Plants in Place: A Phenomenology of the Vegetal (Critical Life Studies)

Plants are commonly considered immobile, in contrast to humans and other animals.But vegetal existence involves many place-based forms of change: stems growing upward, roots spreading outward, fronds unfurling in response to sunlight, seeds traveling across wide distances, and other intricate relationships with the surrounding world.How do plants as sessile, growing, decaying, and metamorphosing beings shape the places they inhabit, and how are they shaped by them?How do human places interact with those of plants-in lived experience; in landscape painting; in cultivation and contemplation; in forests, fields, gardens, and cities?Examining these questions and many more, Plants in Place is a collaborative study of vegetal phenomenology at the intersection of Edward S.Casey’s phenomenology of place and Michael Marder’s plant-thinking.It focuses on both the microlevel of the dynamic constitution of plant edges or a child’s engagement with moss and the macrolevel of habitats that include th