“This Weed is a Threat”: The Political Agency of Carrizo Cane in the US-Mexico Border

This paper explores plant agency in State bordering. Drawing on posthumanism and new materialism, bordering is understood as a material and more-than-human process through which the motion of interacting material entities, both human and nonhuman, is regulated and ordered. The paper examines a case study of the entanglement between a plant (carrizo cane, Arundo donax), human bodies, border infrastructure, and terrain at the US-Mexico border. Using a qualitative methodology, findings show that this reed disrupts US bordering by obstructing the vision and mobility of border officers, the configuration of a visible perimeter, and the maintenance of border infrastructure and technology. Plant agency challenges anthropocentric understandings of bordering (the privilege of human agents and the hegemony of sight and the terrestrial), and of plants (resource and risk).