Kunstler’s discussion of Dutch influence on early America in chapter 2 combined with his discussion about the Age of Reason (ch. 4) and its Romantic backlash (resulting in Transcendentalism once post-war America caught-up) reminded me of another popular book. Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire gives an interesting view of what was happening in Europe, specifically Holland, during this same time period of early to mid 1600’s. This was the time of Holland’s initial love affair with tulips resulting in an economic high that eventually collapsed due to an overexploited market. According to Pollan, the height of the tulip craze culminated in prices as high as ten thousand guilders for one tulip bulb! Pollen sets his tulip story in the context of plant evolutionary strategies and explores the idea that plants have managed to employ humans, involving mankind to do the leg work (pun intended) that plants themselves cannot physically accomplish. Sounds crazy, maybe, but the tulip example is one illustration of man's intent to build currency based on nature – what Kunstler identifies as the roots (this pun is unintended!) of American perspectives of nature as a commodity to be used unchecked and the dire potential consequences. Kunstler and Cronon point out the American employment of nature through agricultural staples brought by settlers to domesticate the new wilderness, and applying Pollan’s ideas fits in an exciting manner.
The grains that prospered so well in American agriculture did so by becoming indispensable to man – leaving Europe behind was an adventure they were willing to face, but not without the familiar favorite foods from home that they knew how to cultivate thanks to the Age of Reason. These grains, like the tulip-frenzied Holland that the new American settlers left behind, had an extraordinary evolutionary advantage thanks to the aggressive stewardship fueled by human desires. Pollan explores the idea further with apples, potatoes, and marijuana (again Holland comes up) – all as plants that have really prospered by becoming linked to human needs and ultimately money! Plants are seen as exploiting man just as much as we usually think about man exploiting plants…maybe the plants (and nature) really do have us snowed, which in itself would turn the Age of Reason on its head!
We ourselves, as a class, are even planting corn in a prairie that was somehow spared from finite demise at the hands of agriculture and development! This is ironic, isn’t it (or as de Certeau would’ve said, “n’est-ce pas?”)!!
KIM
Trouble In The Tulip Bed
An Odd Ode by Paul Lynde
I don't know what to say.
A tulip talked to me today.
I was trimming the hedge
Quite near the mountain ledge
When lo and behold
My blood ran cold.
Yes, a tulip screamed at me today!
It was my favorite, the one I call Blanche.
She puckered up her petals and screamed "Avalanche!"
Yes, a tulip saved my life today.
Now you may not think this quite so much.
But you see most tulips speak Dutch.
2 Comments:
Nice! This idea, as you probably know, comes up in a few different places - there is another powerful use of it in the context of suburban lawns, where human's desire to recreate primordial landscapes is exploited by other graminoids (most of our staples are grasses!) - in this instance crabgrass etc.
There are some nice resonances with a nice technical book by Ricard Dawkins (one of Dawkins' few technical works) The Extended Phenotype, where he develops the notion of how one species exploits the phenotype of another (work on which you have already done with Sparkes).
Best
L
Alas, I really only know Dawkins for his selfish gene book and his immature confrontations with Stephen Jay Gould!
Extended phenotype sounds familiar, but I associated it with Claude Combes (who proabably built off of Dawkins)...
Post a Comment
<< Home