Plant-Thinking and Arboreal Theology

Combining Michael Marder's "plant-thinking" with apophatic theology, this paper proposes that if language can be understood as a coming-into-being as plant–a self-articulation into spacethen I argue that plant-thinking provides a new lens through which to consider the ecological significance of apophatic theology. I will ask: what is “God-talk” if language itself can be corporeal? Further, if language is spatial articulation, then trees are “speaking” themselves constantly–and perhaps also communing with the divine? In my paper, I will argue that plant-thinking (as described by Marder and similar thinkers) can be read with apophatic theology and argue that this may suggest that the very doing of theology derives from a property of matter.