An American insect in imperial Germany: Visibility and control in making the phylloxera in Germany, 1870-1914

The vine louse Phylloxera vastatrix became a "pest" as it was transferred f rom North America and from France to Germany during the 1870s. Embodying th e "invading alien," it assumed a cultural position that increasingly gained importance in imperial Germany. In this process, the minute insect, living invisibly underground, was made visible and became constitutive of the sci entific-technological object, "pest," pertaining to a scientific discipline , modern economic entomology. The "pest" phylloxera emerged by being made v isible in a way that enabled control measures against it. Thus, visibility functioned as a prerequisite for control measures. I differentiate between social visibility and physical visibility, as well as between social contro l and physical control of the "introduced pest." The object phylloxera emer ged at the intersection of techniques of social control such as surveillanc e, techniques of physical control such as disinfection, and representationa l practices of the sciences such as mathematics and graphics. The space of its visibility was not the vineyard as property of a vintner but the vineya rd as national territory, where German (viti-) culture was defended against foreign infiltration and destruction. Many vintners had alternate visions of the grapevine disease, they resented the invasion and destruction of the ir vineyards by government officers, and thus they did not participate in t he social and epistemic constitution of the "pest." By 1914, the "introduce d pest" had not yet become an effective "machinery." However, the "pest" as an object of scientific knowledge emerged together with economic entomolog y. The field became organized as a discipline in Germany in 1913, forty yea rs after the phylloxera had first aroused the minds of some worried Wilhelm ians, and, together with its nationalistic images, the field of "pest" cont rol became organized towards a redefinition of German society and its perce ived dangers.