Vincent Zonca 
Lichens 
Toward a Minimal Resistance

Covering almost 8 percent of the earth’s terrain, lichens are living beings which are familiar to everyone, known to no one. They are one of those organisms that seem to offer nothing to hold our gaze. But the more time we spend with lichens, the more they reveal their beauty, their mysteries and their strange power of attraction. Part-algae and part-fungus, lichens call into question our customary ways of classifying forms of life, and allow us to conceive of an ecology that is no longer based on distinctions between nature and culture, urban and rural, competition and cooperation.

The result of several years of investigation carried out on several different continents, this remarkable book offers an original, radical, and, like its subject matter, symbiotic reflection on this common but mostly invisible form of life, blending cultures and disciplines, drawing on biology, ecology, philosophy, literature, poetry, even graphic art. What if lichens were at the heart of some of the most pressing and topical questions of our day? Does the fact that they can live everywhere, even in very harsh environments, that they persist when almost all other traces of life have disappeared, mean that, despite their fragility, lichens are a force of resistance?

After reading this book you will never see lichens, or the world, in the same way again.

Tabela de Conteúdo

Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Preface by Emanuele Coccia xiv

Part 1

First Contacts 1

Origins 1

Winters 2

Weeds 3

A Scientific Challenge: Remaining or Rising in the Ranks 12

Customs and Beliefs 22

Lichen Erotics 34

Part 2

To Describe, Name, Represent 45

A Challenge to Representation 45

Music = Mushroom 72

The Far East, Mosses, and Wabi-Sabi 77

Part 3

Ecopoetics: Life Force and Resistance 91

Ruderal 91

Rousseauist Walks 92

Sentinel Species 108

‘Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure’ 112

‘Sbarbarian’ Glowworm 116

Ecological Forewarnings 124

Fragility, Resistance 132

Contemporary ‘Poethics’ 134

‘Insurrection of the Humble’ 156

Micro-habitats 166

Part 4

Toward a Symbiotic Way of Thought 173

The Politics of Lichen: at the Origins of Symbiosis 175

Chimeras, Vampires, and Other Common Monsters 192

A ‘Third Place’ 197

Cohabitation 210

Envoi: Sporules 215

Notes 220

Index of Names 255

Index of Lichens 260

Sobre o autor

Vincent Zonca is a researcher and writer who is currently living in Canada.