Dear Plant People
The questions that are coming up here, as well the other projects referenced, are extremely interesting.
I think that the question of what is an 'ecopolitical' approach here (raised by Xin Wei) is important, though I'm wondering whether I understand the use of the term (i.e as 'non-pointillistic') - does that mean systemic, rather than problem-based?
The thing I find tricky about ecological thought is its ethically normative character, and what the implications are with regard to difference (in values, power, experience and so on). I like Guattari's conception of ecology because (on my reading) the only thing it gives intrinsic value to is processes of expression and change (as opposed, for example, to a unitary or persistent conception of 'nature'). Like Morgan, I distrust many applications of the notion of 'intrinsic value'. I think value always comes from a specific time, place and culture and calling it intrinsic can obscure its politics.
On that note (and given my affection for weeds) I have always been troubled by Guattari's use of Bateson in the epigraph which opens The Three Ecologies: "There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds."
While I think there are few different ways to read this quote, in the context of PLSS (and Xin Wei's comments below), might it be interesting to consider what an ecopolitics (or political ecology) of weeds might be? Perhaps more inclusively, and returning to the notion of a 'weedy sociality', what is a politics of weediness in this setting? Can weediness be cultivated, and if so, to what ends?
It might also be useful to consider Bruno Latour's "parliament of things", described in painstaking detail in The Politics of Nature. Although I don't think democratic process is a primary concern here, his suggestions for how a much broader variety of agents (both human and non-human) might be given a voice in the re-constitution of democratic societies are both interesting and pragmatic.
I also find Natasha's "Visions for Embodiment in Technoscience" (posted below) an interesting application of related ideas (but drawing on Haraway), especially because it considers actual practices of observation.
Erin