THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF PLANTS

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About AnimalsBut Were Afraid to Ask Vegetables

Thursday,March 11, 2010

4 p.m.

Doheny Memorial Library 240

Guest Speaker: Timothy Morton, Professor of English (Literature and the Environment) at the University of California, Davis

Evolution science blurs the boundaries between species and variants, between one species and another species, between genera, classes and all the other Linnaean classi�catory orders. As a matter of fact, evolution even makes us question the idea of thin, rigid separations between broad categories of life and non-life. In particular, the line between plant and animal, while seemingly obvious, is not as clear and tight as one might think. We shall explore what this blurred boundary (to say the least) implies for thinking about both plants and animals. Then we'll proceed to study how these implications invite new ways of thinking about poetry and poetics.

Timothy Morton is the author of many books and articles, including Ecology Without Nature (Harvard UP, 2007) and The Ecological Thought (forthcoming from Harvard UP in April 2010).

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