Pine-ing for a Voice: Vegetal agencies, New Materialism and State Control through the Wollemi Pine

Authors

  • Chantelle Mitchell Independent Researcher
  • Jaxon Waterhouse Independent Researcher

Abstract

Attending to Wollemia nobilis (Wollemi Pine), we read this plant as ensconced and mobilised by political and politicised forces, towards distinct colonial and imperial ends. Seeking to work beyond a language of flowers, we attune to the appropriation and weaponisation of plants; a language beyond the merely decorative or affective, towards understandings of plants performing agency and political power. 

Our reading of the Wollemi pine emerges from the scorched summer of 2019/2020, in which much of Australia caught alight, and during which the Wollemi was placed in danger of disappearing for a second, and perhaps final, time. A prehistoric tree, long thought extinct, before its rediscovery in 1994, the Wollemi holds special significance, but further, value within an Australian cultural context. In light of this significance, the Wollemi is apprehended and manipulated towards political ends. Within the frame of this text, we consider not only the contemporary diplomacy and governance within which the Wollemi is ensnared, but too, the legacies of Invasion and colonisation which support the mobilisation of the Wollemi in this manner. 

Framing our approach within the broader context of contemporary ecological theory and in a manner attentive to frames of New Materialism, we engage with the entanglements of plant language, agency and being — as a means through which we can attune to our shared mattering and ongoing struggles for sovereignty amidst a rapidly changing natural world.  

Author Biographies

Chantelle Mitchell, Independent Researcher

Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse are researchers and writers from so-called Australia, working across academic and contemporary arts settings through their research project Ecological Gyre Theory. Together, their work has appeared in un Magazine, e-flux, art+Australia, and Unlikely Journal, with other publication outcomes currently under peer review, and chapters for publications with Bloomsbury forthcoming in 2022. They have presented their work at conferences nationally and internationally, and exhibited their work in Australian artist run spaces. Most recently they have presented through Macquarie University, the international Temporal Belongings, STREAMS and Atmospheric Humanities conferences, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for the Writing&Concepts series—although COVID-19 has disrupted a number of further forthcoming engagements in Sweden, Norway, Greece and Finland. They have shown their work at Sawtooth ARI, Launceston (deluge, Jan – Feb 2020) and have taught their writing and practice focused curriculum ‘Abyss Lessons’ through Bus Projects in 2020. 2021 sees exhibitions at Spectrum Gallery (W.A.) The University of Melbourne (VIC), Sawtooth ARI (Tas) and FELTspace ARI (S.A.), alongside further practice based outcomes in 2022. They are currently guest editors for Issue 8 of Swamphen: a journal of cultural ecology. 

Chantelle Mitchell lives on unceded Wurundjeri Country. She has written for Stilts Journal, Heart of Hearts Press, Plumwood Mountain, the Lifted Brow and Marrickville Pause, and presented performance lectures for ACCA, the Ian Potter Museum, Bus Projects and Free Association. Chantelle maintains a research-based practice with Jaxon Waterhouse, which has seen them present their work through Macquarie University, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the international Temporal Belongings, STREAMS and Atmospheric Humanities conferences. Their written work has appeared in unMagazine, e-flux, art+Australia and Unlikely Journal, and they have presented numerous exhibitions in artist run spaces across Australia.

Jaxon Waterhouse, Independent Researcher

Jaxon Waterhouse is a writer, publisher, and artist living on unceded Ngarluma Country in regional Western Australia. He is the editor of Heart of Hearts Press, which has seen numerous publications and artist books between 2020 and 2021. In 2021, he presented the immersive digital artwork, Quest for the Night Parrot, alongside numerous exhibitions across Australia. Jaxon maintains a research based practice with Chantelle Mitchell which has seen them present their work at a number of national and international conferences. Their written work has appeared in unMagazine, e-flux, art+Australia and Unlikely Journal, and they have presented numerous exhibitions across Australia.

