“She Will Thus Be the Smell of a Rose, a Carnation, a Jasmine, a Violet”
This article aims to show how attention to the plant has been at the heart of one of the strongest historical contestations of the dualistic separation regime of the Moderns. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s work thus combines a major shift in the metaphysical attention to plants, from the eye to the smell, with a general inquiry into the origin of language. This combination raises the forms of sensibility in condition of the institution. The identification of this combination allows a dialogue with the work of Philippe Descola about the generative ontological matrix of collectives. This path from Condillac to Descola and back is not a speculative one: it stems in the affective memory of the smell of flowers, which serves here as an Archimedean point against dualism. The question then arises as to how plants contribute to the institution of collectives, or, to the contrary, resist it.