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

ABSTRACT Transcending the human perspective has always been a challenge – for philosophical as well as for literary and scientific narratives. The present study focuses on such a transcendence from humans to plants through a joint reading of a philosophical and a literary narrative in a form of interdisciplinary conversation. Instead of interpreting literature by means of philosophical commentaries, the philosophical narrative itself will be focused and illuminated through the literary text. The essay La vie des plantes (The Life of Plants) (2016) by Emanuele Coccia is chosen as the philosophical component of this approach. The literary lens for focusing on Coccia’s phenomenological treatise enacts the imagery concerning the gradual transformation of a woman into a plant in the story ‘The Fruit of my Woman’ published in 1997 by the South Korean author Han Kang.