Patrícia Vieira (editor) - The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World

The Green Thread

Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Series Editor : Douglas A. Vakoch, California Institute of Integral Studies, USA

Advisory Board

Joni Adamson, Arizona State University, USA; Mageb Al-adwani, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia; Bruce Allen, Seisen University, Japan; Hannes Bergthaller, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan; Zlia Bora, Federal University of Paraba, Brazil; Izabel Brando, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil; Byron Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas, USA; Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University, USA; Simo Farias Almeida, Federal University of Roraima, Brazil; Julia Fiedorczuk, University of Warsaw, Poland; Camilo Gomides, University of Puerto RicoRio Piedras, Puerto Rico; Yves-Charles Grandjeat, Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3 University, France; George Handley, Brigham Young University, USA; Isabel Hoving, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Idom Thomas Inyabri, University of Calabar, Nigeria; Serenella Iovino, University of Turin, Italy; Adrian Ivakhiv, University of Vermont, USA; Daniela Kato, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China; Petr Kopeck, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Mohammad Nasser Modoodi, Payame Noor University, Iran; Patrick Murphy, University of Central Florida, USA; Serpil Oppermann, Hacettepe University, Turkey; Rebecca Raglon, University of British Columbia, Canada; Anuradha Ramanujan, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Christian Schmitt-Kilb, University of Rostock, Germany; Marian Scholtmeijer, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada; Heike Schwarz, University of Augsburg, Germany; Murali Sivaramakrishnan, Pondicherry University, India; Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA; J. Etienne Terblanche, North-West University, South Africa; Julia Tofantuk, Tallinn University, Estonia; Jennifer Wawrzinek, Free University of Berlin, Germany; Cheng Xiangzhan, Shandong University, China; Yuki Masami, Kanazawa University, Japan; Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg, Germany

Ecocritical Theory and Practice highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists.

Recent Titles

Romantic Sustainability: Endurance and the Natural World, 17801830 , edited by Ben P. Robertson

Ishimure Michikos Writings in Ecocritical Perspective: Between Sea and Sky , edited by Bruce Allen and Yuki Masami

The Ecopolitics of Consumption: The Food Trade , edited by H. Louise Davis, Karyn Pilgrim, and Madhu Sinha

Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: The Ecological Awareness of Early Scribes of Nature , edited by Steven Petersheim and Madison Jones IV

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis: Climate Change, Subsistence, and Questionable Futures, by Patrick D. Murphy

The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective , by Albrecht Classen

Ecocriticism of the Global South, edited by Scott Slovic, R. Swarnalatha, and Vidya Sarveswaran

Explorations in Ecocriticism: Advocacy, Bioregionalism, and Visual Design , by Paul Lindholdt

New International Voices in Ecocriticism , edited by Serpil Oppermann

Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture , by Christopher Schliephake

Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature: Healing Narratives , by Theda Wrede

Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development: Toward a Politicized Ecocriticism , edited by Scott Slovic, R. Swarnalatha, and Vidya Sarveswaran

Transversal Ecocritical Praxis: Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis, and Cultural Critique , by Patrick D. Murphy

Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature , edited by Douglas A. Vakoch

The Green Thread

Dialogues with the Vegetal World

Edited by

Patrcia Vieira, Monica Gagliano, and John Ryan

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Lexington Books

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2016 by Lexington Books

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-1-4985-1059-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

eISBN: 978-1-4985-1060-8

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Patrcia Vieira, Monica Gagliano, and John Ryan

Michael Marder

Monica Gagliano

John Charles Ryan

Stefan Rieger

Tom Bristow

Jennifer Schell

Patrcia Vieira

Andrew Howe

Gioia Woods

Guinevere Narraway and Hannah Stark

Graig Uhlin

Pansy Duncan

Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, and Florian Weil

Alan Read

This book began to take shape when Michael Marder put the three editors in touch. We would like to thank Michael for his unwavering support throughout the different stages of this project.

The editing of the volume would not have been possible without generous funding by several academic institutions. We are grateful to the CREATEC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program at Edith Cowan University, the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, and the Early Career Fellowship Support Programs at the University of Western Australia, as well as to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Comparative Literature Program of Georgetown University. We would also like to acknowledge Yoel Castillo and Mavra Grimonprezs invaluable assistance in the formatting of the final manuscript.

Finally, we wish to thank Douglas Vakoch, General Editor of the Ecocritical Theory and Practice series at Lexington Books, and Lindsey Porambo, Acquisitions Editor in the same press, for their commitment to the publication of the book and their continued engagement and aid in all steps of the publication process.

Patrcia Vieira, Monica Gagliano, and John Ryan

In a research article, Arabidopsis Plants Perform Arithmetic Division to Prevent Starvation at Night, scientists describe the ability of the diminutive mouse-ear cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana (hereafter referred to as Arabidopsis ), to undertake nocturnal mathematical procedures. The steady, calculated expenditure of starch enhances the plants fitness overnight and, one could argue, the efficiency of photosynthesis in the early morning.

Disappointingly (for plant studies scholars), however, by the end of the technical discussion we are left with neither trace, whiff, nor scratch of the performing plants themselves. Although the attributes of thinking and learning are fundamental to arithmetic in the human domain, we find Arabidopsis construed as a vegetal abacus; as a lean-green-counting-machine geared toward the ideal of efficient resource consumption. Framed in this discourse, the apparent aptitude of the species is downplayed by the articles conclusion, where mathematical precision is affirmed as crucial to molecular biology and, more specifically, to plant survival. It appears only as a tantalizing shimmer that Arabidopsis enacts a kind of intentionality (that of computational logic) associated with human intelligence.