Sensitive Plants and Senseless Weeds: Plants, Consciousness, and Elizabeth Kent. Issue 2 (1st October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Walker, Leila
• Is Part Of: Essays in romanticism. Volume 27:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 115
• Page End: 133
• Publication Date: 2020-10-01
• Subjects: Romanticism -- Periodicals; 820.9145
• DOI: 10.3828/eir.2020.27.2.3
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2049-6699

Abstract

Abstract : When a team of researchers in 2018 found that plants exposed to anesthesia appeared to lose consciousness, the press reported that plants might have a consciousness to lose. The ensuing debate revealed a gap between scientific and literary approaches to human and nonhuman consciousness that this article traces back to the botanical writing of the Romantic period. These concerns, I argue, are central to Elizabeth Kent's Flora Domestica (1823) and Sylvan Sketches (1825), both botanical works that double as literary anthologies in order to expose a productive gap between literary and scientific knowledge. In a time when the distinction between science and poetry could frequently blur, Kent's works navigate these boundaries with particular attention to the kinds of relationships each entails. In so doing, I argue, she advances an ethics of care attuned to consciousnesses beyond our understanding, rooted in the contested borderland between scientific and poetic knowledge.