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1his speculatie essay pays tribute to Susan Leigh Stars thinking by engaging her attention to
ecology, metaphor and spirituality into a terrain o contested knowledge and practice:
contemporary soil ecology. Stars contrast between ecology and networks challenges the
seductie metaphors o network extension in radical ways, and inites us to pay attention to
spaces between let unseen but that can disturb the worklow o productiist technoscience.
Ecological thinking is also at the heart of Stars work on infrastructure, together with attention to
inisible labours. A metaphorical displacement o inrastructural analysis into naturecultural
relations makes isible ,soil, ecologies a. inrastructural, alie with much more than material
ecosystemic meanings. Stars call for including spirituality into our analysis can open ways or
reading new orms o vatvrecvttvrat materialist spirituality that are challenging a sel-centred
humanity and transorm our imagination o community. linally, ecological poetics could be a
name that articulates ecology, metaphor and spirituality as the on-going creatiity o materiality
and meaning at the heart o inrastructural ecological labours. \hile ollowing these moes,
another legacy of Stars vision remains vital: to stay in the trouble of ambivalent betreevve.., rather
than seeking the puriication o our technoutures into pre-existent categories o right and
wrong.
<&#
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa teaches at the School o Management, Uniersity o Leicester. ler
current work ocuses on question o ethics, politics and justice in scientiic practices and
technoscientiic imaginaries. She is also interested in the production o alternatie orms o
knowing and organising in social moements, such as eeryday practices o ecological care.
Recent publications include: Matters o Care in 1echnoscience. Assembling Neglected 1hings,
ociat tvaie. of cievce, 41,1,, 2011, Lthical Doings in naturecultures, tbic., Ptace ava vrirovvevt.
. ]ovrvat of Pbito.ob, ava Ceograb,, 13 ,2, 2010, a co-edited special issue on Re-tooling
technologies: exploring the possible through eminist science studies, vb;ectirit, ]ovrvat, 28, 2008.




2

=+)0#-3")&#+


\hen a scholar captures your aections, what is passed on to us is hard to athom. Beyond
theories, concepts and methods, we inherit gestures and ways o doing. 1his has been my eeling
since joining the collectie homage and mourning or Leigh. S. Leigh Stars work has opened
unusual ways o thinking and knowing or many o us. \hen I was a young eminist philosopher
trying to understand the singular power o the sciences I irst encountered the commonly named
Onions paper ,Star, 1991: 50, and the introduction to her edited olume cotogie. of /vorteage
,Star, 1995,. 1hese texts became oundational or me. More than a decade ater discoering her
work and only ater some years o enjoying the priilege o her riendship I can hardly accept
shes gone and that I am participating to posthumous celebrations o her person. Rereading
those writings, I was traersed by longing to talk to her again, to tell her how astonished I was to
realise I had orgotten how much was in them, the many lines o thought and seminal questions
she had opened in early science and technology studies that are ar rom being closed, and
mostly, how much her ways, and some o her insistent yearnings, hae unwittingly marked me,
shaped my own work, become part o the inrastructure o my soul. 1o put it in her own words
when paying tribute to her teacher Mary Daly: within a subjective-collective, thinking is rearivg
,Star, 2009: 335, and the threads we weae with rarely belong only to us. But Stars inluential
gestures and ways o doing go well beyond what we usually call scholarly or ivtettectvat knowing.
She ostered particularly caring modes of attention
i
or marginalised experiences that, as she
always made explicit in her work in science and technology studies, where marked by radical
eminist thinking. Part o the magic o her work and scholarship is thus an aectiely charged
politics o knowledge uelled with loe or seemingly unimportant but ery tangible experiences,
bodies and relations. And so I thought that in writing to celebrate her thought and person I
would engage with how Leighs very singular knowledge politics, had shape-shiting eects into
our ways o knowing. I would explore how this might happen through her untamed and
imaginatie thinking ways, working in mysteriously aectie ways. But in the process, shit
shaping did happen again, bringing me to spaces I had not expected to reach. Reading some o
Leighs writings which I was unamiliar with, those that ocus on infrastructure ,Star, 1999, Star
& Ruhleder, 1996,, moed in unexpected ways my ways o thinking my current topic o research
ixation: the collectie reclaiming o the soil under our eet as a ital ecology. 1his essay speaks
o how this led me to engage with relatively subtle dimensions of Stars scholarship: her attention
to ecology, to metaphor and the relation o both to spirituality. \hat unolds is a particularly
powerul entanglement o ecological thinking and materialist spirituality, a orm o ecological
poetics ,Selby, 199, at the heart o contemporary reclamations o the soil.
1he essay starts by addressing Leighs commitment to marginalised experiences and
looks into how this attention relates to her preerence or ecologies by contrast with the notion
o networks. 1his lays out a questioning o the predominant paradigm by which ecology appears
as a background over which technoscience develops allowing planetary ecologies to sere as
ield or network extension rather than obliging to a responsie relation. A second section
engages with alternatie ways o thinking reealed by enisioning soil ecology as an ivfra.trvctvre,
and relects on Stars practice o metaphor. linally engaging with Stars call to integrate
spirituality and community in science and technology studies I ocus on spiritual meanings o
soil. 1he paper concludes with a relection on ecotogicat oetic. as a possible naming or reimagining
naturecultural spiritualities.



