a consolidated whole, being somehow too distended in their dimensions as well as being too integrated into surrounding structures, a fence on one side and a cottage on the other.

Maybe it is just because benches and tables have legs, and being made a misura d'uomo, their candidature to personhood, via the human model, is all but predestined.

There is something about the designing and building process, however, especially the final sanding, that resembles gestation and birth. Think of Geppetto and Pinocchio. I think it is only after the eyes are carved that the little puppet came to life. There is definitely a magical coming together that happens in that final stage, as minor as it is in the overall labor of a project. Countless times I can think of remodeling work that all of a sudden acquires its desired state of beauty only when the last finishing touches are done, when all marks in a wall have been painted over and the final piece of trim is put in place, even if in material terms those little events are barely consequential, hardly substantive.

Drawing on a piece I wrote recently on plant personhood, I introduce here the topic of ships. Ships, as well as other large scale craft, but especially and originally sea-going vessels, are christened when they are completed, including a ritual whereby they are released from the dock onto the water, this particular aspect of the ritual clearly drawing on Christian tradition. At this time, they are given their names as a bottle of champagne (at least in one version of the act) is broken over their bow, clearly a take on the anointing of the forehead of a newborn, only in an inanimate register. The significance of this ritual is not merely symbolic; maritime law of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries records serious court cases over the liability that christened vessels carry while on the water; that is, it is not the actions of the owner, the captain or the crew that were being tried in court, but those of the ship itself.

Although made of wood, these benches and table are no longer trees, although their ontological origins are made clear by their material appearance, their woody nature evident in the deep rings that the thick slabs reveal. I wonder why that is. Why do I not see a plant when I look at those benches and that table. Why do I not necessarily see even wood. But a bench. And a table? I will have to take this up in a future post.

In Response to Pete Wells' Review in the New York Times

Here's my quibble with restaurant reviews, as a genre, so no offense to Mr Wells, who I think is a sparkling writer who has found his metier. In cultures where the local food ways have become more or less set, all of the chatter about them has stopped. Mealtimes are spent discussing other things besides what is on the plate in front of you. In this way, food takes its unique place at the table, uniting everyone through channels other than speaking and hearing, and never through writing. Of course, dining in restaurants is also alien to the people and places I have in mind; if one goes to one, it is often done so begrudgingly, so perhaps it is the restaurant, and not the restaurant review, that is my true target. My point, however, that people who appreciate food do not really talk about it all that much, especially while eating it, stands.

In support of my rather questionable claim that to speak about plants is to speak about anything and vice versa, I here submit my most recent comment on a piece in the New York Times, a restaurant review by Pete Wells, who always a delight to read.

What makes me think that I can use it to talk about plants is that it resonates so well with an earlier post I made on fetishization through language. In my comment above, I complain that something as essential to life as a meal is made precious by too much talk about it. This kind of excessive chatter, a tavola, as an Italian might say, can be annoying at best and offensive at its worst. Need I say that it is often a plant that is on the plate?

So, of course, my simple admiration of a flower (might I one day drop even that simple nomen?) is degraded, not enhanced, by applying the elaborate popular and scientific naming conventions and systems. So, I avoid it.

Following the model of Michel Serres, I will stop here, and let others work out the connections as they see fit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/dining/king-restaurant-review-soho.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-2&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

How nice not to know

I have always felt like somewhat of a hypocrite for not knowing the names of plants. I have reconciled this lapse with my interest in plants, however, by understanding that my reluctance to learn plant names lies in my reluctance to enroll them in human culture. How nice it is, for example, to see the straggly yellow flowers that bloom at the base of the post of my right railing. Equally nice they are in their closed state on dark and gloomy mornings.

American Indians, of course, lived this to the full. They knew Bear, not a bear. Muskrat, not a muskrat. Just as I know a bunch of yellow flowers rather than whatever their name is, common or scientific or, Yellow Flowers, I suppose.

Enrollment. It is the death of the . . . not person, because that depends on some kind of social context that, arguably, is a form of enrollment . . . id, maybe, being? Beingness?

In any case, enrollment demands a level of tractability that works against the simplest expression of the being, and the beauty of the plant, in my opinion, lies in this free and spontaneous expression. True, my simple gaze produces a kind of enrollment, and for this I am sorrowful (how sensible then the protective veil), but I suppose my saving feature, my gift, my expiation, my atonement . . . is my ignorance, my refusal and inability to name the plant that lives before me.

I suppose this perspective lies at the root of the dismay conveyed in some of my earlier posts. Why this plant rather than that one? Why put this plant here and not there? Why not just like the plants and the earth to which they belong as they are, as they seek to arrange themselves?

Plants Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (?)

Inspired by Rupert Sheldrake's study of the phenomenon of dogs being able to tell, well in advance, when their owners will be arriving home, independent of any cues such as familiar scents or sounds (footsteps, engine noises), I am trying to devise an experiment that is identical in every way but with plants substituting for dogs. If I remember correctly, even cats and birds exhibit similar abilities and behaviors but perhaps not with the same reliability of dogs given their different natures, with the stereotype of cats being comparatively indifferent to human behavior holding true also in this case as one might expect, and birds of course inhabiting that strange avian world that has never quite been contained by the human one, at least not to the extent for which that of dogs, and to a lesser extent, of cats, have been.

Of course, dogs are ideal for such a study not only because they are so loyal and attentive, but because they are so demonstrative. Sheldrake conducted his study by observing when dogs ran to the window and waited, a clear sign that they knew that their owner (an awful idea by the way, maybe custodian or even parent is better) was on his or her way. How to observe this in plants presents a bit of a puzzle.

I will have to reread Mancuso and Viola, as well as Gagliano, to see if I can pick up ideas on how to monitor plants for changes in behavior. I am somewhat skeptical that I will achieve any positive results since Sheldrake has stated that so far the quality that is noticeable in mammals and birds has not been seen in reptiles. Since I place beings on a continuum of of interactive awareness, ranging from humans and other primates to dolphins to dogs to parrots to lizards to hydrangeas, I am not so confident that I will be able to skip a register by observing something in plants that not even reptiles exhibit. But who knows, I could be wrong, and this is what experiments are for. I suppose I am most interested in figuring out how to monitor social reactivity in plants. If anything good comes out of such a study, it surely will be this first and foremost. I think that whatever Gagliano did to detect the use of sound by plants is what I need, or is at least a place to start.

You can learn more about Sheldrake's dog study here.