Contemporary animism

Exploring the intra-actions of new animist and new materialist movements within the environmental (post)humanities, this paper argues for transductive methods in-between the disciplines of the sciences and humanities and Western, Eastern, and Indigenous disciplines beyond the academy. Following such feminist technoscience scholars as Karen Barad and Donna Haraway down one outgrowth of trails and animist environmental educators like Priscilla Stuckey and M.J. Barrett  and Robin Kimmerer and Winona LaDuke down others, we observe different sets of subjects and objects. Yet each scholar shares an open attentiveness to the liveliness and relational reciprocity of the more-than-human. Being present on the margins of any bounded field or at the crossroads where a pattern of intersecting lines of flight has been seen, it is advantageous to present a gift. In this way, the researcher is not only open to receiving gifts but to the habituation of a transductive relational patterning which allows for the emergence of more expansive becomings.

Presented at the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture conference on Religion and Science at the University of Florida on January 17, 2016

Call me wolfing. I was murdered in Lancashire (now a part of Cumbria) in 1390CE, by some pre-enlightened gentlemen. It was just before the perceptual turning point from Theos to Mechanos; from a transcendent God to little ghosts in your little machines.

New animism, as derived from Ojibwe philosophy and articulated by anthropologists of religion, begins in a relational worldview and implies ways of knowing that challenge Cartesian dualism. Opening with a story of my relationship with a weeping birch tree in Ohio, I use the relational epistemology of animism and of feminist theorist Lorraine Code to examine four ways in which my experience with the birch tree, interpreted within an animist-feminist relational worldview, challenges Cartesian dualism. To elaborate animist ways of knowing,

Focusing on the Western intellectual lineage, this essay traces the human archetypal metaphor for the universe as it shifts three times, from that of a great mind, to a great machine, to the modern-day transition toward an organismic view of the universe. We explore how the way we talk about nature can ultimately be scaled to a grounding cosmic metaphor, which itself comes to serve as the lens through which we interpret our deepest questions, - about what we are, and our place in reality. Discussed are the implications of the emerging organismic paradigm to the fundamental orientation of the self to the world, to other beings, and its place in reality.

Do it Yourself (DiY) is a participatory culture which exemplifies a particular ethos in its approach to technology and materials. Rather than engage with 'complete' technologies, such as a technology supplied as ready-to-go item, the DiY practitioners examined in this thesis engage with the raw materials of garbage and recycling, 'incomplete', broken and discarded technologies. In this type of DiY practice the emphasis is towards creating individualised and custom-built forms of technology: often made from components and materials which have been re-functioned from their original intention to produce new and unexpected functionalities; practices which disrupt the dominant discourses of technology.

Psychedelic shamanism might be thought of primarily as a communication with Nature, for instance by asking the plants directly which ones can heal a particular illness, or by asking the plant spirit to teach them, or by using the plant in aiding the psychological metamorphosis into a plant or animal “allies.” Given that shamans have most likely been communicating with Nature in this way for thousands of years, it might well be asked what can be gained for humanity’s relationship with the ecosystem from such a dialogue and, perhaps more importantly, how can Nature benefit from this relationship?

How do we take indigenous animism seriously in the sense proposed by Viveiros de Castro? In this article, I pose this challenge to all the major theories of animism, stretching from Tylor and Durkheim, over Lévi-Strauss to Ingold. I then go on to draw a comparison between Žižek's depiction of the cynical milieu of advanced capitalism in which ideology as " false consciousness " has lost force and the Siberian Yukaghirs for whom ridiculing the spirits is integral to their game of hunting. Both know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still they go along with it; both are ironically self-conscious about not taking the ruling ethos at face value. is makes me suggest an alternative: perhaps it is time for anthropology not to take indigenous animism too seriously.

This chapter explores the Timorese notion of Lulik, a term that is often glossed in English as sacred, holy or forbidden. Common uses of the term include Uma Lulik (sacred house), Rai Lulik (sacred land), Bee Lulik (sacred water), foho Lulik (sacred mountain) and Nai or amo Lulik (sacred priest, for Catholics). When Timorese hear the term ‘Lulik’, it immediately stops them in their tracks, they pay full attention, they pay full respect, they are afraid; some would even go so far as to say it makes them obey without hesitation. Because of the perceived power of Lulik, some Timorese have interpreted it as a form of ‘magic’. Yet such a simple equation overlooks much of what is distinctive about the term and its many uses. The Church, for example, has decried Lulik as an ‘animist’ residual of pre-Christian culture. And the very idea of Lulik has similarly been deemed ‘uncivilized’ by the Portuguese (atrasado) and the Indonesians (terbelakang) when they colonized Timor-Leste. As a result, Timorese are often ashamed and afraid to talk about the concept of Lulik—as, again, they have been led to believe that it is a negative animist belief system. This in turn creates a sense of insecurity, and a complex cultural dynamic. This paper will explore the meaning and practical application of Lulik in day-to-day life.

