Still Life? Musings on vegetal life and inanimate constitutions,and their agencies in the human umwelt

Aadita ChaudhuryMES Candidate, York University

In the hegemonic Western worldview, much of the cultural

understanding of life can be traced back to Aristotle’s ideas in

De Anima. In his paradigm, all living and non-living beings are

arranged in a hierarchy according to the nature of their souls.

As such, plants and minerals are deemed to not have the kind of

component mobile souls that create an obvious animacy similar to

animals and humans. Although they do have souls, and it is

implied that their ontologies are so distinct from that of the

human that they are often overlooked as having tangible

agencies1. Indeed, it is animacy itself that brings other animals

into the human umwelt for consideration, however limitedly, as

real agents in the environment. Although intellectually, we do

acknowledge the agency and impact of plants and minerals in our

world, they are never in the same ontological categories as

animals, and thus the animate always remains foregrounded against

the inanimate in the human umwelt. This I believe, is due to

1 Aristotle. De Anima. London: Penguin, 2004.

their “stillness”, or at least, perceived temporal stillness in

the human umwelt.

The umwelt, of course, is the concept of a unique worldview

of an individual within a species, and a species as a whole (if

we are to consider them as such strictly designed categories).

The concept was formalized by Estonian ecologist-turned-

semiotician, Jakob von Uexküll. According to this theory, each

individual in a species, and each species of being, are equipped

with a functional cycle of receptors and effectors that enable

its survival in the environment2. The receptors are uniquely

configured to pick up on specific carriers of significance from

the environment. Once this is processed through the organism’s

functional cycle, the organism then may respond to it, by a

specific set of actions or inactions, thus furthering its aims in

its environment. As such, this this functional cycle is the key

component to an organism’s umwelt, or broadly speaking, its

unique relationship to the environment it find itself in.

2 Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans. Translated by J. D. O'Neil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, p. 49

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Us humans, depending on the specifics of our biologies,

abilities, moralities, and cultural practices also have created

our own diverse umwelts. Indeed, human constitutions are so

diverse that we can hypothesize that there are more than seven

billion human umwelts in existence. There are overarching

cultural narratives, which I believe we can reverse-engineer back

to our functional cycles, and from then on, deduce what it is

that governs our cultural tendencies at a fundamental level.

Perhaps one of the most notable cultural tendencies facilitated

by the human umwelt is what Agamben calls the Anthropological

Machine: the formal and informal discourses and practices whereby

humans seek to separate and distinguish themselves from so-called

nonhumans3. Indeed, many intellectual and artistic projects

throughout history have been dedicated to furthering this divide

between the human and the animal, and beyond.

Intellectually, at the age of current science, many of us

can acknowledge that many nonhumans, including beings we cannot

even perceive through our naked eyes, are considered in the realm

3 Agamben, G. The Open: Man and Animal. Edited by W. Hamacher. Translated by K. Attell. Stanford, USA: Stanford University Press, 2004

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of living beings. This belief subsequently means that we are at

least subconsciously aware of our own interactions with

multispecies umwelts at all times. What does conscious awareness

constitute – especially when it concerns interactions with other

living beings? I would venture a hypothesis that for the most

part, whether it is living or non-living, something can make its

way into the forefront of our consciousness without purposeful

concentration on our part by its movement. That is, we focus our

attention on anything that moves. Anything that does not, in the

temporal period of our interactions, is considered inanimate,

regardless of whether it truly is according to its own temporal

scale. As such, we associate life with animacy.

By doing so, we often tend to forget that some of the

scientifically accorded living things we interact with are

actually thus, simply due to their inanimacy. Trees and forests

are all around us, but for much of history, we have treated them

as beings that for the most part, cannot respond immediately in a

tangible sense that shows consciousness and agency upon us

interacting with it. We are able to concentrate many efforts in

deforestation and farming, without expecting the least bit of

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retaliation from our plant friends. We can carry on and use them

for economic benefits, or leisure, all we like, without feeling

like someone’s body and life are hampered, let alone their

consciousness or agency. As such, we tend to overlook these forms

of life. It never occurs to us that these beings have anything

even approximating our consciousness, and thereby, we can do unto

them what we please, and there are no apparent consequences, even

from our own psyches.

