Author: Luce Irigaray
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231541511
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Blossoming from a correspondence between Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being is an intense personal, philosophical, and political meditation on the significance of the vegetal for our lives, our ways of thinking, and our relations with human and nonhuman beings. The vegetal world has the potential to rescue our planet and our species and offers us a way to abandon past metaphysics without falling into nihilism. Luce Irigaray has argued in her philosophical work that living and coexisting are deficient unless we recognize sexuate difference as a crucial dimension of our existence. Michael Marder believes the same is true for vegetal difference. Irigaray and Marder consider how plants contribute to human development by sustaining our breathing, nourishing our senses, and keeping our bodies and minds alive. They note the importance of returning to ancient Greek tradition and engaging with Eastern teachings to revive a culture closer to nature. As a result, we can reestablish roots when we are displaced and recover the vital energy we need to improve our sensibility and relation to others. This generative discussion points toward a more universal way of becoming human that is embedded in the vegetal world.
Plant-Thinking
Author: Michael Marder
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231161255
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing the life of plants "after metaphysics," Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, "plant-thinking" is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231161255
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing the life of plants "after metaphysics," Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, "plant-thinking" is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike.
Covert Plants
Author: Prudence Gibson
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1947447696
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Covert Plants contributes to newly emerging discourses on the implications of vegetal life for the arts and culture. This stretches to changes in our perception of 'nature' and to the adapting roles of botany, evolutionary ecology, and environmental aesthetics in the humanities. Its editors and contributors seek various expressions of vegetal life rather than the mere representation of such, and they proceed from the conviction that a rigorous approach to thinking with and through vegetal life must be interdisciplinary. At a time when urgent calls for restorative care and reparative action have been sounded for the environment, this essay volume presents a range of academic and creative perspectives, from evolutionary biology to literary theory, philosophy to poetry, which respond to the perplexing problems and paradoxes of vegetal thinking. Representations of vegetal life often include plant analogies and plant imagery. These representations have at times obscured the diversity of plant behavior and experience. Covert Plants probes the implications of vegetal life for thought and how new plant science is changing our perception of the vegetal - around us and in us. How can we think, speak, and write about plant life without falling into human-nature dyads, or without tumbling into reductive theoretical notions about the always complex relations between cognition and action, identity and value, subject and object? A full view of this shifting perspective requires a 'stereoscopic' lens through which to view plants, but also simultaneously to alter our human-centered viewpoint. Plants are no longer the passive object of contemplation, but are increasingly resembling 'subjects, ' 'stakeholders, ' or 'actors.' As such, the plant now makes unprecedented demands upon the nature of contemplation itself. Moreover, the aesthetic, political, and legal implications of new knowledge regarding plants' ability to communicate, sense, and learn require intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation. By doing this, we can intervene into current attitudes to climate change and sustainability, and hopefully revise, for the better, human philosophies, ethics, and aesthetics that touch upon plant life. TABLE OF CONTENTS// Baylee Brits and Prudence Gibson, "Introduction: Covert Plants" - Prudence Gibson and Michael Marder, "Art Expresses Its Own Appearance: A Conversation with Michael Marder" - Prudence Gibson, "The Colour Green" - Baylee Brits, "Brain Trees: Neuroscientific Metaphor and Botanical Thought" - Dalia Nassar, "Metaphoric Plants: Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants and the Metaphors of Reason" - Stephen Muecke, "Mixed up with Trees: The Gadgur and the Dreaming" - Monica Gagliano, "Eco-psychology and the Return to the Dream of Nature" - Suzanne Anker, "The Blue Rose" - Susie Pratt, "Trees as Landlords and Other Public Experiments: An Interview with Natalie Jeremijenko" - Tessa Laird, "Spores from Space: Becoming the Alien" - Jennifer Mae Hamilton, "Gardening After the Anthropocene: Creating Different Relations between Humans and Edible Plants in Sydney" - Lucas Ihlein, "Agricultural Inventiveness: Beyond Environmental Management?" - Andrew Belletty, "An Ear to the Ground" - Ben Woodard, "Continuous Green Abstraction: Embodied Knowledge, Intuition, and Metaphor" - Lisa Dowdall, "Figures" - Poems by Luke Fischer, Justin Clemens, Paul Dawson, and Tamryn Bennett.