It seems that profound 'End of Life Experiences' quite commonly involve the appearance of a personally significant animal, bird, or butterfly.  A brief autobiographical account of appearances by birds, in dreams and in the flesh, around the time of significant deaths is related to the widespread folk tradition of soul birds, and to ongoing debates in contemporary animism.

Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal (Vol. 6 No. 2) (July 2015)

Although embodied knowing is fundamental to our experience, no previous study has detailed its role in a specific spiritual group. This thesis offers a new model of embodied situated cognition, and develops an embodied hermeneutics which uses Focusing (Gendlin, 1981) in phenomenological research. I apply these tools to the first detailed ethnography of Eco-Paganism to reveal powerful processes of connection which have considerable significance for religious studies and ecopsychology.

Chapters 2 and 3 survey the literature on Eco-Paganism and embodied cognition. Chapter 4 uses the latter to synthesise a model of embodied situated cognition which I call the 'enactive process model', because it draws primarily on enactivism (inter alia, Varela et al., 1991), and Gendlin's process philosophy (Gendlin, 1997a). Current research shows that key aspects of cognition are situated and embodied (inter alia, Varela et al., 1991), such that we often think with place (inter alia, Preston, 2003). This raises epistemological questions which I address in a discussion of embodied philosophy in Chapter 5. I then explain my embodied hermeneutics methodology, and the practical application of the Focusing Interview technique, in Chapter 6. My fieldwork autoethnography, Chapter 7, provides an intuitive, felt understanding of life on a road protest site, and is followed by ethnographies of urban and protest site Eco-Paganism in Chapters 8 and 9. Chapter 10 discusses six processes which create a sense of connection to the organic environment, which include the felt sense (Gendlin, 1981) and the wilderness effect (Greenway, 1995).

I conclude that a type of wilderness effect can catalyze the emergence of a complex 'nature based' spirituality amongst site Eco-Pagans, while a less intense form affects urban Eco-Pagans. Eco-Pagans sometimes use these processes of connection to think with a place. The processes of connection and thinking with place are fundamental to embodied situated knowing in Eco-Paganism, and help explain many of its distinctive aspects. By demonstrating the importance of embodied situated knowing in Eco-Paganism, I highlight the potential for further research into processes of connection and the impact of different physical spaces on religious practice in general.

The question which runs throughout this talk can be stated in stark form: is it a mistake to take our interest in an ethnographic phenomenon in the direction of empirical investigation when what is really needed with respect to its clarity is an imaginative contemplation of it? It is my overall argument that the Malinowskian recourse to ethnographical evidence is misguided. As an example, I take the animist conception of 'soul'. I will show how it is essentially an imaginary issue. Rendering it intelligible, therefore, involves launching a speculative investigation into the source of its origin. This finds an echo in Frazer, the last survivor of the old 'armchair school'. His style of anthropology was marked by a deliberate speculative interrogation of cross-cultural ethnography -a process whereby abstract thinking gives force and meaning to ethnographic observations. Let me say how honoured I feel by the invitation to deliver the Malinowski Memorial Lecture. Honoured, but also a little anxious. For I have been foolish enough to use this opportunity to question the ethnographic tradition of Bronislaw Malinowski. Indeed, the problem I want to consider here is one of key importance to him. It has to do with the relation between speculative imagination and ethnographic observation. The crux of my argument will be to show that we will get nowhere if we confine ourselves to a trust in the concreteness of ethnographic facts. Instead I will seek to convince you that every manifestation of actual social life is more or less adequately expressive of a virtual totality or all-inclusive force, which operates on a purely imaginative plane and which cannot, therefore, be the object of direct observation or first-hand experience. Anthropological insight into the starting-point of social life may, then, begin not from what we conventionally regard as the solidity of actual empirical observation, but, on the contrary, from the scholar's speculative imagination.

