Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants

by Stella Sandford

This book introduces the reader to the exciting new field of plant philosophy and takes it in a new direction to what does it mean to say that plants are sexed? Do 'male' and 'female' really mean the same when applied to humans, trees, fungi and algae? Are the zoological categories of sex really adequate for understanding the – uniquely 'dibiontic' – life cycle of plants?

Vegetal Sex addresses these questions through a detailed analysis of major moments in the history of plant sex, from Aristotle to the modern day. Tracing the transformations in the analogy between animals and plants that characterize this history, it shows how the analogy still functions in contemporary botany and what would a non-zoocentric, plant-centred philosophy of vegetal sex be like?

By showing how philosophy and botany have been and still are inextricably entwined, Vegetal Sex allows us to think vegetal being and, perhaps, to recognize the vegetal in us all.

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 3, 2022

Reviews

[Elton Johnson]

"[T]here is nothing in common between vegetal and animal life, hardly even 'life' itself..." - Stella Sandford, Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants

This book reminds me of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! in its repetitiveness. By the first couple pages the conclusion is revealed: using words that describe animal ways of being like 'sex' are zoocentric and anthropomorphic, and serve very little purpose in expressing the realities of plants and plant life. However, again and again, the book repeats this fact using new evidence from new theorists as support. While this shows that Sandford's argument is quite solid, it makes for a tedious read.

[Zoë]

Some very interesting thoughts that could have been taken even farther (especially in the second zone last chapter with the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives).