Of Blackberries

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Stephen Collis

The Commons Conference, April 29, 2006

The blackberry I have in mind is not the catchily-named communications gadget, with its techno-utopian promises of "staying connected" and "mobilizing the workplace" (one is tempted to conjure the spectre of Marx, here, text-messaging Engels). This blackberry is part of capital’s attempt to appropriate the discourse of the commons—to enclose all leisure and extraneous time so that there can be nowhere where one can be "unconnected" to capitalism’s flow of information.

No, the blackberry I have in mind today is none other than the humble fruit and bramble so common and pervasive in the Pacific North West—the rubus armeniacus, or Himalayan blackberry, brought to North America by California horticulturalist Luther Burbank in 1885 and now running amok in urban and suburban spaces alike. And yet, while my blackberry and the technological one might seem polar opposites at first glance, they do share a few features. They are both based on principles of "connectivity," and they both provide kinds of "information," promising sustenance and the good life.

They are both, however, potentially invasive, and hard to get rid of once they have taken root.