Paper short abstract:

Autoethnographic research, where researcher is also a shaman practitioner, has been seen almost as necessary in the variety of contemporary shamanism. I examine how the experience-based and knowledge could be described and interpreted verbally on my study on contemporary shamanism in Finland.

Paper long abstract:

Shamans bring help, advice, and healing from the spirit world into this world. The work of a shaman is based on the connection of all living things and the possibility of communicating with other beings. So, in shamanic ontology the community includes human and non-human persons, including animals but also other spirits of nature and spiritual beings. Not only shaman’s roles and performances, but also their everyday way of life and even their very ontologies, mediate between the diverse oppositions and possibilities of their culture. Therefore, the challenge of studying contemporary shaman­ism is in its high diversity, and the variety of the experiences of practitioners. In a situation like this, the importance of contextualization is emphasized.

Writing as such, interpreting experience in the field, and understanding it as a fun­damental medium of knowledge, has been at the heart of anthropology and ethno­graphic approaches for decades. In autoethnography, the researcher’s experiences become part of the research material. In contemporary shamanism, autoethnographic research, where the writer is both a researcher and a shaman practitioner, has been seen almost as necessary. Auto-ethnography allows us to iden­tify meanings shared among subjects and within the research community. The description of experiences of auto-ethnographers can highlight the contribution of different human and non-human actors in the meaning-making process in which they are involved. In the case of the generating experience-based and spiritual knowledge, it makes possible to verbalize interactions, for example during the shaman journey between the human and the non-human.

Therefore, auto-ethnographers could act as interpreters of the experience-based, spiritual, and usually tacit knowledge of the field and the spiritual world they convey. The question is how this knowledge is mediated verbally to one’s scientific, or possibly wider, public. In my presentation, I examine my way of making autoethnography on contemporary shamanism in Finland.

Paper short abstract:

Knitting is a technology to produce handmade artefacts, but it is often also described as a spiritual practice. The paper discusses the genre of narrative non-fiction and utilising the practices of creative writing – based on my own experiences while writing a book on knitting for a wider audience.

Paper long abstract:

Knitting has been an indispensable skill (for women) in the past to make clothes and accessories for protection against the cold. Today handicrafts have become a voluntary way of spending one’s free time. But knitting can be much more than a hobby. For many western women (sometimes men too), knitting can be a form of self-expression, a peaceful moment in the midst of stressful everyday life, a form of meditation. Thus, knitting can also be seen as a spiritual practice and it could consist or reveal religious meanings and values.

Narrative non-fiction or creative non-fiction is literary genre which have become more and more popular. The creativity means, in particular, the use of creative writing methods and exercises in non-fiction writing. In addition, it refers to narrative non-fiction writing as its own genre. Creativity also implies the professionalism of the non-fiction writer and researcher to move from one genre to another, from one medium to another, taking advantage of the characteristics of genres and instruments, but also breaking with traditional ways of thinking, reading, doing and writing. Creative nonfiction writing may deal with themes that are for the author extremely important, personally experienced and intimate. In a narrative non-fiction book the author has permission to be present in the text. In this case, the thing, event or person being presented is described through the author's own personal perspectives and approaches.

In my paper, I discuss the genre of narrative non-fiction, and the ways for utilizing the practices of creative writing in writing non-fiction. The paper is based on my own experiences while I wrote a book on knitting for a wider audience.

Paper short abstract:

Looking into the challenges involved in speaking about ethical realism in a clear way, accessible to laypersons, yet without demagoguery or reification; considering the nature of the referents which could give ethical debates a "factual" character.

Paper long abstract:

(This topic is something I am assigning for myself as a spring project, while my dissertation is being officially examined. My thoughts on the subject here are still quite preliminary.)

The terms “transcendent” and “transcendental” are used to relate to a particularly important topic: the nature of the sort of reality that is capable of making particular actions inherently, factually, objectively morally right or wrong. In this regard the discussion inevitably tends to drift towards the ideas of Immanuel Kant on the topic. Kant, of course, by his own admission, wrote in rather opaque German, and his translators have faced considerable challenges in trying to make sense of his concepts in English (generally using “transcendental” as their term of choice). Thus, over the generations, moral philosophers and philosophers of religion have developed a certain semi-standardized vocabulary for referring to certain important things, that may or may not exist, in a somewhat standardized manner. The problem has been most acute among those who think primarily in German, but those who philosophize in English and French have been far from innocent in the matter.

I am interested in giving a presentation regarding the challenges involved in speaking about ethical realism in a clear way, accessible to laypersons, yet without demagoguery or reification. This inevitably involves finding standardized ways of talking about concepts coming from outside of our sense perception, from beyond the realm of our personal emotional experiences, and ideally from beyond the historical social circumstances in which we find ourselves. This combination of requirements makes the topic extremely difficult to speak about with clarity, accuracy and precision; but perhaps not impossible.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation will look at how the ideas of Principia Discordia are written into new creative literature evolving through the times and through the writers’ imagination. This creates a continuity of Discordian worldview transferred via the technology of writing, and the act of reading.

Paper long abstract:

“A Discordian is prohibited of believing what he reads. It is so written!” says Principia Discordia, the central literary work of Discordianism. This, by contradiction, makes the acts of writing and reading part of the Discordian catma (or dogma for dog people). The Discordian worldview has always spread through, among others, the medium of written text both off and online. The Black Iron Prison was created by Discordians who, to an extent, have been inspired by Principia Discordia; likewise, 2023 (Ancients of Mu-Mu) was inspired by the Illuminatus! trilogy (Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea), which in turn refers again to Principia Discordia. Heretical deviance and excommunication of others are also pivotal Discordian practices, which makes co-writing new spiritual or inspired texts with other Discordian thinkers a very Discordian way of expression. Writing never happens in a vacuum, but co-authoring underlines its communal practice, and is reflected in the conglomerate of discordant ideas present in these volumes. Discordianism is also known for its elusiveness and transgressive camp attitude towards religion and spirituality which is very apparent in all the four works.

In this presentation I will look at how the ideas of Principia Discordia are written into new fantastic, artistic, and creative literature, evolving through the times. This creates a continuity of Discordian thinking through the act of reading and the technology of writing, and then reading again, and so forth. While Discordianism is much more than just the most popular published works, these books are so closely related that they are great material for analysing how writing is utilized to develop the philosophy and to spread the ideas of a religious or philosophical movement in a time of scientific and post-modern thinking.