The Women Who Speak to Plants: Plant Knowledge & Patriarchal Archetypes
Join LDG and Anna Souter to explore how Feminism and Plant Knowledge can begin to disrupt patriarchal archetypes in a unique lecture!
Plant communication is a new area of Western biological study, and women are at the forefront of the investigation. Scientists like Monica Gagliano and Suzanne Simard are changing our understanding of how plants talk to each other – and perhaps how they can talk to us.
Vegetal forms of physiology and intelligence are radically different from ours, and studying them can help us to imagine alternative ways of being that subvert patriarchal archetypes.
In an era of ecological breakdown, traditional patriarchal modes of thinking are no longer appropriate or acceptable, and there is a pressing need to find ways to avoid the destructive tendencies of andro-/anthropocentrism. Feminist practices can draw on the imaginative potential of plants to help us speculate about alternative modes of thought, which avoid the destructive tropes of dualism and individualism: ‘tree-thinking’, or, perhaps, ‘tree-speaking’.
The talk will take a feminist approach to learning from plants, exploring the relationship between trees and language, the brain-body divide, and collaboration.
Time: 18:30 BST
