Agricultural Politics | Governing the seed
Heilig’s ‘Thrillerama’ | The subject position of the observer-as-producer. Source | hyperbate.fr Pennsylvania goes Big Brother over local seed library PATHOLOGIES OF SOVEREIGN POWER IN THE (UN)CIVIL SOCIETY Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | August 4, 2014 This is a parable about how the state attempts to govern the tradition of seed saving and exchange. There are a good many lessons to be drawn from the unfolding case of the recent closing by the state government of a Pennsylvania seed library. Most obviously, it seems like an example of utterly absurd overreach by the national security state and also reveals how insidious this has become as the leading force fomenting a particular kind of militarized civic culture dedicated to fighting terrorism as the central focus of national identity politics. In this post, I argue that this act of governmentality reproduces an un civil society in which even the innocent and free act of saving and exchanging garden seed can be rendered as a ...