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1947447696
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Covert Plants contributes to newly emerging discourses on the implications of vegetal life for the arts and culture. This stretches to changes in our perception of 'nature' and to the adapting roles of botany, evolutionary ecology, and environmental aesthetics in the humanities. Its editors and contributors seek various expressions of vegetal life rather than the mere representation of such, and they proceed from the conviction that a rigorous approach to thinking with and through vegetal life must be interdisciplinary. At a time when urgent calls for restorative care and reparative action have been sounded for the environment, this essay volume presents a range of academic and creative perspectives, from evolutionary biology to literary theory, philosophy to poetry, which respond to the perplexing problems and paradoxes of vegetal thinking. Representations of vegetal life often include plant analogies and plant imagery. These representations have at times obscured the diversity of plant behavior and experience. Covert Plants probes the implications of vegetal life for thought and how new plant science is changing our perception of the vegetal - around us and in us. How can we think, speak, and write about plant life without falling into human-nature dyads, or without tumbling into reductive theoretical notions about the always complex relations between cognition and action, identity and value, subject and object? A full view of this shifting perspective requires a 'stereoscopic' lens through which to view plants, but also simultaneously to alter our human-centered viewpoint. Plants are no longer the passive object of contemplation, but are increasingly resembling 'subjects, ' 'stakeholders, ' or 'actors.' As such, the plant now makes unprecedented demands upon the nature of contemplation itself. Moreover, the aesthetic, political, and legal implications of new knowledge regarding plants' ability to communicate, sense, and learn require intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation. By doing this, we can intervene into current attitudes to climate change and sustainability, and hopefully revise, for the better, human philosophies, ethics, and aesthetics that touch upon plant life. TABLE OF CONTENTS// Baylee Brits and Prudence Gibson, "Introduction: Covert Plants" - Prudence Gibson and Michael Marder, "Art Expresses Its Own Appearance: A Conversation with Michael Marder" - Prudence Gibson, "The Colour Green" - Baylee Brits, "Brain Trees: Neuroscientific Metaphor and Botanical Thought" - Dalia Nassar, "Metaphoric Plants: Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants and the Metaphors of Reason" - Stephen Muecke, "Mixed up with Trees: The Gadgur and the Dreaming" - Monica Gagliano, "Eco-psychology and the Return to the Dream of Nature" - Suzanne Anker, "The Blue Rose" - Susie Pratt, "Trees as Landlords and Other Public Experiments: An Interview with Natalie Jeremijenko" - Tessa Laird, "Spores from Space: Becoming the Alien" - Jennifer Mae Hamilton, "Gardening After the Anthropocene: Creating Different Relations between Humans and Edible Plants in Sydney" - Lucas Ihlein, "Agricultural Inventiveness: Beyond Environmental Management?" - Andrew Belletty, "An Ear to the Ground" - Ben Woodard, "Continuous Green Abstraction: Embodied Knowledge, Intuition, and Metaphor" - Lisa Dowdall, "Figures" - Poems by Luke Fischer, Justin Clemens, Paul Dawson, and Tamryn Bennett.
The Philosopher's Plant
Author: Michael Marder
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231169027
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
Despite their conceptual allergy to vegetal life, philosophers have used germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, reproduction, and decay as illustrations of abstract concepts; mentioned plants in passing as the natural backdrops for dialogues, letters, and other compositions; spun elaborate allegories out of flowers, trees, and even grass; and recommended appropriate medicinal, dietary, and aesthetic approaches to select species of plants. In this book, Michael Marder illuminates the elaborate vegetal centerpieces and hidden kernels that have powered theoretical discourse for centuries. Choosing twelve botanical specimens that correspond to twelve significant philosophers, he recasts the development of philosophy through the evolution of human and plant relations. A philosophical history for the postmetaphysical age, The PhilosopherÕs Plant reclaims the organic heritage of human thought. With the help of vegetal images, examples, and metaphors, the book clears a path through philosophyÕs tangled roots and dense undergrowth, opening up the discipline to all readers.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231169027
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
Despite their conceptual allergy to vegetal life, philosophers have used germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, reproduction, and decay as illustrations of abstract concepts; mentioned plants in passing as the natural backdrops for dialogues, letters, and other compositions; spun elaborate allegories out of flowers, trees, and even grass; and recommended appropriate medicinal, dietary, and aesthetic approaches to select species of plants. In this book, Michael Marder illuminates the elaborate vegetal centerpieces and hidden kernels that have powered theoretical discourse for centuries. Choosing twelve botanical specimens that correspond to twelve significant philosophers, he recasts the development of philosophy through the evolution of human and plant relations. A philosophical history for the postmetaphysical age, The PhilosopherÕs Plant reclaims the organic heritage of human thought. With the help of vegetal images, examples, and metaphors, the book clears a path through philosophyÕs tangled roots and dense undergrowth, opening up the discipline to all readers.