This is not to say that our entire cultural landscape has

readily accepted that the passivity of vegetal life as something

that renders it absolutely obsolete in our consideration of the

agency of others. Rather, I am arguing that we only notice their

unique agencies, when it impedes certain functions of life for

us. We care about pests praying on our favourite flowering

plants, animals infringing on farmland etc. because the value of

the products of these domesticated plants are reduced by these

animal interventions. We do not like it – and thus we seek to

protect these species from vermin. It therefore becomes an

extension of our own agencies and interests. Our umwelts still

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cannot grasp the complexities (or simplicities) of plant

ontologies, beyond what serves our self-interest.

In his essay “Resist like a plant! On the vegetal life of

political movements”, author Michael Marder attempts to suggest

ways that humans employ plant ontologies for their own political

motives, perhaps unconscious to the similitudes in existence4. It

is the passivity of plants that are appropriated by Occupy

protestors as a form of activism against an establishment that

seems immutable on the surface5. Thus, in fighting passivity of

an organization through further passivity, humans have borrowed

directly from plant ways of being. However, Marder’s own analysis

reveals a certain selection bias – his example of human beings

relying on plant ontologies is indeed for its own selfish

purposes; this is especially ironic in the context of the Occupy

protests. While he notes “neither human nor animal liberation can

come to pass without the liberation of plants that would dispense

to them their ownmost ontological possibilities”6, I would argue

4 Marder, M. (2012). “Resist like a plant! On the Vegetal Life ofPolitical Movements”. Peace Studies Journal , 5 (1), 24-32.5 Ibid. p. 256 Ibid. p. 27

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that the potential of a “vegetal-human republic”7 is only

promising insofar as the human umwelt would allow and recognize

the agency of plants, which I’ve demonstrably shown to be

limited. Thus, in limiting its knowledge of other umwelts, human

beings in turn limit the possibility of their own liberation.

Sandilands, in her article “Floral Sensations: Plant

Biopolitics”, looks into scientific understanding of plant

agencies that have only recently come to light, and what that

means in the biopolitical age8. Although according to Foucault,

the biopolitical age only began in the 18th century9, human beings

have constituted the biopolitical realm as long as they have

existed. I suppose I believe that biopolitics was born as soon as

human beings shifted from living as nomadic hunter-gatherers to

sedentary agriculturalists, making thereby a conscious decision

to control and maintain other life forms. It is then that we had

our feet clearly in the realm of the biopolitical age. Various

cultures have venerated the virtues of plants and their7 Ibid. p. 308 Sandilands, C. "Floral Sensations: Plant Biopolitics".In The Oxford Handbook for Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabriel et al. Oxford University Press, 2016.9 Lemke, T., Casper, M. J., & Moore, L. J. Biopolitics: an advanced introduction. New York: NYU Press, 2011.

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contributions/attacks on human civilization, but because of their

consideration specifically under the framework of human utility,

I cannot claim that at any time in history, with very few

exceptions, have human beings actually acknowledged plant

ontologies and their agencies. We have indeed, spoken to plants,

not in a shared language, but with a language that was

constructed to facilitate an anthrocentric relationship with

plants.

If we move on to the topic of non-living matter, whether

domesticated or not, the relationship to “inanimate” ontologies

are even further fraught. I wonder if Greek philosophers were

ever aware that the notion of non-living matter being at the

bottom of the chain of being was grossly inaccurate, even by

their own standards of scientific knowledge, because it seems

obvious that they are the principle forms of governance not just

on human life, but all life. All life depends on inputs from the

non-living environment in order to perpetuate itself. Indeed,

gods had to accept sacrifices so that these non-living agents did

not go about wreaking havoc on enterprises of human civilization.