3

=C Spaces G/)7//+
oh seductie metaphor
network lung oer reality
ilaments spun rom the body
connections o magic
extend
extend
extend

rbo ritt .ee tbe .ace. betreev.

lrom 1be ^et, S. Leigh Star, 1995

Leigh Star oten interrupted the low o thought and ideas with poems. 1be ^et was included in
her introduction to cotogie. of Kvorteage, a oundational collection or the ield o science and
technology studies. These verses disrupt celebrations of virtual reality, the language of computer
hype, a pervasive discourse at the time they were published. The poem slows down the
triumphalism surrounding networking successes expressing both ascination and hesitation about
metaphors promising lights o spreading extension to our corporeal initudes. It does so with a
question: rbo ritt .ee tbe .ace. betreev. Stars eorts to look ater spaces between are well known.
In spaces between she saw the iolence and pain in the lies o the orgotten, the silenced, the
erased, the invisible worker and her deleted work, all residual categories like the none of the
aboe or not elsewhere classiied, the anomalies, and all the singular experiences destroyed by
bureaucratic mechanistic arrangements that priilege the norm. 1be ^et calls or attention to see
those spaces between, to interruptions in oerconnected networks that reeal issures in
technoscientiic cultures.
1here is a commitment to justice in Stars work
ii
. She knew what it means to be an outsider,
howeer ritbiv. 1his awareness is coupled in her work with a sturdy sense o humour. She neer
situated her outsiderness on a higher moral ground. So though her particular path into the
thinking o injustice is well reealed by the way she persistently asked: cvi bovo. we should
remember that Leighs cvi bovo is ery dierent rom that o a ;v.tifier, or a writer o wrongs, ery
dierent too rom a cvi bovo satisied by suspicious debunking rbo bevefit. frov tbe crive. - drien
by desire to reeal the hidden moties indicating that something may not be what it appears at
irst to be. I beliee she would hae identiied the guilt and boredom at stake in these
satisactions something to remember when we see moral punishment replace social justice.
Stars commitment to justice has nothing to do with adjustment; on the contrary shed rather
question the upholders o law as, or instance, 1he Category. In other words, Stars pragmatic o
inestigating consequences at the margins is absolutely not reducible to exposing the beneits o
those who hae something to gain. Rather, i there is a moral calculus here it would direct us to
realise the loss which comes upon us when we oerlook other possible worlds hidden or silenced
in marginalised spaces including the un o them! And this is not about a balance sheet
between gains and losses, there is no equialence.
1his is because or Star, spaces between are not only about pain, iolence and surial: these
issures are also about possibility. Spaces between are created when things all o established
charts, creating split-seles, multiple memberships to dierent communities o practice: new
orms o liing are born in spaces between. In negotiations within, and with these vvcbartea
betovgivg., we create possibility. So attending to spaces between is also about ostering these new
possibilities. 1he eminist chicana poet-thinker Gloria Anzalda reclaimed the Aztec word
^eavtta to reclaim a state o political and spiritual in-betweeness in which those marginalised
4

and oppressed by existing regimes engage in strategies o surial ,Anzalda, 198,. Both Leigh
and Anzaldua were veavttera., dwelling at the borderlands o existing categories ostering a
poetics o creatie resistance in the middle worlds. 1his work is as important as attention to
iolence and pain because the interstices o alternatie possibility are also obscured by seamless
accounts o both technological progress and doom.
So to say that Leigh had a commitment to justice wouldnt by itself capture her mode of
attention to marginalities. I hae used in another context a notion of speculative commitment
borrowing rom Stengers reclaiming of speculative thinking to speak o the singular
contributions o Star and other eminist scholars to science and technology studies ,Puig de la
Bellacasa, 2011,. 1rying to think how things would be dierent i we saw the world through
.ace. betreev reeals a strong attachment to situated and positioned isions o what a lieable and
caring world could be: Star did take sides ,Star, 1991,. But her commitment is .ecvtatire as she
wouldnt let neither the situation nor een her position an acute awareness o perasie
dominations conirm in adance what i. or covta be. I can nearly hear her saying: how boring
would that be! The question rbo ritt .ee tbe .ace. betreev. is thus a yearning to which no
deinitie answer can be gien. \e do not know, howeer gooa our intentions i we will be able to
see spaces between. But also, maybe more importantly, we do not know what spaces between cav
becove. 1he act that her hesitations about the libratory eel in the network metaphor expressed in
1be ^et comes as a question rather than a judgement exposes a singular careulness in Stars
commitment, an assumed ulnerability that contributes to the creatie orce o her aectie
knowledge politics.
And when rereading her renowned onions paper, I realised that, o course, Leigh had
thought about this ivaetervivac, o commitment thinking with loward Becker, who in turn was
thinking with Dewey she airmed that we involve ourselves in many potential actions, these
become meaningful in the light of collective consequences, jointly negotiated,Star, 1991:50,.
One o these crucial collectie negotiations o still indeterminate commitments is happening
today around multiple sites o ecological breakdown faced Earths peoples i.e. not only humans
raising questions o naturocultural justice rather than just social; read humanist. In the light
o these collectie consequences I want to explore the challenges to speculatie inquiry that
Leighs interpellation towards network thinking might pose. 1o the question: what .ace. betreev
are being created by the drie or extension o the ery ontology o technoscientiic networks
we might need to add this one: what creases and cracks are being created by the tensions
between the power o creatie networks and ecological relationships on Larth And it is Stars
preerence to speak o ecologies rather than networks that triggered this wondering.
==C !"#$#%&/1
A web is composed of filaments,
and a seamless web should be an oxymoronic term.
1here is no empty space in a seamless web,
but our image o network is that it is ilaments with space between.
lor this reason I preer ecology. ,Star, 1995:2,

