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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:
- Wednesday 31 March, -
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 Wednesday 31 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Through extensive experiences and fieldwork in white-water kayaking, I hope to explore and discuss what it can mean to bear responsibility for extinction, by attending with attention and care to unfamiliar terrain.
Paper long abstract:
Based on extensive experiences and fieldwork in white-water kayaking, this paper explores how risk and fear are realised as scholarly activities of attention and care whilst reading and navigating river’s white-water terrain. I will focus on how limiting emotional influences - while reading, enacting and making decisions to navigate class 4-5 white-water - can lead to a more rational and balanced way to move forward in difficult terrain. Furthermore, I will consider what experiences of studying difficult white-water, and its details with attention and care, can tell us about the conflicting side of carelessness, that is panic. Panic can be thought of here as a type of carelessness to attend responsibly to the unfamiliar or unknown, therefore limiting individual’s possibility to move forward in unfamiliar terrain. Hence, we might consider that it is panic’s carelessness whilst engaging with the unfamiliar and the unknown that can lead towards extinction. The main questions to be addressed, will be (1) What can we learn about managing fear from participating in a limit environment and its terrain, with attention and care? (2) What does panic’s carelessness tell us about absence of responsibility? (3) What are the disabling consequences of panic’s overwhelming reaction and its lack of responsibility, in reference to moving towards extinction?
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses how the Sámi people use a chanting technique called ‘yoik’ to engage with extinction and death. Particular attention is given to the way yoik melodies are created, remembered, and forgotten, drawing ‘developing’ or ‘enveloping’ gestures that open or close horizons
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses a variety of ways in which the Sámi people use a chanting technique called ‘yoik’ to engage with extinction and death. A yoik consists of a short melody, with or without lyrics, designed to evoke a person, an animal species, or a place. A yoik vocalisation typically presents a gradual rise of intensity, captured by the metaphor of a horizon progressively approached by the yoiker and revealing a novel field of perception. ‘Absence’ must here be understood not as an absolute property of things, but in relation to specific practices that afford their bringing to presence. I propose to present observations gathered during my doctoral work on the yoik with an emphasis on this limit between absence and presence, in particular by exploring the issue of memories and death. Humans are said to remain alive so long as their yoiks are still chanted. The dead thus retain a mode of presence sustained by the activity of the living, who are responsible for their memory. Some extinct animal species may also retain a form of presence in chants. Individual melodies are eventually forgotten as generations come to pass. In some cases, these may be retrieved and opened up again, for example thanks to recordings stored in archives. A particular pattern of breath is then restored to vitality, sketching a horizon of its own and recalling a Leibnizian understanding of birth and death respectively in terms of ‘development’ and ‘envelopment’.
Paper short abstract:
The notion of limit shares deep similarities with the one of extinction conceived as space of suffering but also of care. I will discuss these two notions in relation to an ongoing project, Running with Salmon suggesting moving from responsibility towards an ethic of vulnerability and reciprocity.
Paper long abstract:
The notion of limit (author PhD) shares deep similarities with the one of extinction as conceived by Van Dooren. The limit (as the wall of the marathoner shows), rather than being a separating line, is a space with high educational potential, which allows one to become exposed, reorienting us to explore what Deleuze called a life. Van Dooren thinks of extinction not as a singular event which is conventionally understood as the death of the last individual (you can say a line) but as spaces where an entangled way of life is disrupted and disconnected. The notion of extinction/limit as spaces of suffering but also of care can shed new light onto what we mean by life and its relation to death. In my presentation I will discuss the notion of limit in relation to a specific project, Running with Salmon (river Dee - Scotland). By weaving human lines of life with those of salmon through running, this project is an experimental one between art, anthropology and education addressing the limit (wall) of death and the one between us humans and salmon (other animals). It suggests that we don’t rely on moral responsibility to address issues of extinction but rather that these could produce an experience of the limit which existentially would touch ourselves and make us hit bottom in Bateson’s sense. This would hopefully reorient our life forcing us to re-imagine the way in which we live it in search of an ethic of vulnerability and reciprocity.
Paper short abstract:
Through a series of preliminary case studies, this paper explores bird migration as a way of thinking through the limits of life in the environmental crisis. Migration is a practical response to changing circumstances and its study elicits an exploration of ongoing life and its limits.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores bird migration as a way of thinking through the limits of life in the environmental crisis. Many birds are migratory. These migratory habits are normally understood as a response to the variable seasonalities of the world, or sometimes to extreme conditions. As such, migration as a practical response by birds to the changeable circumstances of the world enables an exploration of ongoing life and its limits. New developments in monitoring and tracking birds have enabled researchers to learn more about their migrations, particularly changing strategies and routes in the face of environmental change. Migration also gathers together different places that birds use on their journeying, with changes in one place, such as shifting seasonalities and food availability, having knock-on effects in others, such as where the birds breed. Migration also provides a way to think about the challenges of a bird’s life and the limits of its existence. Migrating birds often find themselves off-course or ‘out-of-place’, but these novel situations offer potential for new understandings of life, both for birds and humans. These movements also transgress national boundaries and promote a need for ‘shared responsibility’ in conservation.This paper explores these themes through a series of preliminary case studies: Barnacle and Brent Geese in Europe and Japan; endangered Spoon-billed Sandpipers migrating between Siberia and southeast Asia; and Siberian warblers shifting their migration routes from Asia to Europe via fleeting stopovers on exposed Scottish headlands.