If plant ontologies generally deferred to the human domain in the

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areas of human civilization, all humans, whether settled or

nomadic, have had to defer to the domain of the elements. The

Greek philosophers themselves suggested that the universe is

composed of four classical elements, fire, water, earth and

air10, so it seems strange that they would not consider these to

be the actual ruling faction of the hierarchy of beings. Implicit

in the assumption that these were the key elements that created

the universe is the notion they have far greater agency than

humans.

In Barry’s “Materialist Politics: Metallurgy” article, it is

suggested that the impassioned speech by the metallurgist

“speaking” for a failed pipeline was alluding to some more-than-

human-politics11. I cannot disagree more. I think it is a bright

example of the limitations of the human umwelt, in that material

agencies are only acknowledged when there is a cost to human

agencies. Of course, the ontologies of the material, through the

rigorous studies of its physical and chemical properties are

10 Plato. Timaeus and Critias. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.11 Barry, A. “Materialist Politics: Metallurgy”. In Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. Edited by Bruce Braun and Sarah J. Whatmore. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp. 89-110.

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thoroughly acknowledged, as is the human responsibility to

safeguard it, it is merely a preoccupation motivated by grief

over of wasted human labour that is being channelled here, rather

than true consideration of material agency. We are not mourning

the loss of material itself, but the redundancy of human

resources that went to perfecting it at the face of catastrophe.

It is less about the emotions of the ostensibly inanimate

pipeline, than human emotion over all the blood and sweat,

arguably based on centuries of human knowledge that went into its

construction, rather than the construction material itself. This

is another example in which we can highlight the limitations of

the human umwelt as driven by human self-interest, especially when

it involves “inanimate” ontologies.

In “25 years is a long time”, Raffles talks about how the

scientific establishment has finally caught up to the much-

discussed intuition that rocks have lives beyond ours, and indeed

within that temporal frame, they are, animate, strictly

speaking12. Rock lives, are therefore, running counter to the

temporality of human, and other animal lives. It requires12 Raffles, H. " Twenty-five years is a long time." Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 3 (2012): 526-534.

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patience and stillness from the human to observe the mobility of

rocks. Let us, for a moment, consider the ever-famous pitch-drop

experiment. Running for nearly ninety years, it has seen many

human guardians, whose sole purpose was to observe the movement

of the pitch, a highly viscous rock-like substance that is

actually a liquid, contained in a glass funnel13. The guardian

must record details every time a drop of pitch escapes from the

funnel due to gravity. The guardians have waited around for

decades simply trying to see the pitch move before their eyes,

and very few have been so fortunate. It is indeed apparent that

this job is certainly not well-aligned with human senses of

temporality. On the other hand, the temporalities of the elements

are sometimes very well suited for humans. Consider the biblical

myth of the manna from heaven, or in today’s world, floods that

maintain the fertility of agricultural land. Well-timed

intervention by the elements sustains human life; conversely,

ill-timed ones may very well serve to ruin it.

I wonder if the discourse regarding agency of inanimate

matter can be extended to the readily intangible forces in the13 Webb, J. "Tedium, tragedy and tar: The slowest drops in science". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 2014-07-26

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environment. What about energy, in discourses of the environment,

or the world fossil fuel crisis that is prevalent in our times?

Do we acknowledge these intangible entities as being agents in

their own right, with their own distinct ontologies? Light, for

instance, is a basic necessity in human life, and much that

sustains and improves it. Do we consider light to be its own

agent, or simply a tool we have domesticated, like many animals,

plants and even minerals for our own use? Can we manipulate light

and other energies at a fundamental level in the same way we are

able to harness living beings and minerals for our own resources?

