Historians of science and technology, by producing dense narratives that assert the thingness of their objects of interest, ignore Heidegger’s jeremiad, undermining his grand nostalgic narrative of a world currently populated with objects and forgetful of things. In a similar way, this book delves into the apparent paradox that at the Nazi harvest celebration peasants (Bauern) were reminded that cultivation (bauen) of the German soil with organisms produced through breeding (zuchten)—my technoscientific things—also meant to dwell (bauen). The German national community was to come into being through the cultivation of wart-resistant potatoes and the breeding of bodenständig pigs. Yes, this book also takes technoscientific organisms as Heideggerian things. But it makes clear that the dwelling they put in place was a very unpleasant one. It was a nasty fascist dwelling. The scientifically bred things mobilized national populations for food production, forming armies in times of peace that replaced democratic practices of political participation, erected organic mammoth state structures eliminating any dissent, made violent colonial labor regimes seem reasonable, and exulted over genocidal imperial settlements. I would thus like to insist here on the importance for historians of science and technology of going beyond the recognition of the thingness of apparently thin technoscientific objects. We are used to think about the alleged violence the degeneration of things into objects entails, but we should be equally aware of the violence associated with certain things. Things, as gatherings, may seem inclusive, but, as fascist things remind us, they can be dangerously exclusionary as well. Another, more fundamental tension exists beyond the Heideggerian one between objects and things: a tension between things, between the different worlds different things sustain.
Index
Action Française, 43
Adametz, Leopold, 197
Adorno, Theodor, 12
Agronomy Institute, 56, 64
Alder, Ken, 238
Alentejo, 43–46, 51, 52, 57, 59, 60
Allen, Michael Thad, 6
Animal Breeding Institute, University of Göttingen, 107, 112, 113, 120–124, 133
Animal Breeding Law, 117, 122
Animal Experiment Station of Humpata, 220
Anstalt für Tierzucht und Milchwirtschaft der Universität Jena, 112
Appel, Otto, 75, 79, 84, 96
Ardito (wheat strain), 33–35, 39–42, 55–59, 240
Arditi (storm troops), 40, 42
Arendt, Hanna, 6
Auschwitz, 144, 161–167, 240
Autarky, 13, 17, 21, 25, 42, 64, 133, 156
Backe, Herbert, 82, 123, 130, 135
Badoglio, Pietro, 144, 209
Balbo, Italo, 210, 211
Barrès, Maurice, 44
Bastos, Cristiana, 224, 225
Battoli, Antonino, 24
Battle for Production, 71, 80, 81, 84, 86, 117, 127
Battle of Wheat, 21
and Ardito wheat, 34, 35
and baking technology, 37, 38
historiography of, 22, 23
in Italian Oriental Africa, 148
National Grain Exhibition, 42
Permanent Committee, 23–25
in the Po Valley, 34, 35, 38
and Portuguese Wheat Campaign, 47
as propaganda, 22
seed exchange, 36
and sharecroppers, 22, 38, 39
and small landholders, 36, 38
in southern Italy, 35, 38
Battaglia della Lira, 21
Bauman, Zygmunt, 162
Baur, Erwin, 64, 84, 197
Belgian Congo, 140, 171, 173, 181,
Belluzo, Giuseppe, 23, 25
Benedictis, A. D., 147
Bernard, Claude, 3
Biological Imperial Institute for Agriculture and Forestry, 74–99, 109
Biopolitics, 1, 2, 12
Blood and soil (Blut und Boden), 13, 7, 82, 101, 115, 131
Blueshirts, 168
Board for Export of Colonial Cotton, 169, 171, 172, 175, 178–180
Board for Internal Colonization, 63
Bonadonna, Telesforo, 213–215
Bonneuil, Christophe, 29
Branzanti, Edorado Carlo, 150
Brizi, Alessandro, 24
Broili, Joseph, 90, 91
Caeser, Joachim, 163, 168
Caetano, Marcelo, 66, 67
Câmara, António Sousa da, 49–51, 56, 57, 61–67, 168, 230
Camprubí, Lino, 6
Canguilhem, Georges, 1–3, 14, 241
Carmona, António Oscar Fragoso, 59
Carvalho, Ruy Duarte de, 232
Catedri Ambulanti d’Agricoltura, 25
Cavaillés, Jean, 1
Center for Cotton Scientific Research, 169, 172–182
Central Agricultural Station, 58, 65
Central Association of Portuguese Agriculture, 47
Césaire, Aimé, 137
Cinatti, Ruy, 232
Coffee
center of origin in Ethiopia, 148, 149, 152
Malcó experimental post, 150, 152, 153
research, 150
systems of production, 149, 150, 151, 155
Coimbra, University of, 46, 168
Colonial Act, 170, 217, 218
Colonial Agricultural Institute (Florence), 143, 145, 148, 150
Colonial labor regimes, 153, 158–160, 166, 167, 171, 172, 175, 201, 217, 226, 227
Commissariat for the Reinforcement of Germandom, 188
Companhia União Fabril (CUF), 47, 48, 52
Conrad, Joseph, 157
Cooper, Ferdinand, 140, 167
Corni, Gustavo, 8
Correns, Carl, 90
Cotton, 171, 172
concentrations, 179
and famine, 178, 179
fiber length, 176
and guerrilla war, 181
and Jassid, 175, 176, 180
research on, 173–180
U4 strain, 174–177, 180, 182
and violence, 172
Creager, Angela, 10
Cyrenaica, 145, 186, 209, 210, 214, 233
D’Annunzio, Gabrielle, 40, 41
Darré, Richard Walther, 71, 82, 83, 98, 101–106, 114, 117, 120–125, 131, 133, 240
De Cillis, Emanuele, 24–26, 38
Dopolavoro, 207
Dorgères, Henri, 1
Duque, Rafael, 64
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., 5
Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, 173, 175, 181
Etemad, Bouda, 138
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 210, 218, 219
Experimental and Agricultural and Zootechnic Center for Italian Oriental Africa (CSAZOI), 147, 148
Fanon, Frantz, 137
Farmers’ guilds (Grémios da Lavoura), 48, 59
Fascism
as alternative modernity, 63, 135, 163
and colonialism, 8, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 183
dimensions of, 134
and food, 6–8, 17
historiography of, 3, 4, 18, 19
and ideology of the land, 9
and modernism, 4–6, 9, 18, 68, 69, 162
Fats, 122–128
Ferraguti, Mario 24
Ferro, António, 68, 69
Fineli, Enrico, 24, 25
Fisher, Eugen, 90
Forschungsdienst, 120, 123, 124, 128
Foucault, Michel, 1, 2
Four-Year Plan, 98, 122–130, 134, 150, 156, 159, 240
FRELIMO, 172
Freyre, Gilberto, 221–226, 229
Friedrichswert estate, 109, 111
Frölich, Gustav, 102, 103, 106–120, 125–130, 135, 191–196, 205, 208
Galla-Sidamo, 149–155
Galicia, 160
Gärtner, Robert, 191, 199
General Government, 156, 160
General Plan East, 186–190
Genocide, 16, 200, 204, 208, 210, 219, 233