Weeds: Classification, Organization, and Wilding

Abstract

In this paper I consider the concept “organization” by using the weed as an example of a category in human culture. The disorganization of the weed is often contrasted to the forms of order that produce farms and gardens, terrains of human labor defended against the wild. In contrast, European romanticism and much environmental thought tends to celebrate that which lies outside culture as being more authentic or regenerative. A survey of these intellectual landscapes is then followed by a consideration of how certain plants move in and out of the category of weed, and what this tells us about an epistemology of organization, particularly a vegetal or post-metaphysical account of organization. Finally, I suggest that it is necessary in Anthropocene conditions, to trouble the boundary between organization and disorganization, and hence to wild organization theory.