The answer, of course, is yes, but that does not leave

contention out of the theoretical framework. We can only tame the

agency of energies as far as we know of its functioning, and the

functioning of other living and non-living agents in our

environment. There, is therefore, always an absolute limit, at

any given time to the human umwelt that is based on current

working knowledge of everything that is not ourselves. This

applies, even to the cases of domesticated animals and plants, as

I’ve discussed before. We can only align them to our interests

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and agendas as far as our working knowledge of their ontologies

enable us to.

Nonetheless, despite the utilitarian framework through which

the agencies of others demand consideration from the human

umwelt, it is in the interest of the human umwelt to learn about

the ways of the umwelt of others, on their own terms, even if to

gain a more favourable position to “negotiate” terms of

engagement with others. Does this mean that the agencies of

others will always have to submit to humanity as it gains further

knowledge of others, and if Marder is to be believed, itself? Not

necessarily. As we may know in our personal lives, familiarity

with even a fellow human being does not ensure them acting in any

particular ways that seeks to please us. I feel this may apply,

at the same level, if not more, to cross-species interactions.

For instance, let us consider the case of man-eating tigers,

stingrays, piranhas and sharks. Just knowing the other, doesn’t

ensure that they will act as we want them to. However, knowing

the other, and thereby understanding that its agency may pursue

divergent goals to us, can help us come to a starting point for

useful environmental ethics, in which, we relinquish some control

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over the universe as we know it, and are humbled by our

submission to its laws, thereby, going contrary to the direction

Agamben’s Anthropological Machine will have us pursue. In our

vulnerability to the laws of elements, we are as helpless as

other animals, beyond a certain point – and by doing that, we can

accept our own animality in death, at least until a feasible

transhumanist and posthumanist paradigm is available for all.

What might such a post-/transhumanist paradigm look like?

Perhaps a certain reimagining of materialist philosophy can be

key to exposing this paradigm. In her book, Vibrant Matter: the political

ecology of things, Jane Bennett, uses pre-existing philosophies to

suggest such a system. She proposes:

If one adopts the perspective of evolutionary rather thanbiographical time...a mineral efficacy becomesvisible...Mineralization becomes the creative agency bywhich bone was produced, and bones then ‘made new forms ofmovement control possible among animals, freeing them frommany constraints and literally setting them into motion toconquer every available niche in the air, in water, and onland. In the long and slow time of evolution, the mineralmaterial appears as the mover and shaker, the active power,and the human beings, with their much-lauded capacity forself-directed action, appear as its product...the materialof Earth’s crust has been packaged into myriad moving beingswhose reproduction and growth build and break down matter ona global scale. People, for example, redistribute andconcentrate oxygen... and other elements of Earth’s crust

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into two-legged, upright forms that have an amazingpropensity to wander across, dig into and in countless otherways alter Earth’s surface. We are walking, talking minerals.14

This highlights the connectivity of humans and all other living

things, including plants to the mineral world, which is perhaps

characterized as the most inanimate of all. As I have mentioned

before, the life cycle of the mineral is at odds with the

lifespan and life cycle of living beings, especially humans.

However, as Bennett asks us to consider the evolutionary view of

time, we can see how all living things, including humans, are

actually a subset of the biographical time of the mineral world;

that our umwelts are indeed superseded by the umwelt of the

mineral world. What does this mean for environmental ethics, or

indeed the ethics regarding the treatment of other human beings,

or living things? Bennett also addresses this:

The fear is that in failing to affirm human uniqueness [frommatter and other living beings under the perspective ofevolutionary time], such views authorize the treatment ofpeople as mere things; in other words a strong distinctionbetween subjects and objects is needed to prevent theinstrumentalization of humans...but the ontological dividebetween persons and things must remain lest one have nomoral grounds for privileging man over germ or for

14 Bennett, J. Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 10-11

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condemning pernicious forms of human-on-humaninstrumentalization.15

