Front cover design by Evan Gaffney
In part one of this post I discussed the introduction and epilogue to Michael Marder's Plant-Thinking. Here, and in part three, I'd like to discuss the five chapters that are divided between two main sections: Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics and Vegetal Existentiality.
As there's quite a lot of material to deal with, I hope I'll be forgiven for simply selecting out the bits that particularly resonate with my own philosophical interests as a floraphile ...
As there's quite a lot of material to deal with, I hope I'll be forgiven for simply selecting out the bits that particularly resonate with my own philosophical interests as a floraphile ...
I. Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics
(1) The Soul of the Plant ...
As Marder recognises:
"Modern readers are likely to greet positive references to 'the soul of plants' with suspicion. This is not only because it seems absurd [...] but also because we have grown deeply mistrustful of the heavy metaphysical and theological baggage weighing down this paleonym." [17]
That's not going to stop him, however, from using a phrase that combines the most ethereal with the most earthly of things, if only because Marder is happy to position himself outside (or on the margins) of "respectable philosophical discourses" and, more importantly, because he believes it is the conjunction of these two terms - soul and plant - that allow for a "point of entry into the post-metaphysical ontology of vegetal life" [18].
I'm not entirely sure how that might work, but Marder insists that each term importantly transforms the other: "the plant confirms the 'truth' of the soul as something, in large part, non-ideal, embodied, mortal, and this-worldly, while the soul, shared with other living entities and construed as the very figure for sharing, corroborates the vivacity of the plant in excess of a reductively conceptual grasp." [19]
In other words, plant keeps the soul real; whilst soul stops the plant becoming purely an object of scientific analysis (i.e. cut and dried) - it keeps the plant alive in all its obscure and exuberant otherness. Again, this might be nonsense, but it's seductive nonsense on a cold, wet afternoon in November - even if, like Wilde, I prefer to relate the beauty of the flower to a condition of soullessness.
Still, as long as the soul is being seized by the scruff of her neck and kept down amongst the plant pots, I'm prepared to go along with it, though do feel a little happier thinking plant life in terms of obscure non-objects, rather than vegetal soul; "obscure because it ineluctably withdraws, flees from sight and from rigorous interpretation; non-object, because it works outside, before, and beyond all subjective considerations and representations" [20].
One should also mention the virtual immobility of plants - that too is surely a crucial aspect of plant being. Fichte, as Marder reminds us, refers to this barely perceptible motion as das erste Prinzip der Bewegung in der Natur. Watching a plant grow or reposition itself (without the aid of time-lapse photography) isn't as boring as watching paint dry, but for a fast-moving, impatient mammal such as ourselves, it certainly requires a huge amount of discipline.
The pace and rhythm of plant life is simply "too subtle for our cognitive and perceptual apparatuses to register" [21] and that explains why we often think of them as being closer to inanimate objects than living animals. Because the cactus in the corner doesn't leap about like the cat, we think it is less vital, or that it only seems to be alive. Two-and-a-half millennia after Aristotle, D. H. Lawrence was still pushing the same line; insisting, for example, that there is a hierarchy of life in which the fast-moving little ant is superior even to the pine-tree, because more vividly alive:
"We know it, there is no trying to refute it. It is all very well saying that they are both alive in two different ways, and therefore they are incomparable, incommensurable. This is also true.
[...] Truly, it is futile to compare an ant with a great pine-tree, in the absolute. Yet as far as existence is concerned, they are not only placed in comparison to one another, they are occasionally pitted against one another. And if it comes to a contest, the little ant will devour the life of the huge tree."*
The inferiority of plants is just how things are in nature; it's not something to lament over or try to reform. Only in the fourth dimension of being do things become nonpareil; i.e., perfect beyond comparison. But in the realm of existence, says Lawrence, plants are subject to and less vital than animals (though he admits that daisies were here before us and will continue to flower long after even our mightiest monuments have crumbled into dust).
It's precisely this kind of thinking - rooted in a theo-fictitious vitalism - that Marder is attempting to overturn. He wishes to know more of plant-soul in all its "non-human and non-animal modality" [22]. Our leafy friends may not dance and may not have eyes, but they're not ontologically lacking, defective, or incomplete.
However, plants should not be fetishised, says Marder; by which I think he means wrapped in myth and venerated and whilst I don't much like his use of the term in this manner, I'm glad he's alert to the danger of worshipping plants as magical objects invested with sacred spirit.