Coming rom a scholar whose work deeloped at the beating heart o the network kingdom
inormation and communication technologies the persisting character o this stance across her
work has an enigmatic character. And o course, here ecology does not reer speciically to
natural ecosystems but to a particular orm o relating. An ontology, with its correspondent
mode o thought and attention o ecological thinking, is here distinguished rom network liing
and thinking. loweer the terms o distinction in the quote aboe are somehow enigmatic, they
sound more like a poetic riddle hidden in an academic piece. 1his style works to ensure that the
terms o reappropriation o this subtle critique o networks are let open. In other words, to turn
3

this into a blanket judgement against the idea o networks ,or o AN1,, would be a blatant
misreading. Not the least because Stars argument here was embedded here in her work o
gathering a olume with seminal interentions in S1S at a time in which the concept o network
is gaining importance in the ield. \hile she is indeed making a point by asking the shape-shiters
o this emerging discipline not to simply create a professionalization movement with respect to
non humans and thus becoming scientists in a way that oten makes us uneasy the invitation is
radically open: let us change the way science is organized. One way, she says, would be to
engage in a reclaiming of the term network of some of its unfortunate ai.covtivvov. connotations
and affiliations to go for networks-without-voids for an ecological analysis and that in that
ecological analysis we be epistemologically democratic, including toward our own work
organization ,Star, 1995:2,.
Much could be unpacked rom those words. In continuity with the attention to spaces-
between an ecological analysis of networks would involve imagining networks-without-voids. In
that sense we can see that ecological thinking is or Star deeply grounded in the attention to that
which escapes dominant isions but is still ritat or the liing o a world. 1ogether with this
ontological point goes the act that, ecological thinking commits to oreground these spaces.
Again this is illuminated by how, in her Onions paper ecological analysis appears again in
contrast with network thinking and early AN1 ocabulary:

Every enrolment entails both failure to enrol and a destruction of the world of the non-
enrolled. Pasteurs success meant simultaneously failure for those working in similar
areas, and a loss and world-destruction or those outside the germ theory altogether. ,...,
... a stabilised network and thus a successful one - is only stable or those who are
members; and this involves the private suffering of those who are not standard
members and the non members. ,Star, 1991: 49,

Taking up Bruno Latours example of the pasteurisation of France, Star reminds us how
Pasteurs networking success meant also faitvre and to... It involved a rortadestruction that didnt
have to do with the scientific controversy between Pasteur and Pochet, but with the ecotogicat
effect. of Pasteurism and its enrolment. Leigh mentions bodies o knowledge destroyed by germ
theory and that are being reclaimed only now: immunology, herbal wisdom, acupuncture, the
relationship between ecology and health. \e can also take rom here that one o the roles o the
epistemological democracy she was calling S1S to oster includes paying attention to the
ecological eects o network enrolment perceied in spaces between.
Putting together Leighs hesitations about the seductie metaphor o networks and her
preerence or ecologies can lead us to think speculatiely about what more could be said about
the contrast between these ontologies,modes o thought. 1ogether with other thinkers ,eminist
and more, in S1S Star was weary o the exclusions o stabilised networks as well as o the
seductie metaphors o extension embedded in the notion o network. 1be ^et maniested how
network thinking is in loe with extension and circulation. O course, .tabiti.atiov is key or the
success o extending networks, but only until the next opening. 1he word o network is attiavce,
the proisional, the switchboard. Dimitris Papadopoulos has drawn my attention the inherent
roavctiri.v in the term network ,Papadopoulos, 2011,. In this resides an addictie eel o
reedom well attuned to the free global marketplace. Networks speak o particular ways o
relating that o drawing lines o connection between one point and other, leaing howeer
countless spaces as background or their agency lows. Agency and power are indeed distributed,
yet all but eenly. \e must always remember, in Stars words, that a stabilised network and
thus a successful one - is only stable or those who are members inoling oten the
priatisation o pain or those who are not standard members, or non members at all.
6

An ecology, by contrast, eokes a site o intensities, synergies and symbiotic processes
within relational compounds. Lcological circulation unctions in cyclic interdependent ways
rather than extensie. In contrast with the idea that a distribution o agency between multiarious
agents is what deines a network, what characterises an ecology is that its world is inseparable o
a certain avrabitit, o etbo. and the practices at stake ,Deleuze & Guattari, 198, Stengers, 199,.
1he dominant existential drie o ecology is not so much to extend itsel but to hold together
resilient relationships ,that are, o course, not only nice, one need only to think o the
interdependent relations between predators and preys ,Stengers, 199,. Again, this is not to say
that a ocus on networks ignores what makes them hold together as stable, but extension
remains the beating heart o network thinking. 1he very existence of the verb networking
exposes the dynamic quality o this mode o thought as is the ocus on alliances ,usually
strategic, and connections. By contrast, thinking ecology brings attention to consistent durable
relations, embedded in territories and cycles as well as the relatie stability o a particular ethos
that characterise ecological togetherness. In ecological thinking is then not so much the
distribution o agency that is the ocus here but the power o relation-creation, by what and how
the dierent participants aect to each other, their oie.i.. Relational thinking is common to
network and ecological thinking but with an important dierence: speaking o ecology ineitably
inokes lie and death. In this sense ecological thinking inoles the acknowledgement o
initude and renewal and a resistance to the deliriums o ininitude o extension metaphors. 1hat
is also why ecological thinking cannot aoid ethical and political thinking o consequences o
world-destruction and, as a corollary, o the possibilities o regeneration and renewal.
Leigh had the art o staying with the trouble as Donna Haraway would say ,laraway,
2010,. \hile the task she gae to hersel was to look out or the spaces between, and neer held
back rom expressing her iews about injustice, she always spoke o our ambialent relations to
technodreams rather than puriying them into right and wrong. 1be ^et, or instance, also speaks
o yearnings or interplanetary connections that IC1s could allow to ulil. In this spirit the point
is not to say that networks cannot be ecological nor that ecologies cannot beneit rom networks.
1hinking urther this contrast between network thinking and ecological thinking shouldnt lead
to create a new binary but inite to engage with the historicity o our questions and concepts.
Can the contrast between ecologies and networks speak o dierent collectie consequences o
scientiic and technological deelopments in the current state o ecological breakdown 1he need
to think the problem strikes me when ecological concerns become so easily translated into a lure
compatible to network-extension and its perpetual uturosophy. One can think o the boom o
sustainable business. Look at how, today, the prealent solution to ecological breakdowns is an
etev.iov o greentech markets. lere is greev policy: does your house hae a high carbon
ootprint Install trite glazing, we will gie you the money - neer mind the tones o PVC tritivg
toxic trash. And what will be our stance when most expressions o doubt about the desirability
o a technology is, still today, easily dismissed as backward or .ivti.tic, when reminders o the
ecological destruction that can come from the extension of a network is met by yes but of the
order o economic realism And what happens to network thinking when we bring to the
forefront the background stage of technoscientific networks: that is, increasingly crushed
planetary ecologies
I hae no answer to such questions iv geverat, and in order to aoid moralistic binarism
,eitber networks or ecologies, I want to stay with how Stars work fosters modes o attention to
think o networks in an ecotogicat way rather than connectionist, that is, one that tries to aoid
instituting irreleant backgrounds. One line o thought in which Stars ecological thinking
maniests ully is in the ontological and ethical attentions she gae to infrastructure, intimately
coupled with her care for the residual categories and labours hidden ,Star & Bowker, 200,. 1he
next section thus continues this exploration o Stars ecological thinking with an exploration o
soil ecology as ivfra.trvctvre.
7