So we are faced with the danger of collapsing moral and ethical

order within intraspecies relations in favour of a holistic view

of environmental ethics. However, the ontological divide, or

perhaps some benign form of speciesm, where one’s immediate

evolutionary family is still prioritized but not at severe cost

to the larger evolutionary family, can still be the basis for a

tenable system of environmental ethics. Bennett also affirms this

view:

Such an attentiveness to matter and its powers will notsolve the problem of human exploitation or oppression, butit can inspire a greater sense of the extent to which allbodies are kind in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in adense network of relations. And in a knotted world ofvibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very wellbe to harm oneself. Such an enlightened or expanded notionof self-interest is good for humans.16

She suggests that through human self-interest itself, the

phenomenon that I have discussed before that discernibly confines

15 Ibid. pp. 11-1216 Ibid. p. 13

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the potential for the human umwelt, is still valid to construct

moral and ethical routes to experience, if not directly, but

through anthropomorphic and sympathetic faculties, the umwelts of

others.

To conclude, I must return to my original hypothesis

concerning how animacy is the basis by which any entity in the

environment makes itself apparent in the human umwelt, and by

extension, human self-interest. I questioned, time and time

again, referring to examples in which it seems the human umwelt

is able to consider the agencies of other beings through the

perspective of their unique umwelts. I considered the self-

interestedness that acted as the governing principle of active

human interest in other umwelts as an impediment to moral

consideration of others, and thus an obstacle to further

expansion of the human umwelt itself. In search of a post- or

transhumanist system of thought that enables a human in which the

human umwelt can ethically consider others while keeping some

loyalty to its own, I found vital materialism to be able to

provide at least some preliminary answers. As I had suggested

earlier, the major reason that the human umwelt has difficulty

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relating to umwelts of plant beings or minerals is because of

their distinct ontologies. As such, the cognitive distance

between the umwelts of the animate, such as those of animals and

humans and the umwelts of the inanimate, like plants and

minerals, seemed unsurpassable. I also theorized that given this

apparent ontological divide and the bias due to human self-

interest, a tenable model for environmental ethics was suspect

since everything was to be eventually considered through the lens

of human needs and wants. However, as Bennett demonstrates, human

self-interest itself could be what is used to expand the human

umwelt for consideration of other ontologies. As such, although

this model seems limited in terms of perspectives, it can provide

novel solutions for environmental ethics as human self-interest

expands in a more conscientious way, and considers itself in

kinship with the so-called inanimate realm.

We have already seen examples of this paradigm shift in line

with advancing scientific understanding of the world. The more we

can understand the environmental forces that act on our lives,

the more we are able to formally recognize their agency. Even

though this formal recognition is predicated on human self-

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interest, it does not automatically invalidate this perspective

as a basis for sound environmental ethics. Indeed, considering

the limitations of the human umwelt, this may indeed be the best

solution we have, at least for the foreseeable future.

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Bibliography

Agamben, G. The Open: Man and Animal. Edited by W. Hamacher.Translated by K. Attell. Stanford, USA: Stanford UniversityPress, 2004

Aristotle. De Anima. London: Penguin, 2004.

Barry, A. “Materialist Politics: Metallurgy”. In Political Matter:Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. Edited by Bruce Braun and SarahJ. Whatmore. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010

Bennett, J. Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things. Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 2010.

Lemke, T., Casper, M. J., & Moore, L. J. Biopolitics: an advancedintroduction. New York: NYU Press, 2011.

Marder, M. "Resist Like a Plant! On the Vegetal Life of PoliticalMovememnts." Peace Studies Journal 5, no. 1 (2012): 24-32.

Plato. Timaeus and Critias. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Raffles, H. " Twenty-five years is a long time." CulturalAnthropology 27, no. 3 (2012): 526-534.

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Sandilands, C. "Floral Sensations: Plant Biopolitics".In TheOxford Handbook for Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielet al. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans.Translated by J. D. O'Neil. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 2010

Webb, J. "Tedium, tragedy and tar: The slowest drops in science".BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 2014-07-26

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