Environmental Philosophy

Volume 20, Issue 1, Spring 2023

Becoming-Bonsai, Becoming-Carer

This essay reflects on my academic work and personal experience as a bonsai enthusiast. Specifically, I plan to point out how Deleuzian theory informs my bonsai practice. First, I situate bonsai gardening as an encounter with the vegetal world. Then I consider this encounter as a form of Deleuzian becoming. Becoming reifies a transformation of the two species to become another version of itself—one that occurs between a bonsai and its carer. As a bonsai carer myself, I find becoming as a precise illustration of my relationship with bonsais; hence, a vegetal encounter in the making.