===C 5*/ &+60'1)03")30/ #6 G&#1B '+- #6 )*/ 31/1 #6 ./)'2*#0
Biology is an inexhaustible source o troping.
It is certainly ull o metaphor, but it is more than metaphor.

Donna laraway ,laraway & Goodee, 2000,

Lxperts in inrastructural analysis please orgie or displacing this complex notion into
an unlikely terrain: the soil below our eet. \et I hae to bear witness o the act that Steps or
an Lcology o Inrastructure ,Star & Ruhleder, 1996, as well the methodological text The
Ethnography of Infrastructure ,Star, 1999, proides a beautiul way to unpack the speciic
wonders o soil ecology. 1he inal home o all residues appears as more than just an
accumulation o dirt, more than the solid ground upon which we circulate: it is the inrastructure
o bio. ,Puig de la Bellacasa, lorthcoming,. 1he story can be told as what Georey Bowker
,quoted inStar, 1999: 380, has named an infrastructural inversion or should I say a covrer.iov
It could be entitled: How a city dweller discoered the magic o dirt between the paements. As
Leigh and Rudheler note, people do not necessarily distinguish the several coordinated aspects
of infrastructure ,Star, 1999: 381,. 1his accounts or the embeddedness of infrastructure, or
the act that it is sunk into and inside of other structures, social arrangements and technologies.
1he ecology o soil is embedded in the ood we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink. Most
children o the scientiic-industrial age rarely notice this. But lately more o us do as ecological
actiists hae started talking of peak soil as a far more looming devastation than any other
peak ,Shia, 2008, \ild, 2010,.
So the personal inrastructural reelation was not that personal ater all. lirstly, again, soil
ecology is learnt through membership another characteristic o inrastructure according to Star
and Ruhleder. lor me the discoery o the importance o soil ecology made soil pass from
background to topic, came through the encounter with a community o knowers across multiple
memberships and or whom soil has been topic or long: soil scientists, gardeners, ecological
actiists and een indigenous people ighting the destruction o their land. Another
characteristic o inrastructure: its particular reach or scope always goes beyond a single event
or one-site practice ,Star, 1999: 381,. Inrastructure maniests its existence locally, through our
material eeryday relationships with it: though soil is eerywhere, and the breakdown has
become planetary, we can only engage locally with it. 1he calls or planetary awareness are thus
oten starting rom the local leel, creating interdependent discussions. Secondly, the
inrastructural inersion happened at a the moment of breakdown, identiied by Star and
Rudheler as the moment when: The normally invisible quality o ror/ivg ivfra.trvctvre becomes
isible. Something is not working well in our soil ecologies. Like Star and Rudheler show, een
the use of back-up mechanisms further emphasises the occurrence o an inrastructural
breakdown. \e can think o the ertilisers industrially produced to repair dying soil, unable to
nourish, reealing not only that something is gone wrong but urther aecting inrastructural
arrangement by their ery interention ,i.e. further destroying soil ecologys abilities for
regeneration,. In other words, i soil ecology was working ine and healthy most o us could go
just around without really noticing it. Noticing it is an eent, what we do with that eent is what
matters: our actions will be part o the relational inrastructural arrangement.
\ithin this general breakdown a shit that is rearticulating, howeer slightly, a sense o
community. A re-learning o soil as inrastructure is being ostered by scientists and ecologists
,including gardeners, or whom knowledge o the soil, inoles attending careully to its
inhabitants and its ecology. Depending on rbo is looking at soil and for rbov that work is done
some things are considered important and others not. Soil doesnt reveal the same aspects
whether it is a scientist who looks at it through a microscope or a gardener who digs her plot.
8

But there is something that joins them all. Soil is not an irreleant background or burying the
debris that deeloping networks o technological progress leae behind and then go on
connecting to develop solutions (e.g. ertilisers,. 1heir work is drawing attention to spaces
between the paements, bringing the backstage of elements of work practice to the oreront. 1his o
course joins in with the enhanced awareness o ecologies o managing excess has characterised
the early 21st century. \aste non susceptible o decay has become a highly ethically charged
category o matter. I it cannot become soil, we hae a problem. But also, most interestingly, the
meaningulness is intensiied o calls to care or the inisible, non human, labourers o the soil
that make it possible. \hat is being indicated is that this mostly inisible inrastructure only lies
and works well i we humans work and lie with proper attention to processes o soil renewal
and ritb inisible workers, such as worms and microbial communities ,i.e. by not pouring
ertilisers and pesticides into their habitat,.
1he lessons emerging rom the reclaiming of soil are attuned Stars call for networks
without oids: there cannot be such thing as an irreleant background in an ecological
worldiew. Soil ecology is not just an extensible network, an ininite resource. Like other
ecologies, soil ecology appears as an inrastructural arrangement essential to lie in this planet.
And ecology as inrastructure inoles thinking about modes o relationalities in
interdependency, that is, community. 1he changes in how we gie meaning to our belonging to
soil ecology might change the community itsel. But to say so also reeals something about this
approach to inrastructure: that it is not only about vateriat. but also about meanings that are
neither separable rom nor reducible to materiality ,Barad, 200,.
Beore immersing into exploring these meanings a word should be said about the eects
o this somehow displaced appropriation o Stars understanding o inrastructure. Initially
thought built to analyse the relational produces o human actions and technologies, it reeals
their potential to engage with a non human made world but eery good western thinker
indoctrinated to secular science has been warned against anthropomorphism or other such
things as b,tooi.v an attribution o purpose, will and lie to inanimate matter, and o human
interests to the nonhuman ,Schaer, 1991: 182,. Indeed I can be held accountable here o
something that we could call avtbroorgaviatiovati.v: the attribution o human organisational
practices to natural worlds. And it will not be enough a justiication to claim that S1S has widely
questioned the distinction human,non human both or analytical and political reasons. Indeed,
there is still some trouble in compounding together without distinction all-things-non-human
,Papadopoulos, in print,. So what work is doing here the breach o speciicity o this displaced
use o inrastructure
Maybe there is something in Stars work that presides to why I hae elt somehow
authorised to engage her notion o inrastructure in this way, to stretch it as a orm o analysis
into a naturecultural ecology. In displacing inrastructure, I could hae also been taken by a
quality o writing that makes o the theory also a trope. In other words, Stars way o speaking o
ivfra.trvctvre has taken me as vetabor. Beore examining urther the consequences o this
metaphorical use, we can look at what it inoles in terms o elucidating her modes o attention.
tartbeoet belongs to a eminist clan o inspiring godmothers ,among which are amous
laraway, Anzaldua, Barad, exploring alternatie ways o knowing our world, among which a
materialist understanding o meaning. Material worlds can be source o metaphor or trope which
doesnt mean, as Haraway warns, that they are ovt, metaphor.
Stars poetics were not just contained in the poems she included in her writings. I hae two
ery iid impressions o gestures that aected me beyond the reading her work. One was how
she had presented hersel in a bio accompanying the programme o a talk she was giing. I was
airly stricken by the act that she presented hersel fir.t as a poet, and then as an academic. As a
person struggling with my own academic identity earing its airly isolating eects I was
inspired, eeling some relie that such a position was possible. Another iid memory is that o
9

her presidential lecture at the Annual Meeting o the Society or social studies o science in 2006.
1here she told the story o a startled and enchanted encounter with a bob cat near her home.
She described this moment o recognition between two earthy beings sharing the same grounds
o lie at the edge o radical alterity as the kind o interruptions that she inited us to reare ivto
the thinking o technology. She didnt tell us how. The call was compelling in more mysterious
ways. \hen telling the story in her sot oice, she interrupted the low, one could hae heard a
eather all. She had that power.
But more explicitly she also airmed metaphor as a powerul orce, one that can build
community by transgressing across splits:
Because we are all members of more than one community of practice and thus
o many networks, at the moment o action we draw together repertoires mixed rom
dierent worlds. Among other things, we create metaphors bridges between those
worlds.
Power is about whose metaphor brings worlds together, and holds them there. It
may be a power o the zero-point or a power o discipline, o enrolment or ainity, it
maybe the collectie power o not-splitting. Metaphors may heal or create, erase or
iolate, impose a oice or embody more than one voice ,Star, 1991: 52,.
\hat bridgings are produced by engaging metaphorically with inrastructure An ecological,
relational-intensie, way o thinking inrastructural arrangements in naturecultures could here
include ecologies and networks in the same breath. But mostly, or me, what taking the peril o
metaphorical avtbroorgaviatiovati.v does to the ecologies o soil is to push us to acknowledge
their importance as something that is being vaae ,not gien,, not a resource but an active
organisation inoling humans and non humans that requires our participation to its renewal,
not only its consumption. Moreoer, the inrastructure o bio. processes many meanings that
most o us only hae human ways o accessing: scientiic research, gardening, agriculture, eating,
composting. Possible bridgings could be happening reclaiming o soil between ecological
moements ,understood in the largest sense possible, and the sciences o soil through what soil
means can mean across these worlds. 1hese inole some cosmopolitical recompositions ,to
borrow Isabelle Stengers notion) by which dierent ields o practice are working towards a
change in how we gie care and attention to this oertly present, but relatiely ignored world.
And because this change in material practices is not separable rom changes in consciousness
and meanings that is why in next section I am ollowing urther Stars message about the
bridging qualities o metaphor into another terrain that she inited us to explore: spirituality. I
address the reclamation o soil through a spiritual dimension rooted in its powerul
metaphorical-material meanings. In turn, this contributes to a larger notion o a Star-inspired
argument or ecological thinking: i ecology is inrastructure, spirituality might also be seen as
inrastructural to ecology. And yet, by thinking o spirituality as inrastructural, this ethereal term
gains in thickness and lesh, exposing a rather vateriati.t orm o spirituality.

