Being and Becoming with Plants in Sue Burke’s Semiosis

Authors

  • Andrea Robin Ruthven Universitat de les Illes Balears

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17561/grove.v33.9755

Keywords:

Plant being, Semiosis, more-than-human becoming, vegetal entanglements, plant agency

Abstract

This article takes up the question of more-than-human communication with the vegetal world, not from the perspective of how to communicate with the plant beings who inhabit the world with us by asking how an ethical being with plants can alter what it means to be human In order to do so, I will turn to the consider the ways in which Critical Plant Studies address these questions with a focus on plant communication before turning to consider the ways in which we can become with the vegetal, and the effects planty entanglements have on our understandings of what it means to be human and how Sue Burke’s 2018 science fiction novel Semiosis engages with these questions by bringing to the fore the agency of plants.

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Published

2026-09-04

How to Cite

Andrea Robin Ruthven. (2026). Being and Becoming with Plants in Sue Burke’s Semiosis. The Grove - Working Papers on English Studies, 33, e9755. https://doi.org/10.17561/grove.v33.9755