Part 3: Soil as Relation

Borders

In Manthia Diawara’s movie One World in Relation, Édouard Glissant describes his perception of borders: “I find it quite pleasant to pass from one atmosphere to another through crossing a border. We need to put an end to the idea of a border that defends and prevents. Borders must be permeable; they must not be weapons against migration or immigration processes.”

How can we adopt a more expansive view of agriculture and cultivation practices that go beyond these fixed pre-constructions of signifying identity?

In Poetics of Relation, Édouard Glissant presents the “right to opacity”28 as an ethical/political claim and condition for relationships. Opacity is for him the opposite of transparency. The Enlightenment rationale, which presumes universal truths and values, bases multicultural communication on the requirement of transparency. However, comprehension from the Latin verb ‘com-prendere’ meaning to take with, requires the act of appropriating and measuring someone to a set of values that doesn’t necessarily belong to them Andrea Gremels recapitulates Glissant’s concepts by stating that “Opacity tries to overcome the risk of reducing, normalizing and even assimilating the singularities of cultural differences by comprehension. […] Opacity, instead, offers a de-hierarchized world-vision as well as a discourse complementary to universal or systemic approaches to globalization. It reflects on uncontrollable “confluences” and an increasing intermingling of diversities, both of which oppose monolithic worldviews.”

29

Borders are used as ways to define who is within, and who is without. Instead, we could reimagine borders as the point of communication and conversation between differences. Borders between countries and individuals, both physical and conceptual, become a place of learning from rather than of wanting to comprehend. Why should borders and soil be indicators of national identity, and why may they not be ways of relating to each other? This essentialization between identity and land leaves no space to question the current economic model for alternative ways of existing together.

28 Édouard Glissant. 2009. Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor: University Of Michigan Press) <https://www.press.umich.edu/10262/poetics_of_relation>

29 Andrea Gremels, Keywords in transcultural English studies, Opacité / Opacity (Édouard Glissant), Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, <http://www.transcultural-english-studies.de/opacite-opacity-edouardglissant/>

Seeds and soil

Relation is a constitutive element of seed culture

In fact, seeds need to be exchanged and re-planted to prevent a particular seed from expiring, which means it can no longer sprout and its variety goes lost.30 Our contemporary diet is a mosaic of histories, with the movement of seeds and people across continents passing through human and nonhuman agents, even prior to colonialism. Similarly, agricultural practices must be passed down between generations. Hence, purist views of agriculture constitute an erasure of the various histories of the hands through which these seeds have passed through. Indeed, Italian culture is also a product of migration processes. Many of the traditional Italian cultural practices, from recipes to architecture, for instance in Sicily (Southern Italy) have been influenced by the Arab community of Saracens, who occupied the region in the 1st century AD.31 Food is easily accepted as a relation to other cultures, however when it comes to people the process seems more tumultuous.

What would it mean to re-signify borders and agricultural practices for different soil relations? In his practice Leone Contini (artist and anthropologist) engages with questions of identity, cultivation, and colonialism. In his work Monte Purgatorio, he composed a pyramidal sculpture made of industrial building debris to symbolize ruins, from which a pumpkin seed germinates at the top. The sculpture is a contemporary take on post-WW2 landscaping projects across Europe that used the debris from bombings to create artificial mounts for public spaces dedicated to leisure. An example of these public spaces is Monte Stella in Milan These landscapes are built upon the repurposed ruins of a violent past. Some citizens might not even be aware of their history. Today these parks are integral parts of the city and citizens life. These designs reveal the intention of building a new urban identity after the war by hiding the debris and perhaps avoiding reckoning with the violence of the past. These urban projects seem unresolved way of memorializing and relating to history.

On the other hand, Leone’s sculpture puts the ruins of modernity on display, which he describes are extractive, warmonger, colonial and genocidal 32 The sculpture’s metaphor of life thriving from exposed ruins indicates the possibility of something different arising from a messy composition of various parts and pasts. Each piece of debris is a stranger to the other, no single one dominates the mount. The artist explains that from shaky ruins cannot be built a strong nationalistic identity, clearly referencing back, and opposing the fascist narrative of creating the Italian identity on a connection of blood to soil33 .

30 From a conversation with Federico Ascheri, an Italian agronomist who has been exchanging seeds for the past 35 years.

31 Nast, Condé, ‘La Cucina Arabo Siciliana, Un’unione Vincente’, La Cucina Italiana, (2019), <https://www.lacucinaitaliana.it/news/in-primo-piano/la-cucina-arabo-siciliana-ununione-vincente/> [accessed 18 April 2022]

32 ‘Monte Purgatorio - Cantica21’. [n.d.]. <https://www.cantica21.it/artista/leone-contini/> [accessed 18 April 2022]

33 Conversation with Leone Contini at the Cantina21: Dante Alighieri and the Italian artist exhibition opening at Istituto Italiano di Cultura (IIC), Paris, 13/04/2022-11/05/2022, <https://www.cantica21.it/cantica21-dante/>

Another interesting part of his practice is his work with migrant farming communities in his hometown in Tuscany. Engaging with Chinese farmers that have been cultivating Chinese vegetables for their community. They have been introducing new seeds, some of which are cousins with Italian varieties. Having been faced with migrating to a different continent and changing soil type once already, the Chinese farmers have demonstrated a higher level of climate adaptability in face of climate change compared with local Tuscan farmers.34 Indeed, they have developed a new soil knowledge through their diasporic experience.35 Nevertheless, the local authorities and media have been targeting these communities with racism and confiscations, instead of seeing the potential of cultivation as a means of relation. This attitude towards farming migrant communities in Italy reveal a deep insecurity when it comes to “foreigners” working the land, which demonstrates the fragility of defining identity based on the nationalist claim of blood to soil promoted by the fascist regime.36

How can we make agriculture questions territoriality and borders and vis-versa? There needs to be a counter-agronomy to subvert the current mode of production (industrial agriculture and big scale distribution) which inherently requires borders. Therefore, Glissant’s philosophy could be applied to soil in the Italian context, where Italian nationals and migrant farmers should engage in relation by maintaining their opacity (to avoid othering)

Few projects already engage in this matter. Semina is an ongoing project developing migrant food cultures in Italy through cultivation and cooking. The project works with and is led by migrant communities. Seeds from different origins were selected and are being cultivated such as okra, curcuma and daikon, introducing them to the Italian market and tables.37 The network is composed of entrepreneurs, restaurants, urban orchards and more, who all share the urge of thinking of migration and living together differently. This relation happens at the level of seeds rather than borders.

