Desiring Trees: reconsidering the vegetal as a Levinasian Other

Abstract

Plants represent unique, intelligent beings. By using a Levinasian framework of the Other to reconsider the plant as ‘vegetal Other’, we can address this unique status of plants philosophically. Levinas theorizes the Other in its radical difference, which allows us to think of plants not in terms of generalized similarity, but in terms of radical otherness. Departing from this Otherness, we can rethink plant encounters as an encounter with a unique separate self, which inherently demands care. This care can only be thought of as a local and iterative process between Self and vegetal Other. The implications thereof for nature conversation and our general use of plants are radical, as it reverses our subjugating relationship with plants.