Plants out of place: How appreciation of weeds unsettles nature in New Zealand

Abstract

Weeds are known as ‘plants out of place’, but how do we come to understand what belongs in place and what does not? Organisms that thrive beyond boundaries of control threaten life that is ‘in place’, or nature. As a threat to life and nature, weeds are transformed into objects of hate and elimination. Exploring the collective hate of weeds helps to untangle the affective dimensions of colonisation. Using the story of the blackberry in Dunedin, both through its settler history and contemporary relationship with urban foragers, this paper describes how weeds have become powerful affective objects.