The recent development of deliberative systems has paid special attention to how systems can fulfill three fundamental functions: ethical, democratic and epistemic (Mansbridge et al, 2012). However, it is important to consider how these functions also configure the exclusion of non-human actants in democratic innovations. An exclusion that is rooted, especially, in forms of epistemic injustice that refer not only to the testimonial dimension (referring to the credibility given to an interlocutor) but, fundamentally, to the hermeneutic dimension (that linked to the absence of collective interpretation resources ) (Fricker, 2009).
In recent years, theoretical approaches have challenged this type of injustice with the aim that the epistemic recognition of non-human actants allows them to improve their inclusion in democratic systems. We are talking about the non-human turn in the social sciences (Grusin, 2015; Morton, 2017), the new materialism (Bennett, 2010) or interspecies communication (Page, 2021). Perspectives linked to the inheritance of assembly (DeLanda, 2016) and that allow us to review the possibilities of democratic systems.
The possibilities of dialogue between the non-human turn and democratic theory in general, and with democratic innovations in particular, have been governed, up to now, by the recognition of non-human animals and their involvement in thinking about time, materiality and forms of interaction within deliberative systems (Meijer, 2019). Since the mid-2010s, Critical Plant Studies (CSP) have raised the need to expand these relationship frameworks (Gagliano, Ryan and Vieira, 2017). From this interdisciplinary group, the need to place issues such as agency, public, will, etc., in dialogue is claimed, from an approach that also includes the capacities of plants.
This text proposes to review the implications that CSPs (and their relationship with the influence of assembly theory) may have for the development of democratic innovations, focusing on two questions: a) how the most characteristic forms of inclusion of deliberation are questioned and b) ) how the CSPs are related to the debates on the different repertoires that go beyond the verbal forms of communication (Fabrino, Ercan and Rosenbaum, 2020) to build and legitimize forms of knowledge and interaction more linked to a more complex sensitive plot. To this end, special attention will be paid to the work of two artists who are developing interspecies communication practices with possible deliberative implications: the Electrobiota collective (Argentina) and the couple formed by Maria Castellanos and Alberto Valverde (Spain).