The Life of Plants
Author: Emanuele Coccia
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509531548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world. In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509531548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world. In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.
The Plant Contract
Author: Prudence Gibson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004360549
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
The Plant Contract argues that visual and performance art can help change our perception of the vegetal world, and can return us to nature and thought. Via an investigation into the wasteland, robotany, feminist plants, and nature rights, this phytology-love story investigates how contemporary art is mediating the effects of plant-blindness, caused by human disassociation from the natural world. It is also a gesture of respect for the genius of vegetal life, where new science proves plants can learn, communicate, remember, make decisions, and associate. Art is a litmus test for how climate change affects human perception. This book responds to that test by expressing plant-philosophy to a wider public, through an interrogation of plant-art.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004360549
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
The Plant Contract argues that visual and performance art can help change our perception of the vegetal world, and can return us to nature and thought. Via an investigation into the wasteland, robotany, feminist plants, and nature rights, this phytology-love story investigates how contemporary art is mediating the effects of plant-blindness, caused by human disassociation from the natural world. It is also a gesture of respect for the genius of vegetal life, where new science proves plants can learn, communicate, remember, make decisions, and associate. Art is a litmus test for how climate change affects human perception. This book responds to that test by expressing plant-philosophy to a wider public, through an interrogation of plant-art.
To Be Born
Author: Luce Irigaray
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319392220
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 110
Book Description
“According to the words of Phaedrus in the Symposium of Plato, Love, sometimes named Eros, has no parents, no age, no history, and its origin remains unknown to anyone. Love, whose destiny is said to be unique amongst the gods and humans, perhaps embodies desire for a conjunction always in search of its happening. Love would represent a dynamism longing for the copula incarnating the transcendence of our being. As such, Love would remain the everlasting yearning for the accomplishment of the ecstatic destiny of humanity.” In this book, Luce Irigaray - philosopher, linguist, psychologist and psychoanalyst - proposes nothing less than a new way of conceiving what a human being is as well as a means to ensure our individual and relational development from birth. Unveiling the mystery of our origin is probably what most motivates our quests and plans. And yet such a disclosure proves to be impossible. Indeed we were born as one from a union between two, and we are forever deprived of an origin of our own. Hence our ceaseless search for roots: in our genealogy, in the place where we were born, in our culture, religion or language. But a human being cannot develop from its own roots as a tree does. As humans, we must take responsibility for our own being and existence without any given continuity with our origin and background. How can we achieve that? First by cultivating our breathing, which is more than a means to come into the world and to exist; breathing also allows us to transcend mere survival to secure for ourselves a spiritual becoming. Taking on our sexuate belonging is the second element which enables us to assume our natural existence. Indeed, this determination at once brings us energy and provides us with a structure which contributes to our individuation and our relations with other living beings and the world. Our sexuation can compensate for our absence of roots too by compelling us to unite with the other sex so that we freely approach the copulative conjunction from which we were born; that is, the mystery of our origin. This does not occur through a mere sexual instinct or drive, but requires us to cultivate desire and love with respect for our mutual difference(s). In this way we can give rise to a new human being, not only at a natural but also at an ontological level.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319392220
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 110
Book Description
“According to the words of Phaedrus in the Symposium of Plato, Love, sometimes named Eros, has no parents, no age, no history, and its origin remains unknown to anyone. Love, whose destiny is said to be unique amongst the gods and humans, perhaps embodies desire for a conjunction always in search of its happening. Love would represent a dynamism longing for the copula incarnating the transcendence of our being. As such, Love would remain the everlasting yearning for the accomplishment of the ecstatic destiny of humanity.” In this book, Luce Irigaray - philosopher, linguist, psychologist and psychoanalyst - proposes nothing less than a new way of conceiving what a human being is as well as a means to ensure our individual and relational development from birth. Unveiling the mystery of our origin is probably what most motivates our quests and plans. And yet such a disclosure proves to be impossible. Indeed we were born as one from a union between two, and we are forever deprived of an origin of our own. Hence our ceaseless search for roots: in our genealogy, in the place where we were born, in our culture, religion or language. But a human being cannot develop from its own roots as a tree does. As humans, we must take responsibility for our own being and existence without any given continuity with our origin and background. How can we achieve that? First by cultivating our breathing, which is more than a means to come into the world and to exist; breathing also allows us to transcend mere survival to secure for ourselves a spiritual becoming. Taking on our sexuate belonging is the second element which enables us to assume our natural existence. Indeed, this determination at once brings us energy and provides us with a structure which contributes to our individuation and our relations with other living beings and the world. Our sexuation can compensate for our absence of roots too by compelling us to unite with the other sex so that we freely approach the copulative conjunction from which we were born; that is, the mystery of our origin. This does not occur through a mere sexual instinct or drive, but requires us to cultivate desire and love with respect for our mutual difference(s). In this way we can give rise to a new human being, not only at a natural but also at an ontological level.
