Dispersion: Thoreau and Vegetal Thought

Description

Plants are silent, still, or move slowly; we do not have the sense that they accompany us, or even perceive us. But is there something that plants are telling us? Is there something about how they live and connect, how they relate to the world and other plants that can teach us about ecological thinking, about ethics and politics? Grounded in Thoreau's ecology and in contemporary plant studies, Dispersion: Thoreau and Vegetal Thought offers answers to those questions by pondering such concepts as co-dependence, the continuity of life forms, relationality, cohabitation, porousness, fragility, the openness of beings to incessant modification by other beings and phenomena, patience, waiting, slowness and receptivity. Cover Contents Notes on Contributors Introduction: Thoreau’s Vegetal Ontology—The Aerial, the Rootless, and the Analogous Branka Arsić 1 Thoreau Experiments with Natural Influences Jane Bennett 2 A Material Faith: Thoreau’s Terrennial Turn Laura Dassow Walls 3 Auto-Heteronomy: Thoreau’s Circuitous Return to the Vegetal World Michael Marder 4 Thoreau’s Garden Politics Antoine Traisnel 5 “Wild Thinking” and Vegetal Intelligence in Thoreau’s Later Writings Michael Jonik 6 Green Fire: Thoreau’s Forest Figuration Monique Allewaert 7 The Riddle of Forest Succession Mark Noble 8 Low-Tech Thoreau; or, Remediations of the Human in The Dispersion of Seeds Jason Gladstone 9 On Thoreau’s Ecoerotics Cristin Ellis 10 Chance Encounters: Thoreau’s Pomontology Vesna Kuiken 11 “Wild Only Like Myself”: Thoreau at Home with Plants Mary Kuhn 12 Plant Life and Poetics of Transtemporality Gillian Osborne Notes Bibliography Index