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- Convenors:
-
César Enrique Giraldo Herrera
(Leibniz-ZMT Centre for Marine Tropical Research)
Caroline Gatt (University of Graz)
- Discussant:
-
Tim Ingold
(University of Aberdeen)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Stream:
- Cognition and evolution
- Location:
- Examination Schools Room 10
- Start time:
- 19 September, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
As anthropologists we are increasingly taking seriously the onto/epistemologies of people we work with & that nonhumans are creative & make sense of the world. Through entanglements with other ways of being/meaning papers will explore what these may offer the recursive re-creation of anthropology.
Long Abstract:
In recent decades academia has increasingly acknowledged that disciplines are in need of reformulation in order to transcend rigid distinctions between natural and humanistic subjects of study. In anthropology this has taken two distinct but related forms. There is an unprecedented interest in taking seriously the onto/epistemologies of the people we work with. Consequently, we are acknowledging that nonhumans are creative and make sense of the world. In these projects it is the very constitution of an emergent world that is explored.
While perspectives are widening, anthropocentrism is often barely displaced, preserving the illusion that certain forms of agency and semiosis, such as symbols, are exclusively human. Simultaneously, the emphasis on language in anthropology has been a barrier to taking seriously other onto/epistemologies. However, an earlier sense of the verb "συμβάλλω (sumbállō) — to throw together, to unite their streams when referring to rivers, and paths, to collect, to come together, to meet, to join hands, to twist ropes…" suggests symbols might be more widespread than human exceptionalism allows for. We suggest that the growth of emergence ontologies in academia enables the fruitful throwing together of ecological communities/communities of knowledge, such as indigenous ways of knowing and artistic practice, that were previously considered incommensurable or irrelevant.
We invite papers that, grounded in entanglements with other ways of being/meaning, explore what these may offer to the recursive re-creation of anthropology. How could anthropology reconsider its ecology of practice to take seriously other ways of knowing/being, whether human or other than human?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
The present paper is the result of the ethnographical fieldwork developed in Vista Hermosa, Meta (Colombia) aimed to identify a multiple set of connections among humans and non-humans, environment and war, whose axis is the landmine. This is what I have called land-mined landscapes
Paper long abstract:
The use of land mines in an internal armed conflict conduct us to think about "territorialization". The decision to lay mines depends on the lecture of territory made by the warring parties and their perception about how "the other" moves on space. Guerrillas use mines because they are cheap, easy to manufacture and effective to weaken "the other" by wounding and maiming them. These artifacts are produced according with conditions and resources available in each particular territory. Consequently, in a way, these devices are deeply intertwined with those environments and cultures within which they are produced. In Colombia, FARC learnt its techniques to lay mines from the Vietcong, the Vietnamese guerrilla that fought against the US in the 60's and 70's. In fact, the know how for the production and use of explosive devices is globally connected but locally adapted knowledge. Decisions about where to lay every mine involve a deep understanding of the space. The territory is "manipulated" to create an image of apparent normality. Second, the mined areas are carefully marked with secret signs such as scratches in the trees or pieces of toilet paper attached to plants. This way, the laying of mines becomes a process of territory making for war purposes. At the same, the landmine, as an artifact (we could say an actant), operates the hub of global network that only can be understood through an embodied lecture of landscape..
Paper short abstract:
Semiotician Thomas Sebeok argued in 1980 that apes could not learn human language. But do they have languages of their own? This paper reads new biological research through the lens of Peircean sign theory to explore how intelligibility equals privilege when human and nonhuman codes collide.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropology is one of the few academic disciplines seriously concerned with researching the spirit world. Interests of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness include spirit possession, trance, and altered states of consciousness. We also study ghosts and other manifestations of the still-present deceased. When a student told Professor Jean-Guy Goulet that he could not publish an article without the permission of a deceased Cree elder, Goulet instructed him to ask the relative anyway. Not all anthropologists so easily afford agency to non-corporeal persons—but, if they did, what would analyses of such interactions look like?
I propose that the same methods we use to understand the communication codes of nonhuman animals can be applied to parsing human symbolic systems on the margins of scientific verifiability, or perhaps simply referentiality. As far as human forms of nonverbal communication might seem from language, they are unlikely as strange as those of the octopus. The signaling capacities of this slimy, 300-million-year old creature evolved in a manner radically different from our own. Octopuses do not speak. They can, however, see with their skin, gesture, blush, issue blows, and squirt jets of water. Dousing disfavored research assistants was a favorite pastime of octopuses in a Middlebury College lab. This paper applies a revisionist Peircean framework to recent biological research on three kinds of nonhuman animal communication—cephalopod, corvid, and cetacean—to trace correspondences between human and nonhuman codes, explore possibilities for decipherment, and question the implications intelligibility holds for affording rights to human and other-than-human persons.
Paper short abstract:
I posit that gratitude generates a positive resonance according to many indigenous ways of knowing and that we should reject materialist concepts from Freudian, Darwinian and Marxian theories.
Paper long abstract:
I argue that the spirituality of all beings is certain and that enacting gratitude is central to understanding it. This realization calls for human actions and thought to be aligned and intertwined with the spiritual essence and combined wisdoms of indigenous ways of knowing; this may engender a restructuring of human institutions, a daunting task that can only be achieved through lasting collaborations and work.
I adopt a creative and reflexive approach for connecting indigenous ways of knowing with ethnographic work on improvisation, creativity, spirituality and religion. I take into account the Stó:lo notion of shxwelí, the 'spirit power that lives inside everything' (McHalsie 2007), consider my experiences among indigenous wisdom-inspired and spiritualist improvising musicians in Brazil, and how dream experiences affect the life trajectories in which all beings are implicated (Bohm 1980). Understanding and applying the wisdom of gratitude in our lives fosters positive forms of resonance and growth.
Anthropology's immersion in colonialist history and scientific modernity demands constant revision and skepticism regarding the concepts we adopt. Thus, we should be ever ready to change our ways of acting and thinking, embracing the 'threat of chaos' that follows from shifting a 'whole system of abductions' (Bateson 1979).
We should strive for the re-enchantment of anthropological thinking and the critical transformation of taken for granted scientific theories in biology and cosmology, their concepts and formulations. We should ultimately and decisively undermine atheistic and materialistic beliefs about life, especially those that emerged from Freudian, Marxian and Darwinian notions.