The Poetics of Life: Luther Burbank, Horticultural Novelties, and the Spaces of Heredity

This paper studies the hybridization practices of plant breeder Luther Burbank in order to better understand how the gene theory of heredity emerged from late nineteenth and early twentieth century spatial practices. Although Burbank bred plants that could fit the consumption habits of an industrialized America, he never adopted the informational practices useful to industry, such as standardized forms or numerical record keeping. Consequently, Burbank's hybridizations brought forth lives built on and intended to exploit new industrial spaces but Burbank never saw the incentives for describing these lives in terms genes, a language made possible by the spaces of the distribution of large amounts of manufactured goods.