If plants don't move much or very quickly, they do of course grow and as Marder points out:
"The dunamis of the vegetal soul, its capacity for growth but also for decay and the assimilation of nutrients, sets itself to work in a seemingly limitless extension in every conceivable direction, not just in a heliocentric tending toward the light." [37]
In other words, plant life expresses itself via a spatial becoming that is also a becoming-literal of intentionality; by the putting forth of new leaves, the extending of roots, and the fading of its flowers, the plant exercises and enacts the capacities of its soul "without ever fully actualizing or accomplishing them" [38].
I suppose a Nietzschean might at this point speak of the plant's will to power and ask if it's really all that different from that found in animal and man; a desire to become-more (to blossom) and to experience the feeling of power via a (paradoxical) expenditure of energy. Like Plato - but unlike Aristotle who vehemently resisted the idea - Nietzsche accepted plants as desiring beings, but he uncoupled his concept of desire from the negative connotations of absence and lack. Marder, however, isn't very happy with Nietzsche's "reductive view of the plant as a vegetal manifestation of the will to power" [40].
Partly, this is because he buys into Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche as an inverted Platonist and the last metaphysician. And partly, it's because Nietzsche robs vegetal life of its "multiple semantic layers" [41] and obscurity: "besides projecting anthropomorphic feelings and behaviours onto plants, he [Nietzsche] includes them under the concepts of sameness and identity ... [ignoring] the fact that in the absence of a clearly demarcated space of psychic interiority, they [plants] are incapable of incorporating anything in their souls which merge with the materiality of their bodies" [41].
I think what this means is that, for Marder, Nietzsche is guilty of an insensitive imperialism that still hinges upon notions of self and non-self, with the latter existing only to be conquered or appropriated. In his own post-metaphysical philosophy, in contrast, the plant's "inability to establish an identity with itself by means of the other" [41] is a prerequisite for a radical understanding of difference and becoming.
It's a bit harsh: and, in fact, it's quite simply false to say, as Marder says, that will to power is all about accumulating power to the self and that Nietzsche "does not entertain the hypothesis that the phenomena of life [...] often preclude the hoarding of power" [42]. Nietzsche scorned the ideal of self-preservation; he thought it at best an indirect consequence of a living being's desire to discharge and even to squander its strength.
The thing is, for onto-political reasons, Marder doesn't want plants to be selfish and aggressive beings; he desperately wants them to be caring, sharing members of a vegetal democracy, whose "inherent respect for alterity" [42] is key:
"Positively understood, the dispersed life of plants is a mode of being in relation to all others, being qua being-with [...] vegetal democracy is open [...] to all species without exception." [51-52]
And in some sweaty, subtropical wetland or godforsaken jungle, I can hear a Venus flytrap begin to laugh ...
(2) The Body of the Plant ...
As Marder recognises:
"Modern readers are likely to greet positive references to 'the soul of plants' with suspicion. This is not only because it seems absurd [...] but also because we have grown deeply mistrustful of the heavy metaphysical and theological baggage weighing down this paleonym." [17]
That's not going to stop him, however, from using a phrase that combines the most ethereal with the most earthly of things, if only because Marder is happy to position himself outside (or on the margins) of "respectable philosophical discourses" and, more importantly, because he believes it is the conjunction of these two terms - soul and plant - that allow for a "point of entry into the post-metaphysical ontology of vegetal life" [18].
I'm not entirely sure how that might work, but Marder insists that each term importantly transforms the other: "the plant confirms the 'truth' of the soul as something, in large part, non-ideal, embodied, mortal, and this-worldly, while the soul, shared with other living entities and construed as the very figure for sharing, corroborates the vivacity of the plant in excess of a reductively conceptual grasp." [19]
In other words, plant keeps the soul real; whilst soul stops the plant becoming purely an object of scientific analysis (i.e. cut and dried) - it keeps the plant alive in all its obscure and exuberant otherness. Again, this might be nonsense, but it's seductive nonsense on a cold, wet afternoon in November - even if, like Wilde, I prefer to relate the beauty of the flower to a condition of soullessness.
Still, as long as the soul is being seized by the scruff of her neck and kept down amongst the plant pots, I'm prepared to go along with it, though do feel a little happier thinking plant life in terms of obscure non-objects, rather than vegetal soul; "obscure because it ineluctably withdraws, flees from sight and from rigorous interpretation; non-object, because it works outside, before, and beyond all subjective considerations and representations" [20].
One should also mention the virtual immobility of plants - that too is surely a crucial aspect of plant being. Fichte, as Marder reminds us, refers to this barely perceptible motion as das erste Prinzip der Bewegung in der Natur. Watching a plant grow or reposition itself (without the aid of time-lapse photography) isn't as boring as watching paint dry, but for a fast-moving, impatient mammal such as ourselves, it certainly requires a huge amount of discipline.
