Superplants: hegemonic masculinities holding up the green transition

Abstract

This paper departs from a consideration of an emerging popular discourse concerning a plant-based mining technology called agromining. Agromining is defined by its inventors as a method for mining metals with plants, encompassing a chain of procedures from the cultivation of metal-absorbing plants to the marketing of the pure metal extracted from them. It is being developed and marketed by scientists as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional mining that can support technological shifts needed for the green transition. Following the characterization within this popular discourse of the agromining plants as “super”, the hegemonic logics behind it are exposed and used to unpack the agendas, political biases, and naturalized ideologies behind green technologies. This paper investigates why being super is so appealing and what logics are upheld and reproduced by prioritizing superness. Three central elements construct the main argument of this paper: hegemonic masculinity, the depoliticization of climate change, and the lack of a plural democratic space to address the global ecological crisis. These points give context to why superness may be an attractive quality for a green technology and help to problematize the neutrality of science-backed solutions to ecological problems. Possibilities for refusal and resisting both hegemonic masculinity and the dominant logics that reproduce it are discussed with contributions from Feminist, Queer, and Crip theories.