References

Anderson, Ian. 1994. “Pine ‘Dinosaur Lurks in Gorge.’” New Scientist 1957, 24 December. Accessed 15 November 2020. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14419570-500-pine-dinosaur-lurks-in-gorge/

Anderson, Ian. 1995. “Lonesome pines at risk from collectors.” New Scientist 1967, 4 March. Accessed 10 November, 2020. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14519670-400-lonesome-pines-at-risk-from-collectors/

Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience. 2020. “Bushfires - Black Summer.” Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub. Accessed 3 December 2020. https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/black-summer-bushfires-vic-2019-20/

Baber, Zaheer. 2016. “The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 46 (4): 659–697. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2016.1185796

Bar‐On, Yinon M., Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo. 2018. “The biomass distribution on Earth.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (25): 6506–6511. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115

Barad, Karen. 2012. “Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers.” In New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies, edited by Iris van der Tuin and Rick Dolphijn, 48–70. Ann Arbor: MPublishing/Open Humanities Press.

Bawaka Country, Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Kate Lloyd, Laklak Burarrwanga, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Banbapuy Ganambarr, and Djawundil Maymuru. 2015. “Working with and learning from Country: decentring human author-ity.” Cultural Geographies 22 (2): 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474014539248

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv111jh6w

Blok, Anders. 2017. “Deep in the Maze: Urban Nature and Repetitions of the Not-Quite-Similar.” In Moving Plants, edited by Line Marie Thorsen, 103–120. Næstved: Rønnebæksholm.

Bousfield, Dan. 2020. “Settler colonialism in vegetal worlds: exploring progress and resilience at the margins of the Anthropocene.” Settler Colonial Studies 10 (1): 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2019.1604297

Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities.” Theory, Culture & Society 36: 31–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418771486

Buchan, Bruce. 2020. “Botany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770.” The Conversation, April 29. Accessed 3 November 2020. https://theconversation.com/botany-and-the-colonisation-of-australia-in-1770-128469

Chamowitz, Daniel. 2012. What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses of Your Garden—and beyond. Oxford: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Clarke, Marcus. 1893. “Preface.” Poems of the Late Adam Lindsay Gordon. Melbourne: Massina.

Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost, eds. 2010. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw2wk

Crawford, Emily. 2007. “Plant/Human Borderland Jamming.” Transformations 30: 203–218.

Doolittle, William E. 2004. “Gardens Are Us, We Are Nature: Transcending Antiquity and Modernity.” Geographical Review 94 (3): 391–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2004.tb00179.x

Farley, Kathleen A. 2007. “Grasslands to tree plantations: forest transition in the Andes of Ecuador.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97 (4): 755–771. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00581.x

Gamble, Christopher N., Joshua S. Hanan and Thomas Nail. 2019. “What is New Materialism.” Angelaki 24 (6): 111–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1684704

Gibson, Prudence. 2018. The Plant Contract: Art’s Return to Vegetal Life. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004360549

Gillbank, Linden. 2007. “Of Weeds and Other Introduced Species: Ferdinand Mueller and Plant and Animal Acclimatisation in Colonial Victoria.” The Victorian Naturalist 124 (2): 69–78.

Greenfield, Abigail, Hannah McPherson, Tony Auld, Sven Delaney, Catherine A. Offord, Marlien van der Merwe, Jia-Yee S. Yap and Maurizio Rossetto. 2016. “Whole-Chloroplast Analysis as an Approach for Fine-Tuning the Preservation of a Highly Charismatic but Critically Endangered Species, Wollemia nobilis (Araucariaceae).” Australian Journal of Botany 64: 654–658. https://doi.org/10.1071/BT16105

Hall, Matthew. 2011. Plants As Persons. Albany: SUNY Press.

Head, Lesley, and Jennifer Atchison. 2009. “Cultural Ecology: Emerging Human-Plant Geographies.” Progress in Human Geography 33 (2): 236–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132508094075

Ingold, Tim. 2011. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London and New York: Routledge.

Instone, Lesley, and Affrica Taylor. 2016. “Thinking About Inheritance Through the Figure of the Anthropocene, from the Antipodes and in the Presence of Others.” Environmental Humanities 7 (1): 133–150. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3616371

Jones, Wyn, Ken Hill, and Jan Allen. 1995. “Wollemia Nobilis, a New Living Australian Genus and Species in the Araucariaceae.” Telopea 7 (2–3): 173–176. https://doi.org/10.7751/telopea19953014

Jones, Martin. 2007. Feast: Why Humans Share Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jones, Owain, and Paul Cloke. 2002. Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees and Trees in Their Place. London and New York: Taylor and Francis.

