Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

I explore elemental worldings in Latvian folklore in the context of ecophenomenology and critical genealogy. In the article I demonstrate situated knowledges as part of the lived, experiential genealogies that co-constitute us today and consider their significance for reconnecting with the Earth.

Paper long abstract

In this article, I explore some of the elemental worldings in Latvian folklore, particularly the element of water and its connection with other principal elements in pre-Christian Latvian cosmologies. I am specifically interested in the elemental as an ecophenomenological vehicle for reconnection with the Earth—a reconnection that scholars of environmental humanities demonstrate as necessary in the current dire ecological conditions. The elemental, in contrast to such abstracted concepts as "nature" or "the environment", provides the means for "thinking with" past genealogies and mobilizing sensed knowing. Methodologically, I am, thus, interested in the genealogical and phenomenological exploration of folklore as situated knowledge that allows revisiting animist human-environment relations for developing future ethicalities.

In the first part of the article I explore the theoretical framework of situated knowledges and represent pre-Christian knowing in the context of process ontologies. In the second part of the article I then describe elemental knowing in Latvian folklore and explore it as a vehicle for the transformation of human-environment relationships. My argument is further strenghtened by uniting the approaches of embodied critical thinking and critical genealogy and demonstrating the present significance of past genealogies that constitute us.