The Botany of Desirehum2461

Instructor: Ericka Ghersi

Human being and Nature

Bees and flowers (coevolution)Traditional distinction between subject and object is meaninglessAuthor and his garden (potato)Relation is the same bees and flowers have

SelectionSelection versus sensorial (xv-1a)Did I choose? (xv-1b)Domesticated species (“we are in charge”[?]) Domesticated species versus “wild” (xvi-2b)But what do we know about the dog? (xvi-3)Plants versus animals. Who are more interesting?

Plants and ancient civilizations

Tulips and potatos (xvii-4)Artificial selection (4b)

Author’s premiseHuman desires form a part of natural history in the same way the hummingbird’s love of red does, or the ant’s taste for the aphid’s honeydew.Four desires:

SweetnessBeautyIntoxicationControl (xviii-5)

DomesticationAncient civilizations and domestication:

What do we know?How do you look at it when a person talks about it?Are we receptive? (xviii-6)Who is older?, plants, animals or human beings? (xix-7a)

PLANTS (xix-7b)

What do we offer to history? Consciousness (independency) versus inventing photosynthesis and perfecting organic chemistry without hurting nature. (8)

CarriersWho is the subject and who is the object?Immobility - defense (xx-9) how do we explain the relationship between beings and plants?Role of the animals before agriculture started:

any relation with the book Popol Vuh?

Evolution evolves (xx-10)

What is evolution?In what way evolution goes?Who is the subject and who, the object?Meaning (xxi-11)Design in nature (xxi-12)In a coevolutionary relationship every subject is a subject and vice versa.

Charles Darwin:The Origin of SpeciesArtificial selection versus natural selection (xxii-13)Human desire (14)Artificial from natural selection has blurred.Man over nature (15)

Conclusion Outside and Inside: We still believe that domestic species implies “species have come in or been brought under civilization’s roof.” (xxiv)Author’s beliefs (xxiv-16)

His approach to these plants

“Man and nature”look at

“the Other”(xxv-17)

End of“Introduction”