We play, we learn, we belong. 

Natasha Myers is a cultural anthropologist based at York University, Toronto. who has coined the word: Planthroposcene. Plant what?  Intrigued? We’re familiar with the concept of the Anthropocene – an epoch defined by the human. Anthropocene, man’s spectacular rise and fall, humans at the centre of all imaginings of present and future.

She writes: ‘Repeat this again and again: We are of the plants. Now, if this is true, then the figure that should ground our actions is not the self-centred  Anthropos so much as a strangely hybrid figure we could call the Planthropos.

Natasha encourages us to wrap our mouth around this word until it rolls off our tongue with ease: Planthroposcene. (It might sound awkward and we might feel like we sound silly, but, she says, just give it a try) The Planthroposcene names an aspirational episteme, not a timebound era, one that invites us to stage new scenes and new ways to see and seed plant / people relations in the here and now, not some distant future.’

(From MMM, Issue # 18, April 2021).