Vegetal Ontologies

Guest editors: Kane X. Faucher and Joshua O. Reno
With the recent animal and multispecies turns in critical theory and philosophy, everything from cats and dogs to microbes and mycorrhizal fungi have become vital allies against anthropocentrism, yet plants have been largely ignored. This issue considers the importance of plants as contributing thinkers and actors within multispecies interactions, landscapes, and worlds. We begin with the path breaking insight of Martin Krampen (1928-2015): that the study of plant life cannot be reduced simply to mechanical descriptions of efficient cause, but must account for phytosemiotics, or sign use and interpretation by plants. Like other life forms, plants are autonomous subjects with their own, meaning- laden life worlds, from which those of human and nonhuman animals emerge. The role of plant cultivation in human civilization, from the rise of the state to the green revolution, is well known. But recent botanical research shows that plants also respond to and communicate about their surroundings, not only by exchanging chemical signals through the air, but also by sharing and stealing nutrients via symbiotic networks underground. In climate change policy and practice, furthermore, plants are leading indicators of, and countermeasures deployed against, the dawning Anthropocene. In this issue, we consider: How do we know plants as organisms and subjects? How we care for them as aesthetic objects, as sustenance, as biocapital as well as the lives they lead for themselves, indifferent to us? For whom plant thinking matters, or for whom should it matter, and why? What stands in the way of plants thinking their own thoughts, of our thinking their thoughts, of their ability to think ours? How we might become better for and with plants? Like all thematic issues, Vegetal Ontologies will remain open to new essays and interventions, and there is no deadline for submission. For the Call for Papers click here. To submit e-mail: semioticreview@gmail.com.