Abstract

Thinking of the animal-as-non-human is an idea that does not solely belong to a myopic yet ameliorable moment of Western philosophy’s past. It is central to, even constitutive of that past. It remains characteristic of its present and will likely dominate the character of philosophy—of thinking’s—foreseeable future. My contention is that thinking-difference has not, and cannot happen because of thinking-the-animal, and this is precisely due to the conceptual companionship that animality has played between the human and the non-human. This paper explores thinking otherwise-thananimality through the activation of the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of becoming-plant. Plant life is genuinely heterogeneous to animal life. In this paper I explore the complex phenomenon of plant communication. Thinking through and activating the vital difference expressed by plant signalling can play a role in the activation of real difference in thought, not merely its companionable extension