The pace and rhythm of plant life is simply "too subtle for our cognitive and perceptual apparatuses to register" [21] and that explains why we often think of them as being closer to inanimate objects than living animals. Because the cactus in the corner doesn't leap about like the cat, we think it is less vital, or that it only seems to be alive. Two-and-a-half millennia after Aristotle, D. H. Lawrence was still pushing the same line; insisting, for example, that there is a hierarchy of life in which the fast-moving little ant is superior even to the pine-tree, because more vividly alive:
"We know it, there is no trying to refute it. It is all very well saying that they are both alive in two different ways, and therefore they are incomparable, incommensurable. This is also true.
[...] Truly, it is futile to compare an ant with a great pine-tree, in the absolute. Yet as far as existence is concerned, they are not only placed in comparison to one another, they are occasionally pitted against one another. And if it comes to a contest, the little ant will devour the life of the huge tree."*
The inferiority of plants is just how things are in nature; it's not something to lament over or try to reform. Only in the fourth dimension of being do things become nonpareil; i.e., perfect beyond comparison. But in the realm of existence, says Lawrence, plants are subject to and less vital than animals (though he admits that daisies were here before us and will continue to flower long after even our mightiest monuments have crumbled into dust).
It's precisely this kind of thinking - rooted in a theo-fictitious vitalism - that Marder is attempting to overturn. He wishes to know more of plant-soul in all its "non-human and non-animal modality" [22]. Our leafy friends may not dance and may not have eyes, but they're not ontologically lacking, defective, or incomplete.
However, plants should not be fetishised, says Marder; by which I think he means wrapped in myth and venerated and whilst I don't much like his use of the term in this manner, I'm glad he's alert to the danger of worshipping plants as magical objects invested with sacred spirit.
If plants don't move much or very quickly, they do of course grow and as Marder points out:
"The dunamis of the vegetal soul, its capacity for growth but also for decay and the assimilation of nutrients, sets itself to work in a seemingly limitless extension in every conceivable direction, not just in a heliocentric tending toward the light." [37]
In other words, plant life expresses itself via a spatial becoming that is also a becoming-literal of intentionality; by the putting forth of new leaves, the extending of roots, and the fading of its flowers, the plant exercises and enacts the capacities of its soul "without ever fully actualizing or accomplishing them" [38].
I suppose a Nietzschean might at this point speak of the plant's will to power and ask if it's really all that different from that found in animal and man; a desire to become-more (to blossom) and to experience the feeling of power via a (paradoxical) expenditure of energy. Like Plato - but unlike Aristotle who vehemently resisted the idea - Nietzsche accepted plants as desiring beings, but he uncoupled his concept of desire from the negative connotations of absence and lack. Marder, however, isn't very happy with Nietzsche's "reductive view of the plant as a vegetal manifestation of the will to power" [40].
Partly, this is because he buys into Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche as an inverted Platonist and the last metaphysician. And partly, it's because Nietzsche robs vegetal life of its "multiple semantic layers" [41] and obscurity: "besides projecting anthropomorphic feelings and behaviours onto plants, he [Nietzsche] includes them under the concepts of sameness and identity ... [ignoring] the fact that in the absence of a clearly demarcated space of psychic interiority, they [plants] are incapable of incorporating anything in their souls which merge with the materiality of their bodies" [41].
I think what this means is that, for Marder, Nietzsche is guilty of an insensitive imperialism that still hinges upon notions of self and non-self, with the latter existing only to be conquered or appropriated. In his own post-metaphysical philosophy, in contrast, the plant's "inability to establish an identity with itself by means of the other" [41] is a prerequisite for a radical understanding of difference and becoming.
It's a bit harsh: and, in fact, it's quite simply false to say, as Marder says, that will to power is all about accumulating power to the self and that Nietzsche "does not entertain the hypothesis that the phenomena of life [...] often preclude the hoarding of power" [42]. Nietzsche scorned the ideal of self-preservation; he thought it at best an indirect consequence of a living being's desire to discharge and even to squander its strength.
The thing is, for onto-political reasons, Marder doesn't want plants to be selfish and aggressive beings; he desperately wants them to be caring, sharing members of a vegetal democracy, whose "inherent respect for alterity" [42] is key:
"Positively understood, the dispersed life of plants is a mode of being in relation to all others, being qua being-with [...] vegetal democracy is open [...] to all species without exception." [51-52]
And in some sweaty, subtropical wetland or godforsaken jungle, I can hear a Venus flytrap begin to laugh ...
