Conjuring Machinic Life

Abstract

While contemporary philosophers refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts plants 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 overthrow the double yoke of totalization and instrumentalization. Along the way, Marder focuses on the plants' own temporality, freedom, and wisdom. " Plant-thinking " comes to designate 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. " A striking and unique contribution. " —Elaine P. Miller, Miami University " Drawing on both phenomenology and deconstructive motifs, Marder argues that recent advances in animal ethics, for all their virtues, are often blind to the blinkered instrumentality of our understanding of plants. Re-thinking that relation opens the vegetal world to a thinking encounter few thought possible (or necessary), one that puts plants in a wholly different light yet also offers new resources for dismantling our deeply rooted metaphysical legacy. This is a remarkable book—original, daring, and timely. " —David Wood, Vanderbilt University