This chapter introduces the notion of 'oneirogenesis' or the origin of daytime beliefs in dream experiences. Dreams with an exceptionally vivid sensation of reality ('reality dreams')--of which there are many types (e.g., nightmares, lucid dreams, flying dreams, sex dreams)--are particularly likely to engender and modify waking beliefs. Moreover, animistic beliefs (e.g., that the soul exists independent of the body) and other beliefs in spiritual entities and events are especially likely to be influenced by such dreams. Examples are provided from both the historical literature and laboratory studies.

Of the many books I have read this past year, only this one would I call beautiful. It is not just a read but an encounter with a deeply inspiring being who seems to become an actual presence herself—someone to guide us back toward consciously awakening to the wondrous, sensuous world around us. Far beyond the information purveyed or even the stories told, Laura Sewall herself emerges from her luminous prose as though to point with a gentle smile to the doorway which will lead us from our self-made enclosure, from the prison of our own device.

Contemporary understandings of ethics consistently situate them as the result of a focussed rational and intellectual process within a narrow range of academic and religious areas. I challenge this approach, and theorise an embodied approach to ethics as both possible and desirable. I argue that such an approach may be most easily located in the contemporary Pagan approach to environmental ethics, given that the rhetoric of Paganism valorises the body and privileges the natural environment. While I agree that Paganism is indeed a nature religion, I theorise that there are two simultaneous yet contradictory discourses of nature informing Paganism: the animist (privileging nature qua nature) and the esoteric (privileging a symbolic understanding of nature).
I assert that my qualitative fieldwork demonstrates that some Pagans have developed an embodied ethic through close relationship with nature. I acknowledge that the development of such a profound relationship requires considerable effort and a great deal of time. I then compare this against quantitative data from an online survey of self-identifying Pagans in order to establish the extent to which such an approach might be representative. The initial analysis of the online data supports the assertion that my respondents are likely to express positive attitudes to the environment, but are unlikely to participate in activism in relation to a number of specified areas. Deeper analysis compares the data between different groups identified along the animist/esoteric scale, and suggests that those Pagans who are more influenced by the animist discourse are indeed more likely to express environmentally friendly attitudes and to take part in activism.
I conclude that such an embodied environmental ethic is possible, although this may be substantially contingent upon lifestyle. I posit that by understanding the diversity of discourses informing Pagan approaches to nature, academics may be able to more accurately interpret the diversity of Pagan approaches, and Pagans themselves may be able to move forward in discussions between their various traditions.

The concept of animism has undergone multiple iterations. Lately, it has found a
resurgence in contemporary theorists that straddle the evolving disciplines of anthropology and
philosophy. The concept of animism in anthropological history was largely contextualized in 19th century
evolutionism and progressionism. This era held animism as a social construct largely denigrated to the
realm of the “primitive” in human society. In the realm of early ecologically-oriented anthropology,
“animism” was understood as a pervasive universal that occurred in the earliest stages of every social
system; thus the notion of “animism”, at least in its primary application, could be considered a theoretical
principle; a principle that originally existed as a structural conceptualization embedded in cultural
evolutionism. While particular elements of this early conceptualization have subtly persisted in the
discipline of anthropology, new mechanisms for understanding and contextualizing animism in
contemporary anthropological theory and philosophy have emerged to re-conceptualize animism. This
“new” animism could simultaneously be expressed as theory of “post-Cartesian animism”. While my
examples of contemporary understandings of animism derive from the socio-cultural realities of the
Upper Kolyma Yukaghirs, a small group of indigenous Siberian hunters in Nelemnoye, Sakha Republic,
Russia, this review is primary concerned with the theoretical understory post-Cartesian animism. More
specifically, I will analyze the theoretical trajectory of animism from its early conceptualizations within
19th century Anthropology, to a modern understanding and visualization of animism through a post-
Cartesian lens and a re-conceptualization of cultural phenomenology. In this way, re-vitalizing “animism”
from its historical roots has the potential to more thoroughly frame epistemological complexities at the
interface of the human and the animate “other”.

Thinking is not only a natural experience for the human being. It's also a cultural experience of nature and of the world. So it neeeds some categories to distinguish the Natural and the Cultural areas, but these categories are not the same from a particular culture to another. Animism has been regularly misregarded in the western philosophy because the animist thinkers and cultures don't share the same frontiers between the Natural and the Cultural spheres. Looking back to Spinoza or Leibniz, we can better understand what the african and latin american people think about the difference between humans and non-humans. I try, through the work of Descola on those matters, to argue for the philosophical rehabilitation of humanism in our times. A new philosophical ecology is then possible.