I Love to You
Author: Luce Irigaray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317959248
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
In this book, one of the foremost contemporary scholars in the fields of feminist thought and linguistics, explores the possibility of a new liberating language and hence a new relationship between the sexes. In I Love to You, Luce Irigaray moves from the critique of patriarchy to an exploration of the ground for a possible inter-subjectivity between the two sexes. Continuing her rejection of demands for equality, Irigaray poses the question: how can we move to a new era of sexual difference in which women and men establish lasting relations with one another without reducing the other to the status of object?
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317959248
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
In this book, one of the foremost contemporary scholars in the fields of feminist thought and linguistics, explores the possibility of a new liberating language and hence a new relationship between the sexes. In I Love to You, Luce Irigaray moves from the critique of patriarchy to an exploration of the ground for a possible inter-subjectivity between the two sexes. Continuing her rejection of demands for equality, Irigaray poses the question: how can we move to a new era of sexual difference in which women and men establish lasting relations with one another without reducing the other to the status of object?
Plant Horror
Author: Dawn Keetley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137570636
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
This collection explores artistic representations of vegetal life that imperil human life, voicing anxieties about our relationship to other life forms with which we share the earth. From medieval manuscript illustrations to modern works of science fiction and horror, plants that manifest monstrous agency defy human control, challenge anthropocentric perception, and exact a violent vengeance for our blind and exploitative practices. Plant Horror explores how depictions of monster plants reveal concerns about the viability of our prevailing belief systems and dominant ideologies— as well as a deep-seated fear about human vulnerability in an era of deepening ecological crisis. Films discussed include The Day of the Triffids, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wicker Man, Swamp Thing, and The Happening.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137570636
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
This collection explores artistic representations of vegetal life that imperil human life, voicing anxieties about our relationship to other life forms with which we share the earth. From medieval manuscript illustrations to modern works of science fiction and horror, plants that manifest monstrous agency defy human control, challenge anthropocentric perception, and exact a violent vengeance for our blind and exploitative practices. Plant Horror explores how depictions of monster plants reveal concerns about the viability of our prevailing belief systems and dominant ideologies— as well as a deep-seated fear about human vulnerability in an era of deepening ecological crisis. Films discussed include The Day of the Triffids, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wicker Man, Swamp Thing, and The Happening.
The Green Thread
Author: Patrícia Vieira
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498510604
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World is an interdisciplinary collection of essays in the emerging field of Plant Studies. The volume is the first of its kind to bring together a dynamic body of scholarship that shares a critique of long-standing human perceptions of plants as lacking autonomy, agency, consciousness, and, intelligence. The leading metaphor of the book—“the green thread”, echoing poet Dylan Thomas’ phrase “the green fuse”—carries multiple meanings. On a more apparent level, “the green thread” is what weaves together the diverse approaches of this collection: an interest in the vegetal that goes beyond single disciplines and specialist discourses, and one that not only encourages but necessitates interdisciplinary and even interspecies dialogue. On another level, “the green thread” links creative and historical productions to the materiality of the vegetal—a reality reflecting our symbiosis with oxygen-producing beings. In short, The Green Thread refers to the conversations about plants that transcend strict disciplinary boundaries as well as to the possibility of dialogue with plants.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498510604
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World is an interdisciplinary collection of essays in the emerging field of Plant Studies. The volume is the first of its kind to bring together a dynamic body of scholarship that shares a critique of long-standing human perceptions of plants as lacking autonomy, agency, consciousness, and, intelligence. The leading metaphor of the book—“the green thread”, echoing poet Dylan Thomas’ phrase “the green fuse”—carries multiple meanings. On a more apparent level, “the green thread” is what weaves together the diverse approaches of this collection: an interest in the vegetal that goes beyond single disciplines and specialist discourses, and one that not only encourages but necessitates interdisciplinary and even interspecies dialogue. On another level, “the green thread” links creative and historical productions to the materiality of the vegetal—a reality reflecting our symbiosis with oxygen-producing beings. In short, The Green Thread refers to the conversations about plants that transcend strict disciplinary boundaries as well as to the possibility of dialogue with plants.