=HC D:')/0&'$&1)F 12&0&)3'$&)4: soils messages

\e all come rom the Goddess
And to her we shall return
Like a drop o rain
llowing to the ocean

Rectaivivg
10


A rainbow o soil is under our eet:
Red as a barn & black as a peat.
Its yellow as lemon and white as the snow;
Bluish gray ... so many colors below.
lidden in darkness as thick as the night:
1he only rainbow that can orm without light.
Dig you a pit, or bore you a hole,
Youll find enough colors to well rest your soul.
. Raivbor of oit, composed by soil scientist l.D. lole, 1985
1he aboe is a song by a proessor o soil science, renowned also or a lyrical approach to his
object o study. 1he chant comes rom the spiritual-political neopagan moement, Rectaivivg
whose members hae been inoled in ecological actiism as a way to restore relations to Larth -
their ocus o worship. Both introduce this section to indicate that there is more than a
transormation in material and economic practices at play in a shit o awareness with regards to
soil ecology. 1his requires discussing also a change o aections and consciousness, a shit in the
sense o community in which organised rationalities ,sciences o soil, ecological moements, as
mundane matters ,the basic need o humans to eed, rearticulate with imaginaries o human
belonging. I am mostly ocusing on those who attend to the soil as an organic liing habitat. 1he
liing aspect o soil has a strong metaphorical edge, and not only in western culture. But this
being the culture I know better, and o which much has been told about its acts o separation o
humans from the natural, I want to bring the Judaeo-Christian theological weight o soil into
our story.

1be Creatiov of Mav Mei.ter ertrav - Grabow Altarpiece, 135-83
1he ancient testament tells us that God created and shaped man rom the matter o the
Larth. 1he name o Adam, the irst man, is the masculine deriation o a particular name gien
to a type of earth found in the Middle East and reputed to be ruddy reminding the colour o
blood. Here even the nouns for acre, ground, land take their name from this colour: adhamah
being the fevivive root o the word deried rom Akkadian into lebrew ,Botterweck, Ringgren,
& labry, 199: 6, no comments here on the act that this deriation hierarchy contradicts the
storytelling o woman coming rom the rib o man. 1his account attests o what is common to
many creation stories in which humans were initially modelled by gods rom mud or clay the
ery Latin word bvvav comes rom earth, ground, soil: bvvavv., humus. Soil is where organic lie
begins literally - and where all lie ends return to dust, decay.
11

Soil rhymes with .ovt ,McIntosh, 2004,. 1hat might say it all. Some basic material truth
lies in this metaphorical deriation into the spiritual dimension o soil: the act is that we,
humans, as most other complex liing organisms in this planet lie rom the ood we grow rom
the soil. 1his organic spiritual meaning to soil is explicit in western moements o neo-pagan
spirituality, which understands working with the soil a basic practice o carivg or the Larth
Mother ,Puig de la Bellacasa, 2010,, attending to a body to which all things return. lere worship
inoles a orm o eeryday ecological actiism, deeloping material modes o attention to
current breakdowns in the webs o lie. Caring properly or the soil requires relearning to /vor it
as a tirivg covvvvit,.
Earth-honoring agriculture would generate abundance, but its primary intention would
be not to grow proits, but rather to gror .oit liing, healthy, complex soil as a ertile
matrix or liing, ital, health-sustaining ood. 1o grow soil, we need to appreciate and
understand that soil is a liing matrix o incredible complexity, the product o immense
cycles and great generative processes. ,Starhawk, 2004: 161, my emphasis,

Starhawk is a spiritual neopagan actiist who has engaged with new orms o
permaculture and organic orms o working with soil as a coherent step with the act that
Mother Larth is not just a symbol or ecoeminist spirituality but a material entity o which
humans are part. Something these oices are insisting on is on the alue to a ery actie
community labouring hard in the growing o soil and they are relying on the sciences o soil
ecology to do this. 1hickening the Judaeo-Christian tale, we could add that the scientiic meaning
o bvvv. is not strictly synonymous with soil, but only ove component o soil, its most nourishing
component, the sturdy stable end product o laborious processes o decomposition and decay
a knowledge that could inite to acknowledge worms et al. as co-creators o bvvavs very matter.
1he point here is that, by contrast, in neopagan spiritualities, the binary spiritual,material is
radically put into question. Soil is not seen as dust, or dirt, to receie humans ater death, nor is a
soulless inert matter shaped by god and inused with spirit to create a soulul orm ,humans,: soil
is in itsel part o a liing organic web o being o which many creatures including humans are
part.
And as we hae seen, we all rely on the inisible labourers o this inrastructure. But soil
workers being mostly ery small non humans most o us only hear o their messages through
specialist spokespersons. Again one o the common diiculties in researching the two
oerlapping worlds o interest in science and technology studies technocultures and
naturecultures is that the kind of non humans is highly differentiated. And so are their
spokespersons: whether o pieces o sotware ,technologists, or o biological beings ,scientists,.
1he workers o the soil need particular spokesperson: \ho is bringing up the messages rom the
soil workers? Who is giving voice to the breakdown of soils nourishing capacities? The voices
seem to be coming rom this reappropriation o the sciences by ,eeryday, ecological actiists
,Carlsson, 2008, Lowenels & Lewis, 2006, and are interening in the material-meanings o soil
looking or more breathable spaces or humans and non humans at the heart o technoscientiic
productiism.
I hae come to talk about these political alliances through the spiritual aspects o soil.
One reason or this is that these constituted an important aspect o the training in permaculture
that played an important role in my personal experience o inrastructural inersion. But also,
because I am trying to find ways to listen to Stars call in her introduction to cotogie. of Kvorteage,
to reintegrate two aspects into the thinking o science and technology: .iritvatit, and covvvvit,.
In secular academia, pronouncing the word spirituality triggers all sorts o red lights and security
alarms. It is my tribute to Stars to bring up the word, but also to bear witness that hers was a
ery material spirituality. It would be a lie to say that S1S analysis is soulless, but paradoxically, it
12

looks as if we, as often are more at ease with recognising souls and other spiritual
maniestations in technoscientiic networks and arteacts the ghosts in the machines than we
are to other actors in our ecologies. Maybe because we create them 1he act is that in order to
engage with some o the ongoing shits in relations human-non-human relations or the sake o
the ecologies o soil we might need to stop separating these material practices rom what
trav.ceva. them. By this I mean not a supernatural world aboe reality, but what we could call,
inspired by Leighs approach to inrastructure, an ivfravatvrat dimension: something that exceeds
us indiidually and collectiely, bvt frov ritbiv. 1he question remains open about how to prolong
Stars call and what meanings gie to it.

