Around the same time the precursors of Carl Linnaeus (Lobelius, Clusius, Dodoens – whose books were all printed by Christoffel Plantijn) started their dubious classification of the natural world, radical botany got born. It is a genre of fiction in which the speculative energy of plants to imagine new worlds gets fully unleashed. The genre tackles important issues about ‘agency’ revolving around the question: ‘How to re-think agency outside of the notions of desire, exploitation and power, outside the animal logic?’ This lecture focusses on tendrilesque writing. What happens to human speech if vines enter our flesh, roots crawl through our veins, and we turn into hybrid plant monsters? What happens if we let plants speak through us and what kind of new language, new bits of knowledge and new worlds can emerge from there? This lecture will explore these topics while focusing on the status of women, and their relation to plants, as presented in works of fiction in which the distinction between women and plants becomes blurry.
recording : https://kaaitheater.be/en/articles/gosie-vervloessem-invites-natania-meeker-antonia-szabari-gry-ulstein-others-radical-botany
