A metonym is a figure of speech that transfers the meaning of a word to another based on a relation of proximity, either material, spatial or causal. For instance, ‘breaking a sweat’ meaning ‘to work hard’, ‘Canberra’ to signify the Australian government, or ‘he turned red’ to indicate the embarrassment that causes a white person to blush. Metonyms are, said differently, full of material power.
Thinking with moss as a metonym leads to a form of embodied and sensory learning. Thinking and walking with moss, we refocus our attention on the here and now: the bank of the canal, the large rocks on the mangrove edge, the shady patch in the back garden. A here and now made of localized encounters and trajectories that unfurl in all directions, in time and space. Moss is metonymic because it creates material and spatial links between the watery ecologies and the urban spaces of Sydney.
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