Kirksey, Scott, Craig Schuetze, and Stefan Helmreich. 2014. "Tactics of Multispecies Ethnography." In The Multispecies Salon, edited by Eben Kirksey, 1–24. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376989-001

Kirksey, Scott, and Stefan Helmreich. 2010. “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography.” Cultural Anthropology 25 (4): 545–576. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01069.x

Kranz, Isabel. 2017. “The Language Of Flowers In Popular Culture And Botany.” In The Language Of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature, edited by Monica Gagliano, John C. Ryan, and Patrícia Vieira, 193–214. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. The Pasteurization Of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lazarev, Ilya. 2018. The Enlightenment, philanthropy and the idea of social progress in early Australia: Creating a happier race? New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429445439

Liang, Lim Yan. 2015. “Gift of Trees to Symbolise Evergreen Relations.” The Straits Times, 30 June. Accessed November 15, 2020. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/gift-of-trees-to-symbolise-evergreen-relations

Mabey, Richard. 2016. The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination. New York: WW Norton & Company.

Mamdani, Mahmood. 2012. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067356

Marder, Michael. 2013. Plant-thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. New York: Columbia University Press.

Marder, Michael. 2013. “What is Plant Thinking?” Klesis: Revue Philosophique 25: 124–143.

Marder, Michael. 2018. “Interview with Michael Marder.” In Covert Plants: Vegetal Consciousness and Agency in the Anthropocentric World, edited by Prudence Gibson and Baylee Brits, 25–36. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books.

Martin, Karen Lillian. 2008. Please Knock Before You Enter: Aboriginal regulation of Outsiders and the implications for researchers. Brisbane: Post Press.

McCoy, Frederick. 1862. “Acclimatisation, its Nature and Applicability to Victoria.” The First Annual Report of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria. Melbourne: Acclimatisation Society of Victoria.

McDonough MacKenzie, Caitlin, Sara Kuebbing, Rebecca S. Barak, Molly Bletz, Joan Dudney, Bonnie M. McGill, Mallika A. Nocco, Talia Young, and Rebecca K. Tonietto. 2019. ‘We do not want to “cure plant blindness” we want to grow plant love.’ Plants, People, Planet 1 (3): 139–141. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10062

McGee, Peter A., Suzanne Bullock, and Brett A. Summerell. 1999. “Structure of Mycorrhizae of the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) and Related Araucariaceae.” Australian Journal of Botany 47: 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1071/BT97064

Morton, Adam. 2020. “‘Dinosaur trees’: firefighters save endangered Wollemi pines from NSW bushfires.” Guardian. 15 January. Accessed 12 November 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/15/dinosaur-trees-firefighters-save-endangered-wollemi-pines-from-nsw-bushfires

Myers, Natasha. 2014. “Sensing Botanical Sensoria: A Kriya for Cultivating Your Inner Plant.” Centre for Imaginative Ethnography. Accessed 13 October 2020. https://imaginative-ethnography.com/imaginings/affect/sensing-botanical-sensoria/

Myers, Natasha. 2016. "Photosynthesis." Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights. Accessed 13 October 2020. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/photosynthesis

Myers, Natasha. 2017. “Photosynthetic Mattering: Rooting into the Planthroposcene.” In Moving Plants, edited by Line Marie Thorsen, 123–130. Næstved: Rønnebæksholm.

Nealon, Jeffrey T. 2015. Plant Theory: Biopower and Vegetable Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804796781

New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation. 2006. Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) Recovery Plan. Hurstville: NSW Department of Environment and Conservation.

New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. 2020. “Understanding the Effects of the 19–20 Fires.” Recovering from the 2019-20 Fires. Accessed 12 November 2020. https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/parks-reserves-and-protected-areas/fire/park-recovery-and-rehabilitation/recovering-from-2019-20-fires/understanding-the-impact-of-the-2019-20-fires

Pangesti, Nurmi, Ana Pineda, Corné M J Pieterse, Marcel Dicke, and Joop J A van Loon. 2013. “Two-way plant mediated interactions between root-associated microbes and insects: from ecology to mechanisms.” Frontiers in Plant Science 4: article 414. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2013.00414

Peakall, Rod, Daniel Ebert, Leon J Scott, Patricia F Meagher, and Cathy A Offord. 2003. “Comparative genetic study confirms exceptionally low genetic variation in the ancient and endangered relictual conifer, Wollemia nobilis (Araucariaceae).” Molecular Ecology 12 (9): 2331–43. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-294X.2003.01926.x

Pitt, Hannah. 2016. An Apprenticeship in Plant Thinking. In Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds, edited by Michelle Bastian, Owain Jones, Niamh Moore, and Emma Roe, 106–120. London and New York: Routledge.

