Plant-life in a World of Differential Becoming: A Speculative Inquiry

This inquiry concerns a marginalized group, one subjected to the systematic manipulation and exploitation of humans over many centuries. Collectively they are known (by humans) as ‘plants’. The new planetary consciousness of science was reflected in the global scale and functions of European maritime expeditions between 16th and 20th centuries.1 Plant Hunters (the Tradescants, Banks, Masson, Humboldt, Douglas, Hooker, Fortune, the Lobbs – Veitch’ nursery which opened in 1808 in Devon alone employed 22, Wilson, Forrest, Kingdon-Ward) searched the globe for living vegetation. They imagined the establishment of vast archives of texts, images, artefacts, and specimens, patiently assembled, through which the geography and natural history of the earth could be made known.2 For Deborah Cherry “it was ‘the planned epistemic violence of the imperialist project’ that earth was transformed into world, land into landscape.”