The Intelligence of Plants: A New Narrative? Notes on a Contemporary Cultural Phenomenon

Catellani, Andrea [UCL] Cholet, Céline Pascual Espuny, Céline

This article explores the development of a new vision in French media productions of plants as beings with intelligence and sentience. The first part of the article presents data on the increase in the number of media about plants and, particularly, plant intelligence and sentience, in France, between 2014 and 2020. A multimedia corpus composed of books, magazine issues and documentaries is the basis for this assessment. The second part proposes an observation of a part of this corpus, aiming at identifying some specific visual and textual devices related to the staging of the intelligence and sensitivity of plants. The third part proposes some theoretical observations concerning the semantic work involved in the new narrative of plant intelligence and sensibility and its implications for the Western vision of plants. The article shows this new narrative has challenged Western naturalism, as defined by Descola, and shaken its ontological structure.