ALL THAT HAS VALUE... WAS THEN COUNTED AS NOTHING
Ron Benner
The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself' as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. Therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.
—Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
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Edward Said, Palestinian/U.S. scholar and advocate, acknowledging his debt to Gramsci in the writing of his book Orientalism (1978), would call for a “critical consciousness” not a “critical theory” in his subsequent writing. In the introduction to Orientalism, Said noted that the only English translation of the Prison Notebooks at the time inexplicably left out the final sentence to the Gramsci quote above: “È perciò indispensabile, in partenza, compilare un tale inventario.” As the Israeli genocide against Palestinians approaches two years, it is more urgent than ever to apply Said's “critical consciousness” to the historical record and to challenge the silence and complicity we are witnessing today.
The traces of a 10,000–year history of Indigenous horticulture in the Americas have been largely unacknowledged for centuries worldwide. My personal knowledge of this history was informed at an early age by the Haudenosaunee people of northeastern North America by their cultivation of maize, beans and squash. My own “critical consciousness,” after formally studying Agricultural Engineering at the University of Guelph, Ontario, began when I first travelled to Mexico in 1972 where I encountered hundreds of economic plants native to the Americas. Over the following decades, I continued to compile an inventory of native American plants based upon travel and research in libraries in North, Central and South America. While doing research in the London Public Library, I came across Dictionary of Economic Plants by J.C.Th. Uphof, Lehre, West Germany: J. Cramer Publishers, 1968. Uphof was described as an Economic Botanist to the Board of Economic Warfare, Washington, D.C. This book raised the question of what is unclassified (the book itself) and what is classified (not in the book). It confuses the idea that classifying plants was somehow inherently negative despite the fact that all horticulturalists use a system of classification of knowledge in order to determine what is safe to eat and to protect themselves and others from plants which could cause harm. A portion of the inventory of economic plants that I compiled was first exhibited in the mixed media photographic installation As The Crow Flies in 1984–1991 and in three photographic/garden installations, American Cloisonné in 1987–1988, Native to the Americas in 1991, and All That Has Value... Was Then Counted As Nothing in 1993–1995. The original 1993 billboard from All That Has Value... would be recycled in 2017 to produce the photographic/garden installation Trans/mission: Native to the Americas presently installed in front of the Wilfrid Laurier University Library, Waterloo, Ontario. All That Has Value… Was Then Counted as Nothing included the bibliographic information for Dictionary of Economic Plants and Uphof's job description embedded within the inventory of plants. The plant names were introduced as UNCLASSIFIED. What became CLASSIFIED was the end of the title for the installation: Was Then Counted as Nothing.
The title All That Has Value...Was Then Counted As Nothing is a quote from The Story of the Conquest as Told by the Anonymous Authors of Tlatelolco, written in Nahuatl in 1528 or earlier, and is in the collection of the National Library, Paris, France, where it forms part of Unos anales historicos de la nacion mexicana. It is probably the oldest prose document describing the conquest of Tenochtitlan/modern-day Mexico City. The full quote is as follows: “Gold, jade, rich cloths, quetzal feathers—all that has value was then counted as nothing.” All Aztec cultural objects made from gold or silver were melted down by the Spanish invaders into ingots and taken back by Cortés to the Spanish Court. Everything else was burnt. The Europeans did the counting. From then on, all silver and gold mines throughout the Americas were worked using forced Indigenous labour. Starvation and subsequent diseases such as flu and smallpox devastated the Indigenous populations. All sense of community was destroyed. In less than three generations, the population of the Americas declined by 50 million from a total of 75 million. The death toll from the conquest of Tenochtitlan alone, over a two year period, was 250,000. This was a genocide on a scale that had never been seen before in the history of the world. |
Dictionary of Economic Plants by J.C.Th. Uphof, Lehre, West Germany: J. Cramer Publishers, 1968
Title page: Economic Botanist to the Board of Economic Warfare, Washington, D.C.
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Gold and silver from the Americas became coinage minted in Mexico, Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia with the Kings of Spain taking “the Royal Quinto” -20%. The closest thing to currency in the Americas before the conquest had been cacao beans, which were of uniform shape and weight and could be counted on for their value. For the next 300 years the minted coinage of the Americas travelled east and west around the world. During this same period, so did the horticultural knowledge and food production of the Americas. Columbus on his return voyage in 1493 introduced chili peppers, maize and so many other foods to Spain. Cacao/chocolate became a luxury drink in the courts of Europe. By 1530, maize could be found growing in India, South East Asia and China thanks to the Portuguese who had accidentally bumped into Brazil on their way to the Horn of South Africa and India (Cabral 1500). The movement of economic plants native to the Americas happened so quickly that within 200 years most urbanites considered these plants to be native to their respective territories. Most farmers knew better and the plants were always valued as gifts from the Indigenous horticulturalists of the Americas.
Ron Benner, All That Has Value, 1993–2004, billboard/garden installation, Harbourfront, Toronto
Ron Benner was born in 1949 in London, Ontario. He is an internationally recognized visual artist, photographer, writer, curator, and social activist whose long-standing practice investigates the history and political economy of food cultures. Since 1987, he has produced photographic/garden installations across Canada and in Salamanca and Seville in Spain, and Xi’an, China. His photographic/garden installation As The Crow Flies (2005–ongoing) became part of the permanent collection of Museum London in 2023. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, Western University, and a cofounder of, with Jamelie Hassan, and curatorial advisor at the Embassy Cultural House.
