Emanuele Coccia

on plants

interview by OLIVIER ZAHM
photography by TAKASHI HOMMA, NURSERY, 2017

 

TAKASHI HOMMA, NURSERY, 2017

OLIVIER ZAHM — In your book La Vie des Plantes: Une Metaphysique du Mélange (The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Melange), you begin with the observation that plants have been neglected in the history of ideas. How did you come to that realization?

EMANUELE COCCIA — When I was young, I was sent to a high school for agriculture. For years, I had to study botany, chemistry, and plant life in general. Since my philosophical interests were well established by then, I had already realized that our knowledge of plants was at a much lower level than our knowledge of animals. The problem with botany is that it’s essentially based on concepts drawn from animal life. Its methodology is built entirely on the animal – life…