(2) The Body of the Plant ...
"What does metaphysics have to do with plants? What can this group of heterogeneous beings [...] tell us about being 'as such and as a whole', let alone about resisting the core metaphysical values of presence and identity that the totality of being entails?" [54]
One can imagine how a sceptical reader might well reply ... But I'm intrigued by what Marder has to say; particularly his claim that the loss of plant varieties and biodiversity is symptomatic not just of capitalist economies, but "of a much more profound trend - the practical implementation of the metaphysics of the One [...] in human and non-human environments" [55].
This monolithic and monomaniacal enframing is something that has long concerned me, but I've not stopped to consider (until now) that plants might have "a crucial role in the ongoing transvaluation of metaphysical value sysytems" [55], precisely because they have been so shut-out of traditional philosophy and its political-economic avatars.
From the position of absolute exteriority, "plants accomplish a living reversal of metaphysical values [...] and thus contribute to the destabilization of hierarchical dualisms" [56]. Or at least that's Marder's fantasy; a green deconstruction carried out in perfect silence (apart perhaps from the rustle of leaves) that we might think of as a sort of Derridean day of the triffids.
The familiar narrative in European philosophy goes like this: blame it all on Plato! And Marder doesn't disappoint us by going off-script; the inception of Western metaphysics, that privileges the onto-theological status of the human, is rooted in Plato's thinking. And yet, amusingly, Plato also considers man as a kind of heavenly plant with both head and roots located in the sky above (i.e. the eidectic sphere).
We are literally nourished by ideas and Western metaphysics begins with "the inversion of the earthly perspective of the plant, a deracination of human beings uprooted from their material foundations and transplanted into the heavenly domain" [57]. This has been disastrous for mankind and also produced a "correlatve devaluation of the literal plant, mired with its roots in the darkness of the earth as much as in non-conscious existence" [57].
No wonder then, that modern thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, who are anti-Platonic and wish to deconstruct Western metaphysics, tend to side with the plants and exploit vegetal metaphors in their writings. For both, man (and culture) blossoms only when rooted in the soil.
Now, there are, admittedly, problems with such organic thinking, but I'll not address these here; suffice it to say that I agree with Marder that "the first targets of the transvaluation of values are the transcendental ideals now brought down to earth, back to their concealed roots in the sphere of immanence" [59] and that all vegetal materialisms are, to some degree or other, an inversion of Plato's own inversion of reality.
I also agree that it's important to remember that "germination commences in the middle, in the space of the in-between" [63]. In other words, "it begins without originating and turns the root and flower alike into variegated extensions of the [de-centered] middle, in marked contrast to the idealist insistence on the spirituaity of the blossom and the materialist privileging of the root" [63].
Thus: "The root and the flower are neither essential nor radically indispensable, having lost their metaphysical status as the spiritual culminations of vegetal being." [64] And for Marder, this makes plants onto-politically ethical; "they cover the earth but do not dominate or conquer it; they seek their 'place in the sun' but do not usurp the place of others" [66]. Again, I can hear the laughter of jungle plants at this point ...
I mean, plants may do all kinds of wonderful things - including mediating between the living and the dead - but I'm extremely wary of sentences like this: "While plant existence is ethical, post-metaphysical ethics is vegetal." [69] That's just too morally convenient to be true and the radical dependence of plants on its environment shouldn't be mistaken for altruism or unconditional generosity.
But of course, it's hard to know; if only because plants themselves remain silent on the issue; and the silence of plants is "unbreakable and absolute" [75]. That's not to say they don't find other ways to communicate - chemically, for example - but, as even Prince Charles might concede, talking to plants is not the same as speaking with them. Indeed, as Pardner discovered, when you talk to the trees, they don't even listen to you ...
Despite this vegetal rudeness, for Marder, the language of plants belongs to a "hyper-materialist tradition" [75] that is about posturing and spatial relations and relies as much on the poetic thought of Francis Ponge as it does Walter Benjamin's language of things. Ultimately, each and every tree or plant has it's own unique language - which is why the destruction of each and every tree or plant "signals the obliteration of the meaning that it is in the extended materiality of its posture" [76].
That's a profoundly beautiful point; one that those responsible for the destruction of the rainforests - or, indeed, for casually cementing over their front gardens so they can conveniently park their cars - are never, ever going to understand. But, in the long run, it's vegetal life and not human life that's probably going to have the last laugh and the figure of the plant which "furnishes the prototype for post-metaphysical being" [90].
