Society has come accustomed to the potato’s presence at certain times, moments and places. As part and parcel of specific meals or exclusively alone, such as after or occasionally during a night out. That spud is in all likelihood aggressively ordered, fried and devoured. Without hesitation and regard for what the spud can do. Occasionally we do end up regretting it all in hindsight, or alternatively congratulate ourselves for having made a decision that was ‘just what I needed.’ Here too the agentic potato has popped up, acting on bodies.
It’s seen us heartfelt and moved. At our most joyous and least enthused. Like now, cornered and disturbed by a pandemic. Like the fate of a potato, ours can and does afford to write different histories. Like the roots of the Solanum tuberosum, there is no fixed beginning, definite middle or ultimate end to either.
No one could have predicted the current state of the world. We might think that life will now transform into something unidentifiable, and to an extent it might. A daunting prospect, but one which is all too familiar for the unsuspecting spud.
Maybe the ongoing pandemic will make us feel the multitudes of being human, and see that like the potato’s, our being isn’t singular and fixed. There is no “one human” just like there is no one spud. What has become of us during the pandemic hasn’t come at the cost of humanness, it’s merely been shaped by a non-human agent. A virus. Though we haven’t arrived here out of our own volition, like a fry during night out, this might be just what we need to recognise other agents of history.
