https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.041
From Passive Flora to Storied Matter: Plant Agency in Selected Speculative Fiction
RESHMA R
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Sree Narayana College, Punalur, Kerala
reshmaneeraja@gmail.com
DR HIMA S. MADHU
Associate Professor/Research Guide, University of Kerala
Department of English
Government Arts College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
himasnc.1982@gmail.com
Abstract: Speculative narratives enliven readers with visions of altered futures, where human beings coexist with diverse species. Speculative plant-centric narratives, termed Speculative Botany, are a relatively new genre in speculative fiction that combines both philosophical and speculative insights. The genre portrays sentient flora not in the background as in traditional texts, but as active, sentient forces. These texts help readers imagine an agentic world of plants, portraying them as possessing their own characteristic attributes. It challenges the symbolic and objective representation of the vegetal world.
Drawing on the philosophical and theoretical framework of Critical Plant Studies and material ecocriticism, the paper probes into the material and agentic role of plants in selected works of speculative fiction. Vegetal agency is manifested through interspecies communication, plant-human entanglements, plant intelligence and the ability of flora to transform and reshape human, ecological, and narrative structures. The paper makes a close textual analysis of the agentic role of sentient flora depicted in selected speculative texts. The central argument of the study is that plant agency challenges human-centric norms, resulting in a paradigm shift in human perspectives toward plants, thereby restructuring the way humanity relates ethically to the nonhuman world.
Keywords: Critical Plant Studies, Material ecocriticism, Speculative Botany, Plant agency, Plant sentience
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