EXPeditions - The living library of knowlegde26 Juni 2025

Emanuele Coccia - Metamorphosis

Emanuele Coccia, Associate Professor of Historical Anthropology at EHESS, discusses metamorphosis.

About Emanuele Coccia "I am Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

I’m working on art, fashion and ecology. I published The Life of Plants four years ago, and this year I published a book called Metamorphoses."

Key Points

• Metamorphosis shows that life cannot be reduced to a single anatomical or moral identity. • Metamorphosis is the relationship between all individuals within a species as well as the relationship between species. • Living beings come from previously living beings; every life is more ancient than the body carrying it.

Metamorphosis is interesting because it tells us about what life is in general. For example, take the most evident phenomenon of metamorphosis: insect metamorphosis. In this case, metamorphosis shows that there is life between two bodies that have nothing in common from an anatomical, ecological or ethological viewpoint.

A caterpillar and a butterfly do not share the same body. They do not share the same face. They are totally different. Moreover, they do not share the same ethos or moral identity. On the one hand, you have a caterpillar, which is a life form occupied by the question of nutrition. For a caterpillar, the world is a huge McDonald’s where it can simply eat. On the other hand, you have the butterfly, which is a life form whose main concern is having sex.

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