One can imagine how a sceptical reader might well reply ... But I'm intrigued by what Marder has to say; particularly his claim that the loss of plant varieties and biodiversity is symptomatic not just of capitalist economies, but "of a much more profound trend - the practical implementation of the metaphysics of the One [...] in human and non-human environments" [55].
This monolithic and monomaniacal enframing is something that has long concerned me, but I've not stopped to consider (until now) that plants might have "a crucial role in the ongoing transvaluation of metaphysical value sysytems" [55], precisely because they have been so shut-out of traditional philosophy and its political-economic avatars.
From the position of absolute exteriority, "plants accomplish a living reversal of metaphysical values [...] and thus contribute to the destabilization of hierarchical dualisms" [56]. Or at least that's Marder's fantasy; a green deconstruction carried out in perfect silence (apart perhaps from the rustle of leaves) that we might think of as a sort of Derridean day of the triffids.
The familiar narrative in European philosophy goes like this: blame it all on Plato! And Marder doesn't disappoint us by going off-script; the inception of Western metaphysics, that privileges the onto-theological status of the human, is rooted in Plato's thinking. And yet, amusingly, Plato also considers man as a kind of heavenly plant with both head and roots located in the sky above (i.e. the eidectic sphere).
We are literally nourished by ideas and Western metaphysics begins with "the inversion of the earthly perspective of the plant, a deracination of human beings uprooted from their material foundations and transplanted into the heavenly domain" [57]. This has been disastrous for mankind and also produced a "correlatve devaluation of the literal plant, mired with its roots in the darkness of the earth as much as in non-conscious existence" [57].
No wonder then, that modern thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, who are anti-Platonic and wish to deconstruct Western metaphysics, tend to side with the plants and exploit vegetal metaphors in their writings. For both, man (and culture) blossoms only when rooted in the soil.
Now, there are, admittedly, problems with such organic thinking, but I'll not address these here; suffice it to say that I agree with Marder that "the first targets of the transvaluation of values are the transcendental ideals now brought down to earth, back to their concealed roots in the sphere of immanence" [59] and that all vegetal materialisms are, to some degree or other, an inversion of Plato's own inversion of reality.
I also agree that it's important to remember that "germination commences in the middle, in the space of the in-between" [63]. In other words, "it begins without originating and turns the root and flower alike into variegated extensions of the [de-centered] middle, in marked contrast to the idealist insistence on the spirituaity of the blossom and the materialist privileging of the root" [63].
Thus: "The root and the flower are neither essential nor radically indispensable, having lost their metaphysical status as the spiritual culminations of vegetal being." [64] And for Marder, this makes plants onto-politically ethical; "they cover the earth but do not dominate or conquer it; they seek their 'place in the sun' but do not usurp the place of others" [66]. Again, I can hear the laughter of jungle plants at this point ...
I mean, plants may do all kinds of wonderful things - including mediating between the living and the dead - but I'm extremely wary of sentences like this: "While plant existence is ethical, post-metaphysical ethics is vegetal." [69] That's just too morally convenient to be true and the radical dependence of plants on its environment shouldn't be mistaken for altruism or unconditional generosity.
But of course, it's hard to know; if only because plants themselves remain silent on the issue; and the silence of plants is "unbreakable and absolute" [75]. That's not to say they don't find other ways to communicate - chemically, for example - but, as even Prince Charles might concede, talking to plants is not the same as speaking with them. Indeed, as Pardner discovered, when you talk to the trees, they don't even listen to you ...
Despite this vegetal rudeness, for Marder, the language of plants belongs to a "hyper-materialist tradition" [75] that is about posturing and spatial relations and relies as much on the poetic thought of Francis Ponge as it does Walter Benjamin's language of things. Ultimately, each and every tree or plant has it's own unique language - which is why the destruction of each and every tree or plant "signals the obliteration of the meaning that it is in the extended materiality of its posture" [76].
That's a profoundly beautiful point; one that those responsible for the destruction of the rainforests - or, indeed, for casually cementing over their front gardens so they can conveniently park their cars - are never, ever going to understand. But, in the long run, it's vegetal life and not human life that's probably going to have the last laugh and the figure of the plant which "furnishes the prototype for post-metaphysical being" [90].
* Note: D. H. Lawrence, 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 357.
See: Michael Marder, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (Columbia University Press, 2013). All page numbers given in the text refer to this work.
Part one of this post - encountering plants and ethical offshoots - can be accessed by clicking here.
To read part three - on vegetal existentiality - click here.
See: Michael Marder, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (Columbia University Press, 2013). All page numbers given in the text refer to this work.
Part one of this post - encountering plants and ethical offshoots - can be accessed by clicking here.
To read part three - on vegetal existentiality - click here.
