Involutionary Momentum: Affective Ecologies and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounters

Abstract

This essay puts forth a theory of “affective ecologies” encompassing plant, animal, and human interactions. The authors’ formulation of “involution” favors a coevolution of organisms that act not on competitive pressures but on affective relations. Drawing in particular from—and challenging—Darwinian and neo-Darwinian accounts of orchid-insect contact and controversial research on plant communication, Hustak and Myers demonstrate the interdependence of seemingly unrelated life forms. The evolving entity within this framework is not an individual organism but a community of organisms in communication with one another, exemplified by the transmission of information through chemical signaling among plants, which forces readers to question what it means to communicate. This relationality also begs a reconsideration of the dynamic between a human subject who conducts an experiment and an animal or plant object of study, which the essay approaches by showing how Darwin became a participant in his own orchid experiments. Taken together, these feminist readings of ecological and evolutionary phenomena result in the dissolution of species and even kingdom boundaries.

Attending to grape vines: perceptual practices, planty agencies and multiple temporalities in Australian viticulture

“…one who will not be affected' (Despret 2004: 118). Yet this conception of agency, like that mobilised when a purposefulness is attributed to plants' 'genetic blueprints' (Jones and Cloke 2002;Pollan 2002), is grounded in a problematically anthropocentric vision of a human actor idealised as rational, self-interested and self-moving (Hustak and Myers 2012).…”

“…Expanding upon a wellestablished turn to studying more-than-human dimensions of social life (Clark 2011;Hustak and Myers 2012;Whatmore 2002;Whatmore and Hinchliffe 2010), geographers are enthusiastically exploring human-plant relationships within gardening practices (Cloke and Pawson 2008;Ginn 2008;Hitchings 2007;Hitchings and Jones 2004) and human engagements with wild or feral vegetation (Barker 2008;Franklin 2006). Yet interventions investigating human-plant interactions in agricultural settings remain comparatively rare (although see Head, Atchison and Gates 2012;Inhetveen 1994;Jones and Cloke 2002;Richardson-Ngwenya 2012).…”

Neurobiologia das plantas: uma perspectiva interespecífica sobre o debate

“…• Este trabalho apresenta um balanço do debate ocasionado pelas ideias suscitadas nas ciências das plantas com o advento da neurobiologia das plantas, destacando, a partir das tensões geradas entre diferentes grupos de cientistas, os elementos do que Hustak & Myers (2012) chamam de uma "narrativa mais rica", além do enfoque redutivo da biologia contemporânea sobre células e genes, ou de uma lógica evolucionista neodarwiniana, e com maior atenção ao organismo e seus modos de relação. Uma narrativa que também dê conta da maneira como as plantas se expressam e permita desvelar os emaranhados nos quais plantas e cientistas estão envolvidos.…”

“…• ABSTRACT • This paper presents a balance of the debate caused by the ideas raised in plants sciences wit h t he advent of plants neurobiology, highlighting from the tensions generated between different groups of scientists the elements of what Hustak & Myers (2012) call a "richer narrative", beyond reductive focus of contemporary biology on cells and genes, or a neodarwinian evolutionary logic, and with greater attention to the organism and modes of relation. A narrative that also accounts for the way plants express themselves and reveal the entanglements in which plants and scientists are involved.…”

Editorial Preface

“…To be mindful of mortality is, for example, to marvel at the incredible achievement that is a species: a living form stretched over millions of years, pieced together out of the fragile and fleeting lives of so many innumerable living beings (Hustak andMyers 2012, van Dooren 2014 21-44); ways of life evolved and evolving through deep time, being blotted out en masse in the blink of an eye. It is to be captivated by the immensity of the oil, coal and other fossil fuels, laid down over millennia, only to be brought to the surface and consumed by fire in the lifetimes of a few generations of humans.…”