José Vasconcelos's Plant Theory: The Life of Plants, Botanical Ethics, and the Cosmic Race

Abstract

abstract:This article explores the representations of plant life and botanical ethics in José Vasconcelos's philosophical work. Drawing from some ideas of so-called critical plant studies, I investigate the ontological, political, and ecological implications of Vasconcelos's plant theory. I contend that it is a set of suggestions that ultimately put pressure on the stability of his own philosophical and political thought. The article focuses on two aspects of vegetal life that Vasconcelos highlights and theorizes: consciousness and collectivity. While the idea of plant consciousness as a tight interweaving of organic and inorganic elements tends to destabilize the anthropomorphic notion of human consciousness, plant collectivity stages a contingent and proliferating multiplicity that resists its domestication into a stable totality. In this way, Vasconcelos's encounter with plants suddenly uncovers the possibility of an ecological and anarchic thought. In the last section, I examine how these philosophical ideas about plants shed new light and cast an innovative image of La raza cósmica.