Roślinne dusze miejsc. O genius loci w kontekście critical plant studies

Abstract

This article analyzes the category of genius loci in the context of contemporary plant studies. It aims to restore the ancient term’s connotations related to nature and to use the idea of the “soul of a place” to rethink local, site-specific interspecies relations. The author reinterprets the notion of “soul” and conducts a comparative analysis of Michael Marder’s Plant-Thinking and Tadeusz Sławek’s essays on genius loci, which helps to outline the similarities and differences between the post-phenomenological approach of the authors in question and New-Materialist accounts of relationality. Key-words: genius loci, plant studies, interspecies, soul of plants, soul of place, nature of brownfields