HC ?3/1 )#7'0-1 '+ /"#$#%&"'$ 2#/)&"1
revt ovt to tbe baet rooa
ecav.e a fire ra. iv v, beaa.

\.B. \eats, 1be .ovg of !avaerivg .evgv.

.va tbe bira. of tbe air
.va tbe bea.t. of tbe .oit
.va tbe fi.be. of tbe ae.erate .ea.
!itt /vor rbo av
.va ovr .vb.tavce ritt eava
.. art of erer,tbivg

Jolie lolland, Cooab,e Catiforvia

\et i metaphorical work is about power to bridge, the word spirituality might not work
particularly well in the context o the communities o membership with which I am speculating
here ,this doesnt mean it is out of the landscape but that it might produce adverse effects to the
project,. Ater all, how many soil scientists would recognise themseles in the insinuation that
their sciences are eeding into orms o Larth worshiping But more conceptually speaking,
.iritvatit,, as I hae been reminded by Donna laraway, is probably still bound to be an ill suited
word or materialist meaning practices. 1he ery word spirit is entrenched in a tradition o
separation o spirit and body, mind and matter. By the way, she suggested, only hal joking, and
quoting her partner, the physics teacher, ecologist and radio director Rusten logness, that we
could just call it covo.t. All these are enough reasons to not settle the questions asked by Star
into a single answer. But we can keep the question: how can the openings Star has produced by
pronouncing the word spirituality be included in our analysis
I will not try to proide an answer but I can share some cues. A one is in the ery way
Star articulated the question. In cotogie. of Kvorteage the question o spirituality appears through
her acknowledgment o belonging and early training in a community o knowing:

At first, feminist scholarship ways so beleaguered, so new, and so dependent on
emerging community that people rom all ields were welcome. So the analysis o poets
was equal to i not greater that o scientists, the experience o an eighty-year-old woman
as important or the critique as that o a twenty-ie-year-old ,although this certainly not
without its own struggle, and there was an incredibly heterogeneity in the sorts o
analysis brought to bear on issues....,. 1his was coupled with an important inclusion and
participation o eminist theologians Mary Daly, Carol Christ, Rosemary Ruether, Nelle
13

Morton, and others who were not araid to tackle questions o God,dess, the
Absolute, power, Imagination, and so on.,Star, 1995: 24,
Star admitted the presence of silly mysticism (or that silly mysticism became an easy
accusation way to dismiss the potential o these experiences,. But what she insisted on was on
the joys and troubles of not splitting: that is, in not making any o these questions and
experiences a priori irreleant. \e can also read here Stars commitment to pluralism,
epistemological democracy, and an enduring belie in the ertility o multiple marginalities and
memberships. And thus we see is that the thought o spirituality appears here with the spirit o a
community becoming possible also because beleaguered. A .ace betreev.
1his leads me to a second cue I remembered by the way spirituality appears ramed in a
special issue o the eminist journal Q|1 in one o its irst issues, rom the ery time Leigh is
describing aboe:
The contemporary womens movement has created space for women to begin to
perceie reality with a clarity that seeks to encompass many complexities. 1his perception
has been triialized by male dominated cultures that present the world in primarily
rational terms. Reatit, i. vot ovt, ratiovat, tivear, ava categoriea ivto eitber,or it i. at.o irratiovat
ava .verratiovat. ecav.e re ao vot bare a ver rora for tbi. .trvggte to covrebeva tbi. totatit, ava
ivcororate tbat vvaer.tavaivg ivto ovr actiov, re are cattivg it .iritvatit,.,Dais & \eaer,
195:2, my emphasis,
1his second cue also leads us to a community open to multiple memberships and an
experimentation with the arts of not splitting. And it can be said that this kind of non-splitting
practice by which a community is created is based on a orm o aith, a suspension i not o
doubt at least o scepticism: becav.e re ao vot bare a ver rora for tbi. .trvggte. Because again, we do
not know i we will become able to speak or the spaces-between we are articulating. 1hat which
Judy Dais and Juanita \eaer called there spirituality is also that mysterious, unexplainable, and
een irrational something because unknown, a something that always dwells in the possibility o
a community to come. Because the world, as we remake it, is always somehow new.
A third cue when looking or meanings and eects o spiritual openings was gien me at
an eent in celebration and honour o Leigh. I went there with the same question o how to
prolong Stars calls for spirituality. I thought Id be walking on delicate grounds but I had got it
wrong and was ar rom being the only one bringing the ivfravatvrat into the picture. In her
opening address to a panel exploring the meanings o Cvi bovo Karen Barad started by engaging
with the material practicalities o her Jewish practice, Donna laraway oered a iew o the
cosmic and artistic meanings o her aourite metaphor o terraotiticat relationality o the game o
cat cradling as used in Natie American creation o myths, Jake Metcals presentation took us by
the miracles o a isual and sound technologies to listen to the sounds o coyotes in the night,
recorded in Stars and Geof Bowkers home on the hills.... Deinitiely there is something in
Stars call that has not been let unheard. Spirituality, or that-or-which-we-do-not-hae-a-good-
word was deinitiely present at that gathering. And it is Geo Bowker who gae me a inal cue
to a word that might do, for now, for the something Im trying to get at in remaking of soil
ecology when he eoked the work that Leigh and him had been exploring lately on tbe oetic. of
ivfra.trvctvre. I do not know precisely what this work would hae unolded and will still unold.
Bu the ery mentioning o that phrasing made me come back to how Stars modes o attention
ound their way across through poetry. As I mentioned aboe, her poetry is not only in her
poems but also in how always an awareness o something that exceeds us, inds a way through
her work.
Poetics goes beyond the art o writing poetry and the theory o it. Poe.i. is about making
creatiely. 1he character o making makes to the act that poetry is not only abovt the world or
its metaphor it is about va/ivg worlds. Poets that were dear to Leigh such as Adrienne Rich are
14

