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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
The Substance of Memory: Plants, Objects, and Affect
Author(s)
John Charles Ryan
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.01.012
Affiliation(s)
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to develop the concept “botanical memory” through an analysis of interviews conducted with indigenous plant enthusiasts in the biodiverse Southwest corner of Western Australia. The topic of this article can be described as memory-based studies of plant diversity or botanically-focused oral histories; and the method is ethnographic. Attending to the everyday practices constituting botanical memory, the article posits a material-affective framework to foreground the dynamics between plants, people, objects, and remembrance. The writings of Henry David Thoreau and C. Nadia Seremetakis, in conjunction with affect and materiality theory, offer conceptual anchor points for this exploration of human recollection and flora. The interviews indicate that plant-based objects and living plants deepen human memory, particularly through their appeal to touch, taste, smell, and sensation.
KEYWORDS
memory, oral history, plants, biodiversity, Henry David Thoreau, C. Nadia Seremetakis, Southwest Australia
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References
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Tauber, A. (2001). Henry David Thoreau and the moral agency of knowing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Thoreau, H. D. (1993). Faith in a seed: The dispersion of seeds and other late natural history writings. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Thoreau, H. D. (2000). Wild fruits: Thoreau’s rediscovered last manuscript. Dean, B., (Ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
UNESCO. (2003). Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. Paris: UNESCO.
Wood, T. (1938). Cobbers: A personal record of a journey. London: Oxford University Press.
Bennett, T., & Joyce, P. (Eds.). (2010a). Material powers: Cultural studies, history and the material turn. New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T., & Joyce, P. (2010b). Material powers: Introduction. In Material powers: Cultural studies, history and the material turn (pp. 1-21). New York: Routledge.
Clarke, P. A. (2008). Aboriginal plant collectors: Botanists and Australian aboriginal people in the nineteenth century. Dural Delivery Centre, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing.
Collins, K., Collins, K., & George, A. (2009). Banksias. Melbourne: Blooming Books.
Dampier, W. (1703). A new voyage round the world (Vol. 1). London: James Knapton.
Daw, B., Walley, T., & Keighery, G. (1997). Bush tucker plants of the South-West. Kensington, WA: Department of Environment and Conservation.
Eyre, E. J. (1845). Journals of expeditions of discovery into central Australia and overland from Adelaide to King George’s sound. London: T. and W. Boone.
Gagliano, M., Mancuso, S., & Robert, D. (2012). Towards understanding plant bioacoustics. Trends in Plant Science, 17(6), 323-325. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2012.03.002
Gole, C. (2006). The southwest Australia ecoregion: Jewel of the Australian continent. Wembley, WA: Southwest Australia Ecoregion Initiative.
Hicks, D., & Beaudry, M. C. (Eds.). (2010). The Oxford handbook of material culture studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hopper, S. D. (2006). Developing through art a botanical and landscape context in a settler society. In Holly Story: Skin deep (pp. 4-9). Melbourne: SPAN Galleries.
Hopper, S. D., & Gioia, P. (2004). The Southwest Australian floristic region: Evolution and conservation of a global hotspot of biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 35, 623-650. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.35.112202.130201
Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (Eds.). (2014). Material ecocriticism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Jones, A. (2007). Memory and material culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Jordan, J. A. (2010). Landscapes of European memory: Biodiversity and collective remembrance. History and Memory, 22(2), 5-33.
Lambers, H., & Hopper, S. D. (2014). Introduction. In H. Lambers (Ed.), Plant life on the sandplains in Southwest Australia: A Global biodiversity hotspot. Crawley, WA: The University of Western Australia Press.
Lawrence, D. H., & Skinner, M. L. (1990). The Cambridge edition of the works of D. H. Lawrence: The boy in the bush. P. Eggert, (Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Moore, G. F. (1834). Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore. M. Doyle, (Ed.). London: Paternoster Row.
Moore, G. F. (1842). A descriptive vocabulary of the language in common use amongst the aborigines of Western Australia. London: W.M.S Orr and Paternoster Row.
Myers, N., Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., da Fonseca, G. A., & Kent, J. (2000, February 24). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature, 403(6772), 853-858.
Nazarea, V. (1998). Cultural memory and biodiversity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Nind, I. S. (1979). Description of the natives of King George’s sound (Swan River Colony) and Adjoining country. In N. Green (Ed.), Nyungar—The people: Aboriginal customs in the Southwest of Australia (pp. 15-55). North Perth, WA: Creative Research.
Pate, J. S., & Beard, J. S. (Eds.). (1984). Kwongan, plant life of the sandplain: Biology of a Southwest Australian shrubland ecosystem. Nedlands, WA: The University of Western Australia Press.
Peck, H. D. (1990). Thoreau’s morning work: Memory and perception in a week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, the Journal, and Walden. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ryan, J. C. (2012). Green sense: The aesthetics of plants, place and language. Oxford: True Heart Press.
Ryan, J. C. (2014). Being with: Essays in poetics, ecology, and the senses. Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing.
Seddon, G. (2005). The old country: Australian landscapes, plants and people. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Seigworth, G. J., & Gregg, M. (2010). An inventory of shimmers. In The affect theory reader (pp. 1-15). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Seremetakis, C. N. (1996). The memory of the senses, Part I: Marks of the transitory. In The senses still: Perception and memory as material culture in modernity (pp. 1-18). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Skinner, M. L. (1972). The fifth sparrow: An autobiography. Sydney, NSW: Sydney University Press.
Snell, T. (2009). Foreword: Nalda Searles: Experience, skill, memory and engagement. In A. Nicholls (Ed.), Nalda Searles: Drifting in my own land (p. 10). Middle Swan, WA: Nalda Searles and ART ON THE MOVE.
Stefano, M., Davis, P., & Corsane, G. (2012). Touching the intangible: An introduction. In Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (pp. 1-5). Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewe.
Tauber, A. (2001). Henry David Thoreau and the moral agency of knowing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Thoreau, H. D. (1993). Faith in a seed: The dispersion of seeds and other late natural history writings. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Thoreau, H. D. (2000). Wild fruits: Thoreau’s rediscovered last manuscript. Dean, B., (Ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
UNESCO. (2003). Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. Paris: UNESCO.
Wood, T. (1938). Cobbers: A personal record of a journey. London: Oxford University Press.