Coexistencia entre distintas especies: Emanuele Coccia en conversación con Jorge Godoy

Abstract

CO CCIA -G O D OY Our planet is a complex interaction of different life forms, in which human beings are just one among many other species. Awareness about this condition is the basis of Emanuele Coccia's thought, one of the most influential philosophers today. In this interview, he presents his ideas regarding our coexistence, mainly with non-animal living beings: plants, trees, or even viruses. jg: In the Chilean context, there is a humanistic approach that is still very strong in philosophy. The more materialist philosophy is not very present. Can you briefly mention something about that, just to contextualize your line of philosophical development?Ec: I can speak about my last book that came out in France a few months ago, called Métamorphoses, which is a reflection about the transformation from caterpillars into butterflies. This experience is very interesting to me from a speculative point of view, because there are two bodies -the caterpillar's and the butterfly's -which have nothing to do with each other, anatomically or ecologically speaking, in the sense that they are two different forms, that they don't have the same morphological structure; but they also don't share anything from the moral perspective. The caterpillar spends his or her days just eating, as if nature were a huge McDonald's, while the butterfly is mating all the time, so they have a different ethos, different moral or ethical identities. And then they also live in two different worlds, because the caterpillar lives on the ground and the butterfly is living in the air. This fact is interesting coexistence between diffeRent sPecies: Emanuele Coccia in conversation with Jorge Godoy

When a woman becomes a plant: looking at philosophical discourses through literary narratives

“…He insists on causal models for the inexplicable world, however this world remains beyond his imagination. This image can illustrate Coccia's claim that formal causation stops to produce sense (sense that turns out to be provisional and superficial) only through the immersion in the world, only when one finds his or her world inside the world of the otherof any other (Coccia [2019, 9). This transition is illustrated in Han Kang's story in the image of the man discovering the water as the essential element for ensuring the survival of his exhausted wife (Han 1997(Han [2016, 6) but not understanding yet the context of the effect, because their worlds are still apart.…”

“…He hasn't a notion for the extended reality in which the visions and desires of his wife are embedded. Thus, we get an emotion-loaded image of deceived expectation as a frame for reading Coccia's claim that we cannot understand a plant if we have not understood the world in its totality (Coccia [2019, 1).…”

“…organs]they also do not expose themselves to the world couched in a specific organ'. Moreover, 'it is with the totality of their body and being, without distinctions of form or function, that plants open to the world and merge into it' (Coccia [2019, 7). Han Kang's story illustrates vividly Coccia's implication that this kind of interaction with the world does not need organs, and it is not by means of organic symptoms that such an interaction can be perceived.…”

“…I pierce through the roof of the balcony and through that of the floor above.' (Han 1997(Han [2016, 7) The emotions of fear, uncanniness, but also wondering, together with the implicit hope of change and overpassing painful constraints that accompany this description can be read as a comment on and emotional complement to Coccia's formulation that plants as sessile beings are able to make and modify the world without moving (Coccia [2019, 7).…”

“…For an easier orientation in both the French original text (2016) and the English translation[2019] references to and quotations from the essay of Coccia are given by the number of the (rather short) chapters. Thus,Coccia ( [2019, 15) refers to Chapter 15: Like an Atmosphere, from Section V: Epilogue of the essay.…”