Rose, Deborah Bird. 2000. Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, Deborah Bird. 2004. Reports From a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation. Sydney: UNSW Press.

Sarah, P., and M. Zonana. 2015. “Livestock Redistribute Runoff and Sediments in Semi-Arid Rangeland Areas.” Solid Earth 6: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.5194/se-6-433-2015

Salleh, Anna. 2005. “Wollemi Pine Infected by Fungus.” ABC Science, 4 November. Accessed 1 December 2020. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/11/04/1497961.htm

Sandilands, Catriona. 2016. “Floral Sensations: Plant Biopolitics.” The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199685271.013.33

Shakespeare, William. 2005. Four Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. Edited by David Bevington and David Scott Kastan. New York: Bantam Classics.

Soler, Roxina, Jeffrey A Harvey, T Martijn Bezemer and Josef F Stuefer. 2008. “Plants as green phones: Novel insights into plant-mediated communication between below- and above-ground insects.” Plant Signaling & Behavior 3 (8): 519–520. https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.3.8.6338

Thorsen, Line Marie. 2017. “Introduction: Moving Plants.” In Moving Plants, edited by Line Marie Thorsen, 11–15. Næstved: Rønnebæksholm.

Todd, Zoe. 2016. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology 29 (1): 4–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124

Trewavas, Anthony. 2002. “Plant Intelligence: Mindless Mastery.” Nature 415 (6874): 841. https://doi.org/10.1038/415841a

Trewavas, Anthony. 2003. “Aspects of Plant Intelligence.” Annals of Botany 92 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcg101

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77bcc

Tsing, Anna. 2017. “Moving plants: appreciating Koichi Watanabe.” In Moving Plants, edited by Line Marie Thorsen, 21–26. Næstved: Rønnebæksholm.

Turcotte, Gerry. 1998. “Australian Gothic.” In The Handbook to Gothic Literature, edited by M. Mulvey Roberts, 10–19. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.

Wandersee, James H., and Elisabeth E. Schussler. 1999. “Preventing Plant Blindness.” The American Biology Teacher 61 (2): 82–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/4450624

Wild, Eva, Robin Golser, Peter Hille, Walter Kutschera, Alfred Priller, Stephan Puchegger, Werner Rom, Peter Steier, and Walter Vycudilik. 1997. “First 14C Results from Archaeological and Forensic Studies at the Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator.” Radiocarbon 40: 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200018142

Wilson, Edward. 1857. “On the Introduction of the British Songbird.” Transactions of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria 2: 77–88.

Wollemi Pine. 2004. “Wollemi Watch Issue 6.” Accessed 12 November 2020. http://www.wollemipine.com/watch/issue_6.php

Wollemi Pine. 2006. “Wollemi Watch Issue 12.” Accessed 12 November 2020. http://www.wollemipine.com/watch/issue_12.php

Woodford, James. 2002. The Wollemi Pine. Melbourne: Text Publishing.

Woodford, James. 2005. “Prehistoric Miracle: Our Dinosaur Tree.” Australian Geographic 80: 50–57.

Wong, Luke. 2019. “‘Dinosaur tree’ Wollemi pines safe for now as Blue Mountains bushfires continue to burn.” ABC News. 5 December. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-05/wollemi-pine-trees-national-park-fires-blue-mountains/11763420

Zimmer, H., T. Auld, J. Benson, and P. Baker. 2014. “Recruitment bottlenecks in the rare Australian conifer Wollemia nobilis.” Biodiversity and Conservation 23: 203–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-013-0593-2

Downloads

Published

01-11-2021

How to Cite

“Pine-Ing for a Voice: Vegetal Agencies, New Materialism and State Control through the Wollemi Pine”. 2021. Performance Philosophy 6 (2): 100-116. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2021.62332.

How to Cite

“Pine-Ing for a Voice: Vegetal Agencies, New Materialism and State Control through the Wollemi Pine”. 2021. Performance Philosophy 6 (2): 100-116. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2021.62332.