Why to look at plants

Plants have always been there, they existed millions of years before us. The first living cells capable of photosynthesis appeared on the planet more than 3.5 billion years ago, while the first Homo sapiens, the so-called "modern man", is not known until two hundred thousand years ago.[1] However, throughout history we have paid very little attention to them. The fact that our plant companions have gone so unnoticed throughout history is not a coincidence.




According to Mancuso, the reasons that have led us to undervalue them and deny their intelligence are not based on "scientific facts", but above all on prejudices and beliefs that have inhabited our culture since the millennia. Our perception of the environment has always been deeply influenced by the socioeconomic situation of the moment and its consequent western anthropocentric hierarchies. We exploit and pollute the environment without taking into account the importance of the plant world that sustains us. Without plants we would die from lack of oxygen, they, on the other hand, could live perfectly well without us. We must understand that Earth does not need the “Homo Sapiens” to “survive”. It was there before and it will continue here after us. In this paradigm, ecologist claims as “Save the planet” have an astonishing lack of sense.
Over the centuries, many philosophers and scientists have put forward the idea that plants have "brains" or "souls" and that even the simplest plant organisms are capable of perceiving and reacting to external stimuli. And yet, the conviction that plants are less intelligent and evolved beings even than invertebrates, and that in a hypothetical and non-existent "evolutionary scale" - although well rooted in us - they are just one step above inanimate objects, resists in human culture in all latitudes and manifests itself continuously in our daily attitudes.

It was late at evening and we went out to the courtyard with J. to have a beer and a cigar before going to sleep. That week we had been transplanting the plants. Lettuces were starting to grow; the nasturtiums were greener and bigger. Pumpkins, zucchini, and peppers were starting to stretch their leaves. We watered them every day and shamelessly projected our intentions onto the vegetables, humanizing them: "I think the tomato plants are happier today." That project brought us closer than anything we had done at the time.
We talked about traveling and life and how things grow at their own time.
We both agreed that planting a vegetable plot had become an act of resistance.

Plants’ fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silent presence have, for over two thousand years relegated plants to cultural backgrounds. These reductionisms have been used to assess plants’ ontological inferiority towards animals and even more so, humans. [2]

But what about now? We live in an environment conditioned by economic and environmental crises, climate collapse, pandemics... From a sick and exploited environment, life emerge in the same conditions because, despite anthropocentric efforts to separate human beings from the rest, we have always been part of the same body. Thus, humans, rivers, oil wells, animals, mines... we are all exposed to the capitalist practices from which capitalism produces value.
This situation of precariousness and vulnerability demands a rethinking of our model of life. It is imperative to look at our environment to recognize a network of lives connected in diverse temporalities that affect and sustain each other. It is perhaps time to ask ourselves: how can we rethink our coexistence to open new multispecies imaginaries and build heterogeneous communities based on care and common well-being?

Morton says:





Let's start, then, by

Situating ourselves in other, non-human points of view and being aware of the existence of other temporalities, other scales, other sensibilities and, in short, other realities, allows us to understand the system-environment and the relationships that occur in it in a more plural and considerate way with other organisms. This inclusive way of composing reality helps to think of possibilities for ecological coexistence that would be difficult to contemplate from exclusive anthropocentric paradigms.

[1] Stefano Mancuso, /Sensibilidad e inteligencia del mundo vegetal/, (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutemberg, 2015), 12.
[2] Giovanni Aloi, /Why to look at plants/, (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019), XXIII.
[3] For more information go to: Mancuso, /Sensibilidad/, 12-23.
[4] Cristian Alonso, /Imaginarios Multiespecies. El Arte de Vivir en un Mundo de Contingencia e Incertidumbre/, (Barcelona: La Capella, 2022).
[5] Timothy Morton, /Dark ecology. For a logic of future coexistence/, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), quoted in Paula Bruna, “Arte y Ecología Política. Un Viaje Desde El Modelo Antropocéntrico a Las Realidades De Los No Humanos, (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2020), 37