%0 Journal Article
%T Can the plant speak? Giving tobacco the voice it deserves
%A Andrew Russell
%J Journal of Material Culture
%@ 1460-3586
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1359183518799516
%X The idea of non-human objects speaking has an illustrious pedigree. Using Holbraad¡¯s (2011) question ¡®can the thing speak?¡¯ as a springboard, the author asks what it means to say that tobacco might speak. Accepting a degree of ventriloquism in giving a voice to plants, he tracks examples of tobacco (and its paraphernalia) speaking in English literary sources, demonstrating that the postmodern turn to ¡®material agency¡¯ and object sentiency, voice and intentionality is, in fact, nothing new. Taking Miller and Latour¡¯s conceptions of hybridity in human/non-human relationships seriously, he argues further that tobacco can speak, or remain silent, through a number of different human and corporate locutors. Where tobacco speaks in its own words, its voice ¨C in contrast to the ¡®tinny but usable¡¯ voice of a mushroom spore ¨C becomes that of an imperious autocrat intent on world domination
%K hybridity
%K material agency
%K object sentiency
%K tobacco
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1359183518799516