Plant Life and More-than-human Agency in Zainab Amadahy’s Resistance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13123742 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paula Wieczorek (0000-0002-7295-8619, Rzeszów University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Pages | 79-91 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Horizons in English Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2543-8980 • E-ISSN: 2543-8980 |
| Publisher | Wydawnictwo UMCS (PUBLISHER • PL) |
| DOI | 10.17951/nh.2021.6.79-91 |
| OpenAlex | W3206621557 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
For centuries humans have acted as if the environment was passive and as if the agency was related only to human beings. Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers, scholars, and artists express the need to narrate tales about the multitudes of the living earth, which can help perceive the Earth as vibrant and living. The following paper discusses Black/Cherokee Zainab Amadahy’s speculative fiction novel 2013 Resistance as an example of a story resisting the claim about human beings as the ultimate species. The paper initially scrutinizes the phenomena of “plant blindness” and then explores how Zainab Amadahy illustrates plant life in her book. Unlike in traditional literary depictions of botany, the writer presents tobacco as an active and responsive agent that influences the characters, which, consequently, opposes anthropocentrism. The article also addresses the cultural violence and disregard that has dominated the Western perception of animistic cultures and expresses the need to rethink the theory of animism. This paper draws from posthumanist writings by scholars including Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, and Stacy Alaimo. It also refers to some of the most influential contributions to critical plant studies made by Indigenous thinkers such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’ s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
Animism · Anthropocentrism · Animal and Plant Science Education · Botany, Ecology, and Taxonomy Studies · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |