Abstract:
In this thesis I explore how the material properties of plant seed enter the
political discourses of the international peasant coalition the Via Campesina and
coalition member the National Fanners Union of Canada (NFU), querying how this
process might be employed as a resource for a transformative eco-social politics. I
employ several post-structural theoretical constructs, configuring them together as a
"minor theory".
This minor theory provides the basis for a "minor" reading of three sets of
Via Campesina and NFU texts. The aim of these readings is to track the movement
of seed from a local agricultural concern to a transitive political one, across both the
material and discursive registers. In surfacing the presence of the seed's physical
properties in the three texts, I highlight the distinctions between the constraining seed
of corporate industrial agriculture, and the social and agroecological opportunities
resulting from what I call a "Seed Event".
