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We are all fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis - of the caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly. Their bodies have almost nothing in common. They don't share the same world: one crawls on the ground and the other flutters its wings in the air. And yet they are one and the same life.
Emanuele Coccia argues that metamorphosis - the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies - is the relationship that binds all species together and unites the living with the non-living. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants, animals: they are all one and the same life. Each species, including the human species, is the metamorphosis of all those that preceded it - the same life, cobbling together a new body and a new form in order to exist differently. And there is no opposition between the living and the non-living: life is always the reincarnation of the non-living, a carnival of the telluric substance of a planet - the Earth - that continually draws new faces and new ways of being out of even the smallest particle of its disparate body.
By highlighting what joins humans together with other forms of life, Coccia's brilliant reflection on metamorphosis encourages us to abandon our view of the human species as static and independent and to recognize instead that we are part of a much larger and interconnected form of life.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Continuity of Life
The Forms Within Us
1. Births
Every Self is a Forgetting
One and the Same Life
Birth and Nature
Cosmic Twins
Giving Birth, or the Migration of Life
Carnival of the Gods
The Speech of the Earth
Metamorphosis as Destiny
Mirror of the World
2. Cocoons
Transformations
Insects
Every Living Being is a Chimera
A Postnatal Egg
Rejuvenations
A New Idea of Technics
The Metamorphosis of Plants
The Cocoon of the World
3. Reincarnations
Eating and Metamorphosis
Being Eaten
Reincarnation and the Transmigration of the Self
Genetics and Reincarnation
The Shadow of the Species
4. Migrations
Planetary Migration
Vehicle Theory
The Great Ark
Everybody in the House
The Domestic Life of Non-Humans
Invasions
5. Associations
The Multispecies City
Interspecies Architecture
Our Mind is Always in the Bodies of Other Species
The End of Wilderness
Contemporary Nature
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the author
Emanuele Coccia is Associate Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris.
Summary
We are all fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis - of the caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly. Their bodies have almost nothing in common. They don't share the same world: one crawls on the ground and the other flutters its wings in the air. And yet they are one and the same life.
Emanuele Coccia argues that metamorphosis - the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies - is the relationship that binds all species together and unites the living with the non-living. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants, animals: they are all one and the same life. Each species, including the human species, is the metamorphosis of all those that preceded it - the same life, cobbling together a new body and a new form in order to exist differently. And there is no opposition between the living and the non-living: life is always the reincarnation of the non-living, a carnival of the telluric substance of a planet - the Earth - that continually draws new faces and new ways of being out of even the smallest particle of its disparate body.
By highlighting what joins humans together with other forms of life, Coccia's brilliant reflection on metamorphosis encourages us to abandon our view of the human species as static and independent and to recognize instead that we are part of a much larger and interconnected form of life.
Report
"Emanuele Coccia defines anew the relationship between humans and nature - a fascinating inquiry, and one which we urgently need in order to open our eyes to the world around us."
Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees
