On the Vegetal Verge (With Saint Hildegard)

ABSTRACT

This article is a meditation, developed in dialogue with the thought of twelfth-century German mystic and saint Hildegard of Bingen, on the various senses of the verge. Besides connoting a temporal and spatial edge, the verge unites such apparently disparate things as virginity and virility, vigor and virtue, veracity and viriditas – Hildegard’s original term for the vegetal principle of “greening green,” allowing for the self-reproduction of all finite existence. I show how, in the shadow of vegetality, the verge sparks a series of sudden reversals in which, figured as “the greenest branch,” Virgin Mary is imbued with a greater strength than the Flower-Child she carries, and plant life is endowed with vigor animating the rest of creation.

KEYWORDS:

• Hildegard
• plants
• vegetal life
• sexuality
• verge
• theology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michael Marder is a specialist in political philosophy, ecology, and phenomenology. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and thirteen monographs, including Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013); Phenomena—Critique—Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology (2014); The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium (2014); Pyropolitics: When the World Is Ablaze (2015), Dust (2016), Energy Dreams (2017), Heidegger: Phenomenology, Ecology, Politics (2018) and Political Categories (2019) among others. For more information, consult his website michaelmarder.org.