Netted Matter
Several factors influence characteristics of olive oils made — the choice of cultivar and technique of extraction exemplifying two — and modes and matters of sorts pertain to the categorical definitions through which olive oils become known. One might for instance be familiar with the notions of extra virgin and cold pressed olive oils, have wondered about their denoted significance and considered reasons for consuming one kind or another. I know I have, wondered that is, standing there at the supermarket in front of the selection of olive oils, not knowing the first thing about the significance of one classifying label over another, nor about the processual difference of their becoming. Not so much anymore, for I have through my fieldwork experiences been made aware the practical engagements through which various factors, modes and matters occur relatively enmeshed the categorical definitions through which oils appear systematically classified. Moreover, I have become evermore curious to think with particular entangled configurations in exploring the relational becoming of particular oils. I will in the next post go more into detail regarding for instance particular difference between extra virgin and virgin olive oils, thinking with one of the oldest quality measures of olive oils there is, namely that of acidity level. This post though, while also engaged to the purpose of untangling some tangled matters, dedicated as it is to the netted matter of raccolta di reti, concerns modes of harvest in general and that of harvest, or collection really, by net in particular.
Through my thus far fieldwork and as pictorially hinted above, I have had the opportunity participating as olives have been handpicked and manually combed off branches, by means of vibratory machineries become fallen and with sticks been hit down, with brooms and semi-mechanical technologies been whisked together in piles to be collected from the ground. Harvested and gathered, through forces and assemblages of sorts collected and moved from one state of being to another, olives of various maturation and means of harvest materialize later in the process as olive oils. That noted, when and how olives become amassed emerge of importance for the categorical definition of the oils produced thereof. By way of example, olives harvested directly from the plant, however done, albeit at a timely degree of maturation, occurs the method for producing olive oils of the so-called extra virgin quality. Meanwhile, virgin and lamp oils customarily become made of olives fallen from the branch onto nets and grounds, either directly due their own degree of maturation or indirectly attributed the coexistence of other beings, such as by forces of birds or olive flies. Below follows a series of imageries featuring harvest by net, which is a practice of collecting olives of relative maturation, let alone degradation, through large nets emplaced early fall.
An occurrence possibly noticed in the images above is that not only olives become gathered, but the vegetation that grown part of the netted assemblage becomes gathered too; though by happenstance, thus through machinery purposely sorted out as the gathered matter moves through it, leaving only the olives to be loaded on the truck. The practice occurs accompanied with a soundscape of clattered rattling, one caused at once by the machinery sorting away vegetation as well as by vegetation being teared from the ground to begin with. Clattered rattling occurs also as nets become ripped, often due to so-called ‘wild’ asparaguses — as opposed to cultivated asparaguses — which with their rigidly thorny character act saw-like on the netted material as it become forcefully pulled off the ground. Ripped as they occur, nets are temporarily tied with striped plastic bands, shortly to become repaired through wired knots to ensure that olives become wrapped up also in subsequent harvest events to take place.
To the purpose of critically engaging potent matters and beings beyond the human scope, me curious to explore the becoming of olive oil sentiently through multispecies ethnography, I have chosen to name this post Netted Matter in a sort of combined salute to the actual material by which olives usually become collected and the entangled nature by which this is done. While leaving the theoretical foundation for this stance of mine only hinted for now, it ought to be mentioned that it follows notions that multitude stories may be accounted for in thinking with the netted matters — the multiscaled environed assemblaged intertwine — that things, life and knowledge production alike, occurs (cf. Barad 2007; Bennett 2010; Braidotti 2019; Ingold 2011, 2007; Haraway 2016, 1997; Kirksey 2014; Omura et al 2019; Palsson & Swanson 2016; Tsing 2015).
While most nets occur laid directly on the ground, held down with stones not to move with forces of winds, others hang from sticks, forming a sort of hammock for olives to fall into. An arrangement serving several purposes, one being to reduce vegetation growing part of nets, another to abate olive degradation, this T/Pendagli structure makes for a much multitangled practice leaving the olives clear to harvest. Moreover, the structure appears also functional in terms of reducing the risk of mice gnawing holes through which olives may slip, an occurrence otherwise commonly countered by putting out veleno a topi — mice poison — under bricks by the base of trunks where mice live. This exemplifying an encounter where the entangled liveability of certain beings occur relationally the constriction of others, it seems apt, vital even, to note, especially from the perspective of the narrative netting of a multispecies ethnography, that much as stones act weights for nets, they too act living space for critters of sorts.
References
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
——, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Femaleman©_Meets_OncoMouse™. New York: Routledge.
Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive. London: Routledge.
——, Tim. 2007. Materials against Materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1): 1-16.
Kirksey, Eben (ed.). 2014. The Multispecies Salon. Durham: Duke University Press.
Omura, Keiichi, Otsuki, Grant J., Satsuka, Shiho, and Morita, Atsuro (eds.). 2019. World Multiple: The Quotidian Politics of Knowing and Generating Entangled Worlds. New York: Routledge.
Palsson, Gisli, and Swanson, Heather A. 2016. Down to Earth: Geosocialities and Geopolitics. Environmental Humanities 8 (2): 149-171.
Tsing, Anna. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
