Power & Gardens

Nico Carpentier (Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University, Czech Republic)

The first part of the Power and Gardens audiovisual essay discusses the theoretical backbone that is used for the discursive-material analysis of gardens, emphasizing the entanglement of the discursive and the material. This part, in particular, argues that the garden is a materialization of an anthropocentric discourse.

The second part of the Power and Gardens audiovisual essay zooms in on the taming mechanisms used in gardens in order to tilt the power relations towards humans, for instance, by using nature as a sculpting element.

The third part of the Power and Gardens audiovisual essay moves away from the older royal gardens, and shows how gardens have been, for centuries, sites of societal struggle, for instance between different class positions, and between the logic of privatization and the commons.

The fourth and final part of the Power and Gardens audiovisual essay analyses how nature resists the human disciplining attempts, and how nature exercises its own agencies. This final part of the essay concludes with a reflection on the ideal garden, and the need to develop more (and new) synergetic models for gardens that rethink the power relations between humans and nature in more fundamental ways.

Gardens have a long history, as locations of human recreation and relaxation, and as symbols of civilization. This also renders them highly suitable locations for a reflection on human-nature relationships, and for a discursive-material analysis (Carpentier, 2017) of how gardens often perform an anthropocentric ideology, which intersects with a series of other discourses, such as capitalism and colonialism. 

This discourse of anthropocentrism is grounded in a value hierarchy, and privileges humans through the position that “only human interests count, and that value only enters the natural world at the point of its transformation into product for human consumption” (Hay, 2002, p. 33). For centuries, this discourse has been the dominant guiding principle of human civilization and development. As Scholte and his co-authors (2020, p. 10) wrote: “Indeed, the hegemony of anthropocentrism is so strong – perhaps still more powerful than that of the state or capitalism – that most people are not even aware of this world-order structure and can imagine no alternative mode of ecology.”

As a discourse, anthropocentrism provides meaning to what we label as the environment and the natural world, but also to the social-human world and the interactions between these realms. But anthropocentrism is not the only discourse to generate meaning about these human-nature relationships: Ecocentrism is a key counter-hegemonic force that engages with anthropocentrism in struggles over discursive dominance (Lalander and Merimaa, 2018, Carpentier et al., 2021). These discourses are not disconnected from the material world, though. They are, on the contrary, deeply entangled or knotted, where the material contributes to the performance of these discourses and can strengthen them, but where the material can also dislocate them (Carpentier, 2017). 

Gardens can thus be seen as anthropocentric discursive-material assemblages, where nature is used as a sculpting element, where the threat of the wilderness is removed, where exotic nature becomes an object of display, where humans organize commemoration and entertainment, and where biotic life is even created through human intervention. Still, nature has the capacity to resist this oppressive relationship. The material, non-human animals, and other biotic life, all have their agencies (Latour, 2005). Plants can refuse to grow in gardens, or their uncontrollable growth can distort the imposed geometric forms. Humans, in their engagement with an ecocentric discourse, can also provide support to this resistance, for instance, through the practice of guerrilla gardening (Tracey, 2007; Reynolds, 2008).

Still, anthropocentrism remains a considerable force, also because it is strengthened through discursive alliances with other discourses, in particular capitalism and colonialism. Many of the urban gardens visited for this visual essay—which are located in Paris, Lyon, and Prague—and in particular the formal gardens with their mathematical order (Turner, 2005, p. 175), have been created by royalty. In these cases, the hyper-structured order of the garden also signified and legitimated the political hierarchy. Later, the aristocracy and then the bourgeoise continued to use gardens to signify difference and hierarchy. Similarly, colonial elements in urban (botanic) gardens, with exotic plants positioned in greenhouses, signified (European) human control over the (non-European) colonial territories, peoples, fauna, and flora (Baber, 2016). But again, also here we can see resistance from the natural world, sometimes refusing to grow and in other cases growing out of control, as happens with what is then called ‘invasive species’. Also, humans have contributed to this resistance against hierarchization, through the reclaiming of the garden by the working class (Conan, 1999; Willes, 2014) and through the democratization of urban (garden) spaces and attempts to restore the commons (Standing, 2019; Hayes, 2020), for instance, through the practices related to community gardening (Bach and McClintock, 2020).

While the first part (“Domesticating Nature”) of the video essay provides the more theoretical backbone of this discursive-material analysis, the second part (“Ways of Taming”) discusses the taming mechanisms that tilt the power relations towards humans. The third part (“Gardens and Class”) then moves away from the royal gardens and shows how gardens have been, for centuries, sites of societal struggle, for instance between different class positions, and between the logic of privatization and the commons. The fourth and final part (“Nature’s Agency”) analyses how nature resists the human disciplining attempts, and can exercise its own agencies. This final part of the essay concludes with a reflection on the ideal garden, and the need to develop more (and new) synergetic models for gardens that rethink the power relations between humans and nature in more fundamental ways.

Acknowledgement

The video essay project was supported by Mistra, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, through the research program Mistra Environmental Communication.

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