“Earth Thinking Aloud”: The Agency of Trees in The Overstory by Richard Powers

Résumé

This article explores the idea of nonhuman agency in Richard Powers’s The Overstory. On the basis of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, which opens a theoretical space for defining the agency of objects, the article examines the possibility of applying Latour’s theories to Powers’s representation of trees.  Although metaphor, of which Powers makes abundant use, suggests a form of agency in its way of bringing the world closer to human understanding, it also represents a barrier to a reckoning with nonhuman agency. The manner in which Powers explores the relation between literal and metaphorical levels of narrative makes it possible to perceive the agency of trees as an effect of this interaction, rather than the result of a metaphorical appropriation. This narrative strategy can be seen as producing “assemblages” resembling those which Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett consider as vehicles for nonhuman agency.

Keywords: Richard Powers, forests, nonhuman agency, Bruno Latour, metaphor