We would like to invite the academic community and those outside the university to a meeting entitled ‘The Growth, Decay, and Metamorphoses of Plant-Thinking’ with Professor Michael Marder, Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, which will take place on Monday 13 January at 11.30am in the Main Library of the University of Gdansk (room 1.22).
The starting point for the talk will be the publication ‘Thinking Plants. Philosophy of vegetation’, which was published in November by the słowo/obraz terytoria publishing house. The margins of philosophy are inhabited by non-human and non-animal beings – including plants. While contemporary philosophy tends to shy away from an ontological and ethical consideration of plant life, Michael Marder places it at the forefront of the ongoing deconstruction of metaphysics. He demonstrates that plants are capable of resisting totalizing logic and moving beyond the confines of instrumentalisation. In his terms, ‘plant thinking’ is both the non-cognitive, non-ideational and non-imaginative mode of thinking inherent in plants and the process of bringing human thought back to its roots and making it plant-like.
Michael Marder’s research includes environmental philosophy, ecological thought, political theory and phenomenology. He is the author of a book on Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of ‘late modernity’ (‘The Event of the Thing: Derrida’s Post-Deconstructive Realism’), the political theory of the controversial German thinker Carl Schmitt (‘Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmit’) and a recent book published in Poland, ‘Thinking Plants. Philosophy of Vegetation’. Since 2008, he has collaborated with the French portal *T*elos.
The meeting will be attended by the translator of the book, Łukasz Kraj, and the editor of the Environmental Humanities series, Dr Patryk Szaj. Łukasz Krajnik (Centre for Foreign Languages) will act as moderator.
The meeting with Michael Marder is a continuation and extension of the MORE THAN HUMAN / MORE-THAN-HUMAN series, which focuses on literature, philosophy, art and social movements as languages for responding to climate change, the dynamic remodelling of the hierarchy between human / non-human / more-than-human, relations with nature, thinking about resources, models of social functioning and responsibility for sustainability. The series will include debates and artistic activities from the fields of environmental activism, ecocriticism, animal and plant studies, posthumanism or ecological economics. So far, it has been held exclusively at the headquarters of the Gdańsk City of Literature, and thanks to the cooperation of GML and the słowo/obraz terytoria publishing house with the Centre for Sustainable Development of the UG and the Institute of Polish Philology, it is gaining its academic version. We would also like to invite you to the second meeting in the series with Michael Marder, which will take place on Tuesday 14 January at 6 p.m. at 35 Dluga Street: https://facebook.com/events/s/myslenie-roslin-filozofia-wege/1780219966109962/.
The Growth, Decay, and Metamorphoses of Plant-Thinking
dr Irena Chawrilska
Dr Katarzyna Warska