Like a Seaweed

Transformativity in and from "between", through María Zambrano and Michel Serres

Abstract

The paper describes the transformative process that is generated by dwellin in the "in-between", outlining the roots of a philosophy of vulnerability that emphasizes the paideutic and prophetic role of the exiled and fragile. It is through the metaphor of the seaweed that the philosophers Maria Zambrano and Michel Serres narrate the unconventional condition of the fragile and the exiled: to be out-of-place enough to be able to move to see, opening oneself to the transformation this entails. The two philosophers' thinking is inspired by a poetic and maternal sensibility, that prefers perception to rational thought, listening and observing the world from the bowels, and that accredits the dimension of vulnerability as favored by the philosophical approach.