celebrated or grounding their poetry in this belie. Also, and correlatiely, poetics disturbs the
contradiction between metaphor and truth. Characteristically, one o the words Leigh Star kept
pronouncing without irony when writing at the midst o the most post-structuralist or
postmodern times atmosphere is truth: or cav re .a, tbe trvtb abovt ovr tire.? This commitment
to something that can be called truth marks one o the singularities o her work but it is the
embodiment o a particular orm o knowing in which truth has nothing to do with the
adequation to a preigured reality but more to the contribution to its making that is the
pragmatism of truth she advocated. 1ruth is about eects, rather than just interpretation. ler
pragmatic o consequences is based on a pluralism o truths as the condition o community.
1he intrinsically entangled power o truth - as metaphor and oe.i. as making worlds -
are aspects the theologian and ecological actiist Alastair McIntosh discusses wonderully in his
book oit ava ovt. One o the ecological struggles he recounts is the resistance to inal
naturecultural annihilation that accompanied the progression o the British interior empire into
the Scottish ecology and economy through clearing the land of its people and thus seering the
relations o the soil communities. But he also explores the suriing remnants o this oral
culture, and its modern reclaiming, through the igure and the words o bara.. 1his brings us
back to the poets craft. McIntosh reminds that the historical igure o the Bard that was the
ehicle o recording and transmitting history. 1hese public-poets were respected scholars and
somehow politicians - their spoken knowledge o truth disturbed the distinction o scholarship,
politics and poetry. But most importantly here, the bard, like is in other cultures the shaman, was
deeply embedded in a connection with a community o beings which goes beyond ourseles:
To the poet, historical truth could not be separated from representation in the language
o metaphor. As such it is a qualitatie reality rather than a black- and-white absolute.
listory, to the mythopoetic mind, was not just literal, more importantly, it was also a
ery psychological and spiritual reality... ,..., the bare bones o historical act had to be
leshed out with illustratie meaning. In this way not just the truth but also the whole
truth would be told... 1o such a mind, nature itsel has a lie beyond the one-eyed seeing
that allows perception only o its mundane acets... Such, then is the ,..., otherworld,
existing not necessarily as some distant Lden... but interpenetrating the world all around
us... ,McIntosh, 2004: 2-3,.
O course McIntoshs use o an almost banished culture to understand the present is in
itsel a v,tbooetic endeaour, rooted on a process theology o perpetual recreation. A process
theology in which there is no original nor inal act o creation but an ongoing process in which
all beings are inoled. And this recreation is intrinsically word ,metaphor, and matter. 1his is
the type o creation that we can read as oe.i.: encompassing spirituality ava va/ivg beyond the
diide between spirit and matter. 1he poetics o inrastructure is iv the world rather than about
the world. Coming back to the breakdown o ecological utures, and thinking o the kind o
membership and commitment that we can hopeully glimpse in the reclaiming o soil as a liing
ecology we can think about ecological poetics as a way o expressing-recreating the ivfravatvrat.
Giing the word to the poets seems most appropriate here. Stuart Cooke, a scholar as well as a
poet and member o Lcological lumanities writes:
I am looking at ways o articulating ecological networks, or o allowing energy to low
through language,s, in the same way that it lows constantly between dierent orms and
materials in an ecosystem. Ideally, Id like my language to graft onto the ecology in
question. In order to do so, poetry must become as surprising, as ractured and as many-
sided as any other member o a complex ecology. ,Cooke,
13

Selby ,speaking of Gary Snyders poetics, inds meaning o an ecological poetics in a striing
or a isionary integration with the land this means necessarily for him to mark the diorce
between nature and culture... the split between word and world that is exposed in our work o
reading these poems, and which can be read as a product of a capitalist economy of exchange
and o western culture. He affirms that to see the poem as work-place is to expose the workings
o language, and to make raught our relationship to the object world. 1he ecological lesson ,...,
lies, finally, in an attending to the fracture in the very guts of the real ,Selby, 199,.
I would hae loed to hae Leigh here to help me read these cues towards an ecological
poetics as a possibility or re-inusing spiritual-material meanings in our thinking and making o
naturecultural inrastructures in technoscience. My way o asking her is to continue engaging
with her inspirational oice through her writings, to trust that she is still speaking through our
weaing with her. I will miss Leigh till the day I join the worms. \et her uniquely creatie legacy
is at work. 1he integration o modes o attention that her oe.i. transpires between ecological
thought, metaphorical thinking and ,materialist, spirituality, coupled with her care or aoiding
easy puriications, hae much to oer to the vatvrecvttvrat collectie negotiations o our ecological
commitments to justice at the heart o technosciences networks. Starting with challenging a
human-centred sense o community.

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l
l owe the phrasing modes of attention Lo Natasha Myers and Joe Dumits invitation to the panel Lag Lhey
organlsed for Lhe 2011 Annual meeLlng of Lhe SocleLy for Soclal SLudles of Sclence. lL has Lhe quallLy of
lnvoklng boLh an embodled sense of modes of percepLlon and Lhe quallLy of care, of paylng aLLenLlon and
listening that were so characteristic of Stars person.
ll
1hls commlLmenL was explored ln Lhe conference The State of Science and Justice: Conversations in Honor
of Susan Leigh Star organlsed by Lhe Sclence and !usLlce Worklng group ln !une 2-3 2011 aL Lhe unlverslLy of
Callfornla, SanLa Cruz.