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- Convenors:
-
Tim Ingold
(University of Aberdeen)
Andrew Whitehouse (University of Aberdeen)
Paolo Maccagno (University of Aberdeen)
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- Stream:
- Extinction
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
What does it mean for life to reach its limit? Does the limit bring life to a close or open up into a space of renewal? This panel will explore alternative experiences of the limit, drawing out their implications both for ways of understanding extinction and for the responsibilities we bear for it.
Long Abstract:
At extinction, life reaches its limit. But is this limit a terminal point, a threshold to be crossed, an asymptote towards which one draws ever closer, or a horizon that recedes on advance? What does it mean to live close to the limit, or even to inhabit the limit itself? Does it bring life itself to a close, or open up from the inside into a space of renewal? Mainstream science, focusing on species and their continuation, tends to equate life with a genetic capital, passed down the generations along lines of descent. Extinction, then, marks the end of the line. Yet a counter-current of vitalism focuses more on the organism and its development, regarding it less as a vehicle of transmission than as a vortex in a current of life, which can hold out only for so long before dissolving back into the flow. Death, then, marks not the end of life but the moment at which a failing body is finally overwhelmed by the intensity of the vital energies from which it was once formed. Here the measure of extinction would lie not in the closure of any particular lineages, or in the extent of species loss, but in the capture and containment of life itself, not least by the machinations of science. In this panel we will explore alternative experiences of the limit, drawing out their implications both for our understanding of extinction and for our ideas of what it means to bear responsibility for it.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Mammoths have been extinct for thousands of years, yet their remains are found in large quantities in Siberia. This paper offers a perspective on mammoth extinction, scientific engagement with the animal remains and it highlights the connection between extinction and life, loss and continuation.
Paper long abstract:
Mammoths, one of the most enigmatic animals known to humanity, have been extinct for thousands of years. In Sakha (Yakutia), north eastern part of Russia, mammoth remains are well preserved due to permafrost and can be found in large quantities. This paper offers a perspective on mammoth extinction, engagement with the animal remains and it highlights the connection between extinction and life, loss and continuation.Currently, teams of international scientists are engaging with excavated remains of mammoths to extract good quality cells. This biological material of these extinct species is used for the research conducted by international teams of evolutionary biologists and geneticists in their attempt to de-extinct these animals. While there is no limit to technological and scientific advancements showcased in these experiments, there are moral and ethical limits that make such scientific engagement controversial.On the other hand, despite being extinct physically, mammoths, as a symbol, have been used for quite some time. Such symbolic resurrection includes cultural, economic and ideological exploits of this emblematic animal. This case study demonstrates a range of engagements with the mammoth tusks, from artistic creative works, political profits to environmental devastation ensued by digging and other negative effects from such “mammoth hunting” in northern communities. This paper considers these aspects to evaluate their role in the process of mammoth (de)extinction, as well as to query the very notion of extinction.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the limit experienced by young people facing storms at sea when sailing on tall ships. A storm at sea weathered together, is a vivid and highly perceptive experience that meshes and touches every living being on board.
Paper long abstract:
Surviving a storm at sea is something etched in your memory: it will always be remembered. It is an overwhelming experience in which the relationship between the crew and the boat prevails. It is an act of truth for your crew, your boat and yourself in which everyone takes part, with their own responsibilities, without further explanation than the sharing of the experience.Sailing experiences lived as life paths of their participants, not only transform the youngsters, they also become part of them as a ‘time and a site of extreme attentiveness’ (Serres 1997). This threshold of tensions aboard develops a momentum in which impossibility permeates into possibility, and chaos and disorientation go back to the breathing and the flow of sailing, and to the breathing and flow of the participants.When the storm is over, or one is back on shore is when you realise that all the movement and energy absorbed, has touched you to the very core of your soul. Like the eye of the storm always adjusting its different pressures and in continuous movement, the young participants sharing this experience will remain open-ended and moved towards life. Storms at sea are then, not weathering extinction but capturing experiences of life in danger of extinction, intensities of flowing energy to remember when modern life seem to be defined by borders, marks or titles. Like storms, where initial tension subsequently vanishes into the medium, life experienced in this way is in a constant state of flux.
Paper short abstract:
I will illustrate how the personal experience of the limit in so-called extreme sports has nourished my anthropological imagination by reconfiguring control as tuning with life forces and responsibility as finding the right rhythm between survival and extinction
Paper long abstract:
In my presentation, I will illustrate how the personal experience of the limit in so-called extreme sports has nourished my anthropological imagination. In my personal encounter with the limit as a professional in sports such as kitesurf and alpine ski, the limit has constituted both an occasion to interfere with the currents of life by blending with them and the challenge of not being overwhelmed by these currents. The experience of the limit, for accomplished kitesurfers or skiers, is to play with the vital energies within and around them, yet keeping the control over their body. Control, in this experience, configures not as a dominative act but as the ability of a body to accommodate transformations while enduring and surviving. Control is not control-over-something, rather is a rhythm. My sport experiences have influenced my work in anthropology. It explores the implications of adopting an ecosystemic understanding of health, one that conceives health not as a property of bodies but as an emergent property of a dynamic pattern of entanglements. I try to understand what it means to live well and survive in a world in which, by necessity, we nurture but also hurt each other through the very fact of living. To try to answer this question reconfigures responsibility as finding the right rhythm between survival and extinction. In other words: is it really worth to overcome the limit or there is more to be gained by practicing it?
Paper short abstract:
Life, experience and the limit of becoming river from the senses and physicality of the human. Through art-based research I hope to transmit and discuss the vital current of life within rivers and the human, to become-river and re-configure the limits of vitality and extinction.
Paper long abstract:
Despite the massive rates of extinction of species today, the only extinction that seems to matter to the human species is its own. Hence our disregard for the life and death of the natural surroundings, the non-human. The human is largely made of water (45-75%). so, what is our relationship to nature’s carriers of water, the rivers and lakes that sustain us? In the UK, a common term used by local authorities to describe a river as an ‘ecosystem service’ hints at the limitations of an imagination that objectifies the river as a resource or service for humans. This presentation explores an art-based research case study of the Dee River and the local people who live near its banks in Aberdeenshire. The study will follow the river’s journey through moving image and poetry to explore the qualities of the Dee, and the deeper consciousness of the human ‘becoming-river’, and the limits of the human as river. In this way I hope to transmit the vital current of life within the river and the people who experience the river. Is it possible to move a human relationship of the river that is deemed at the national level as being an ‘ecosystem service’ to something that is part of our inner existence of being human? It is through creative imagination that the limit of our own extinction can be broken, the non-human given ‘life’ and paradoxically life returned to the human.