Paper short abstract:

By applying a sensory-ethnographic and posthumanistic approach, I examine the Southern Kashubian landscape from the perspective of sand, by following its transversal paths and attuned matter. My aim is to show how sand and humans interact, and how they impose their regimes onto each other.

Paper long abstract:

Although Southern Kashubia is mainly noted for its lakes and forests, there is another, at first sight inconspicuous, elemental actor, which turns out to be even more dominant: the sand. By applying a sensory-ethnographic and posthumanistic approach, I examine the landscape from the perspective of sand, following its transversal paths, nomadic tendencies, and listening to its eloquent and attuned matter.

The sand, mostly invisible in its everydayness and proximity, comes to the fore in various ways: vagabonding, it creeps into every possible niche and sets itself in motion while interacting with other elements. When a sand mound piled up by heavy machinery starts to slide during intense rainfall and buries the adjacent farmland, the sand's highhanded behaviour unsettles the residents who start to oppose the sand-regime: by channelling the pathways of sand and water or by covering an unruly dirt track with a firm asphalt layer. However, as soon as the work is completed, the sand, dancing with other elements, enters the stage and destroys it from the edges. Thereby the sand not only undermines human regimes and order systems, but actually reveals them occasionally. Hence, the sand filling the air narrates about the droughts caused by climate change and thus articulates anthropocene processes.

In a perspectivistic mode, I portray the interaction between sand and humans, firstly "from the activity" of the sand, secondly "from the activity" of the human addressed, and thirdly by integrating both perspectives within the notion Stimmung (attunement), into which both, humans and sand, are immersed.