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Paper short abstract

Following Tanymecus dilaticollis across three sites, the paper shows how the weevil's affinity for monocultures exposes the political and scientific work required to maintain the stability of the agro-industrial model and the symmetrical toxicity it imposes on humans and pests alike.

Paper long abstract

Much more-than-human scholarship seeks to articulate forms of symmetry between human and non-human actors through ontological or methodological commitments. This paper proposes a reverse path and shows how the agro-industrial complex produces a material, toxic symmetry through the effects of its own logic. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village from the Romanian Danube Plain, the paper follows Tanymecus dilaticollis, the grey corn weevil, not as a subject to be given voice, but as a situational force that persistently breaks the frames through which industrial agriculture organises itself. The relational traces of the weevil are read across three heterogeneous sites: in the damaged bodies of plants, in farmers’ narratives, and in techno-scientific entomological work. At each site, Tanymecus enacts a different disruption, in which different actors struggle to reframe what is happening, culminating in a situation in which Romania is simultaneously facing EU infringement proceedings for unauthorised neonicotinoid use and struggling to legitimise further derogations. Tanymecus’s affinity for monocultures exposes the political and scientific work required to stabilise the current agro-industrial model. At the same time, the use of pesticides puts humans, in terms of effects, in the same boat as non-human pests. This raises a challenging question that has been less addressed: what if the non-human already acts as a human ally, not through ontological symmetry, but through the material consequences it imposes on the systems that pursue it? In other words, is Tanymecus an enemy of the agro-industrial complex or its most effective internal critic?