In Puglia, a production and distribution network called Fuori Mercato38 (in Italian translates to “outside of the market”) has been gathering various associations and local producers who’s work foregrounds the care for people and soil. Part of their network includes: Diritti a Sud, a non-profit association that offers legal advice to migrants arriving to Italy and who often find themselves in exploitative work environments.39 As well as SfruttaZero, a company led by Italian nationals and migrants to produce “exploitation-free” tomato products. They practice agro-ecological farming techniques

34 Interview with Leone Contini over zoom, Rome, December 2021.

35 Regine, Future farming. How migrants can help Italian cuisine adjust to climate disruptions, (2020), <https://we-make-money- not-art.com/future-farming-how-migrants-can-help-italian-cuisine-adjustto-climate-disruptions/>

36 Soil is the inscribed body, on sovreinity and agropoetics, Savvy Contemporary: The laboratory of formideas, (31.08.–06.10.2019) <https://savvy-contemporary.com/en/projects/2019/soil-is-an-inscribedbody/>.

37 ‘Il Progetto - Semino - Alimentare Positivo’. [n.d.]. Semino - Alimentare Positivo <https://www.semino.org/il-progetto/> [accessed 18 April 2022]

38 About section of Fuori Mercato: autogestione in movimento, website, <https://www.fuorimercato.com/index.php/118-chi-siamo> and use a local and traditional tomato seed (non-hybrid), making them independent from seed corporations. Their production is not under the EU biological patent because the requirements were too restrictive and “intensive”. Moreover, the production isn’t big enough to receive subsidies from the EU Common Agricultural Policy (only from 4 hectares and above). These EU policies and subsidies just benefit bigger scale agricultures demonstrating further the interest of profit over soil.40

39 Interview with Paola Frascella from Diritti a Sud over zoom, December 2021.

Nevertheless, these initiatives of worlding, prove that alternative circuits of care are possible. Self-governed productions don’t require borders that hierarchize and define individuals for cheap labour power. Instead, it requires to see beyond extractive relations to people and soil.

Conclusion

The Italian fascist and colonial regime have been at the genesis of constructing national identity through the spatial strategy of infrastructural projects on agriculture. Internal and External colonization projects demonstrated the essentialization and obsession of legitimizing the connection of blood to soil to create a strong nation. Similarly, the contemporary agricultural infrastructure echoes this not-so-distant past, which is now disguised in the logistics of supply chain capitalism.

Our cultures are results of migration processes, exposing the counter-intuitiveness and obvious failure (thinking of the inequalities and violence it promotes) of legal regimes and borders resisting, preventing, and calibrating (to profit) these exchanges. If we then adopt an understand of our contemporary society as a multiplicity of historical influences that cannot be restricted, then the need for a strong nationalistic claim is futile and melancholic of authoritarian regimes. As Glissant exposes in his philosophy, one can and should maintain its opacity while being in relation to avoid extractive and subordinating relationships. The construction of the other and its consequent fear reflects the weakness of identity based on the territoriality of the nation-state.

This identity paradigm can be and should be rejected today because it reveals a continuation of the same violent system of value enacted during colonialism. Belonging and relating to territoriality can go beyond the legal and economic regimes that seem to define people today. Solidarity in the wake of climate change and soil degradation is urgent. More and more people will migrate by consequence of the interaction of political, economic, and environmental pressures41 . Therefore, by subverting and reevaluating our relations to soil we can start re-signifying borders

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Lectures

Alfredo Gonzáles-Ruibal, The Countermemory of Soil, Life of Crops: Towards an Investigative Memorialization conference, Univer- salmuseum Joanneum Graz, (8/11/2019), <https://www.memorialinbecoming.net/pojmovnik/witnessing/alfredogonzales-ruibal>

Robin D. G. Kelley, What is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter? recorded November 7, 2017 at Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= gim7W_jQQ&t=4484s>

RE-POSSESSION: the RCA School of Architecture International Lecture Series: From the Wall to the Sea: The Translocal Politics of (Anti-)Apartheid with Charles Heller (Border Forensics) & Nandita Sharma, Royal College of Art London, zoom conference, (25 november 2021)

Co-Liberation: the RCA School of Architecture International Lecture Series 2020-21: Agropoetic Militancy: Sónia Vaz Borges & Filipa César in conversation with Cooking Sections, Royal College of Art London, zoom conference, (13 May 2021)

Exhibitions

SOIL IS AN INSCRIBED BODY. ON SOVEREIGNTY AND AGROPOETICS, Savvy Contemporary: The laboratory of form-ideas, (31.08.–06.10.2019) <https://savvycontemporary.com/en/projects/2019/soil-is-an-inscribed-body/>.

Cantica21, Dante Alighieri and the Italian artist, Istituto Italiano di Cultura (IIC), Paris, 13/04/2022-11/05/2022, < https://www.cantica21.it/cantica21-dante/>