Wheat: a powerful crop in US-American culture: Between politics and plant agency

Abstract

Intertwined in processes of ideological meaning-making, wheat has been particularly successful in pairing its genetic assets with a powerful symbolic charge in US-American culture. The sense of agency that US culture attaches to wheat is subsumed under paradigms of organized personhood such as the nation and the corporation. Artists and writers have merged the idea of “wheat power” with the fears and hopes of their specific historical moment.Wheat is not only genetically complex but has also been exceptionally culturally defined. Interestingly, some cultural representations of wheat emphasize what may be referred to as plant agency. This is particularly striking in North American art and literature. There is often a certain wildness, independence, and power to wheat that are lacking in other cultivated crops. Focusing on the 19th and early 20th centuries, this article examines the active role of wheat in shaping US-American history and society. Starting from the assumption that cultural artefacts help societies to understand and negotiate their norms and values, I take a look at a painting (Emanuel Leutze’s Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields on the Approach of the British from 1852) and a novel (Frank Norris’s The Octopus from 1901) to analyze their representation of the human-wheat relationship. Using a historicizing, philological approach, this case study contributes to a debate in the environmental humanities that seeks to redefine the human-crop relationship in times of climate change, diminishing biodiversity, and human population growth. Can the American legacy of wheat help us to reframe the human-wheat relationship? Are there potential pitfalls of crop agency as it is depicted in American representations of wheat?