Might we understand these seemingly different ideas--so called primitive animist belief in a living, relational world versus more recent concepts like deep ecology, environmental ethics and nonhuman politics--as linked at a deeper epistemological level? What links these ideas, and what are the potential implications if we were to take these similarities seriously? This paper is an attempt to reengage with this question: Can the belief in a living, animate world gain a new political relevance for the twenty first century? My argument here is that taking these claims seriously does matter, and the political implications are quite deep and far reaching.

Si bien la teoría literaria y la antropología son disciplinas que formulan una aproximación
“objetiva” del fenómeno lingüístico en la sociedad, ambas evidencian problemas de traducción e interpretación al momento de fijar un objeto de estudio dinámico como es el lenguaje. atravesando estas dos disciplinas, el artículo profundiza en algunos conceptos de la teoría animista y la heterogeneidad literaria para abordar mejor un objeto literario peruano que pone en relieve modos de representación del referente amazónico. La estructura se compone de tres partes. En la primera, se desarrollará la noción de discurso heterogéneo propuesta por Antonio Cornejo Polar, quien analiza algunos detalles de la novela Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo y otros brujos de la Amazonía.
En el segundo apartado, se profundizará en el concepto de animismo a partir de la reinterpretación de Philippe Descola y se tratará de establecer una relación con la propuesta de Cornejo Polar. Finalmente, en la tercera parte, se mostrará la problemática de LTMIM frente a sus posibilidades interpretativas, con el fin de buscar una estructura analítica pertinente para comprender mejor esta obra.

This article reflects the relationship between Qom indigenous and their dogs based on ethnographic information. The aim is to understand the position of these animals in a sociocosmology where the border between wildlife and humans is unclear. We inquire about the special care and teaching processes that are the subject of dogs and how they becomes an extension of the hunter. We also asked about mascotization process and how the relationships established with the ‘other’ animal drive transformation processes that link existing. Finally we argue that the dog is the paradigm of ambiguity but also an excellent example of how, through a process of transformation, the beings that exist in the sociocosmology Qom can cross categories.

Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) is a work of fiction set in a dystopic future that has been altered irreversibly by climate change. The text, in terms of how it functions as a narrative and represents its narrative space, emerges as a potent example of the absolute interdependence between the non-human environment and the human. In my paper, I explore how such a narrative form deployed on a spatial language not only dissolves the strict division between nature/culture, but also emboldens the discourse on ‘new animism’. It is my argument that when a climate change novel, taking the example of The Swan Book, is also animist realist, it meets one of the biggest challenges facing climate change fiction
at present, which is to enable its readers to recognise the fallibility of human exceptionalism.

Environmental Values Environmental Values is an international peer-reviewed journal that brings together contributions from philosophy, economics, politics, sociology, geography, anthropology, ecology and other disciplines, which relate to the present and future environment of human beings and other species. In doing so we aim to clarify the relationship between practical policy issues and more fundamental underlying principles or assumptions.

By reflecting on new and emerging perspectives and trends in the contemporary humanities and social sciences, including the critique of anthropocentrism,
Eurocentrism and secularism, the questioning of human epistemic authority over knowledge building, the ‘indigenization of the academy’, and debates over the
applicability of the humanities to the problems of the contemporary world, the author identifies tendencies that are relevant to discussions on the future role of
archaeology. In her analysis of the ontological and animist/ic turns, the author claims that asking the questions ‘what is an object?’ and ‘is it alive?’ within the
context of this paradigm shift might support the emergence of an alternative worldview based on a participatory perspective of the world that understands
(new) animism as a different way of being human and relating to the world on different terms. The author asks whether it is possible for archaeology (as the discipline of ‘animated bones and things’) to potentially become an intellectual platform for exercising an alternative worldview.

The present work addresses the potential heterogeneity of César Calvo’s novel Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo based on the comments of Antonio Cornejo Polar. By including the details of the controversy between Cortázar and Arguedas that took place at the end of the 1960s, we will analyze the presence of these two authors as characters in the novel, trying to link them to the main tensions of the controversy. Likewise, we will comment on how these apparitions, seen from the lens of the legacy of Cornejo Polar, seek to sketch a heterogeneous socio-historical dimension between the Amazonian and the Andean universe in the terrain of fiction.

Main aim of this paper is to present the ethnographic contex on which French anthropologist Philippe Descola builds his reconceptualisation of animism. This researcher distances himself from the classic concept formulated by the British anthropologist Sir Edward B.Tylor, in which animism is seen as a form of religious belief that assigns a spiritual aspect to everything that lives (1871). Thus, he offers not only a new perspective on the phenomenon, but also an anthropological method of research. In the years 1976-1978 Descola conducted fieldwork among the Achuar Indians. Among the broad spectrum of his anthropological interests, the Achuar relations with their natural environment were of central importance. Based on solid field material, he proposed an interesting reformulation of how we might understand animism so that it becomes more consistent with the empirical phenomena it is intended to describe.

But, self-consciousness transcended (as opposed to self-dissolution, so the remembering self remains itself remembered) could have metaphysical implications: Those who have cultivated the transcending of self-consciousness in life, experiencing it over and over again and gaining a measure of control over the awakening, may well be able to retain the artifacts of selfhood – memories – as original awareness leaves the body behind, that is, in death. Just as the electricity continues after the light bulb darkens, in either case, life energy withdraws from the body but continues as unbound dynamism, but, in the latter case of self as silent witness, the memories of a lifetime may go with it, perhaps to enrich the manifold of experience in that source, which, in this way undergoes change and learning. Without those memories, able to withstand such radical decentering, the self dies with the body.

Following upon Bruno Latour's famous injunction that 'we have never been modern', Graham Harvey has recently added that perhaps 'we have always been animists.' With the massive ecosystem destruction that is underway in the Anthropocene, this realization could represent a necessary paradigm shift to address anthropogenic climate change. If the expropriation and destruction intrinsic to the modern division between a world of cultural values attributed exclusively to humans and a world of inanimate matter devoid of value has become untenable, then showing the illusory nature of this divide should open the way for a transvaluation of values capable of developing an animistic relational ontology to replace the dualisms of the Western paradigm. Developing the four traits typical of animistic cultures-personhood, relationality, location and ontological boundary crossing-a postmodern 'machinic animism' is defended as a new ecological paradigm for the Anthropocene.

"The aim of this paper is to explore the construction of animals, humans, the forest and demons in relation to and in opposition with each other as seen through Japanese animated cartoons, also known as anime. In particular, this paper will explore the critically acclaimed film Princess Mononoke by Miyazaki
Hayao and a less well known but still popular film Origin: Spirits of the Past by Sugiyama Keiichi. I attempt to bring together through the lens of anime the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida on the question of the animal and philosophical insights gleaned from the emerging field of critical animal studies. I will use the questions raised by Derrida to look at various ethical issues concerning human-animal and human-nature relations in these films. It is my hope that by doing this we can explore the political and ethical value of anime as a medium for raising these type of discussions within popular culture. Another serious attempt at engagement with post-structuralist philosophers like Derrida or Deleuze and Guattari is worth mentioning--although not on the question of the animal--was attempted in the short-lived but highly intriguing series Ergo Proxy, where Derrida is personified by one of the two statues in a central room which reappears throughout the series."

Penser le Corps-Objet-Image à travers le prisme de l’animation et cartographier ce mystérieux phénomène qui dote les êtres d’un supplément d’âme, leur attribue une intentionnalité, ou les met en mouvement, suppose de croiser les perspectives et les champs disciplinaires. Cet atlas se fait l’écho des résonnances esthétiques, philosophiques, historiques et anthropologiques, qui aident à saisir la singularité de l’animation marionnettique. Structurée autour de trois îlots – manifestation, interaction, attribution – éclairant respectivement la présence inhérente à la marionnette, la part tirée de sa relation avec l’artiste et la part résidant dans la participation du spectateur, cette cartographie tente de replacer le phénomène de l’animation dans la problématique plus large de l’humain et du non-humain. Faisant éclater les dichotomies sur lesquelles se fonde l’ontologie classique pour aborder l’être et son existence (sujet-objet, esprit-matière, vivant-inerte), les territoires de l’animation présentés ici dans leur hétérogénéité, dans leur capacité à se répondre, à s’entrechoquer, ou à se distinguer, abolissent les frontières pour redéfinir les contours de la scène du monde et la place des agents qui la peuplent. N’ayant pas vocation à être exhaustive, cette cartographie se fonde sur un principe d’association d’idées, renvoyant à des œuvres, des pensées ou des parcours d’artistes du Corps-Objet-Image. Elle ouvre des pistes, creuse des distinctions conceptuelles, soulève des interrogations, pour rendre compte de la multitude des possibles offerts par la pensée de l’animation. Outil protéiforme et inachevé, cet atlas est amené à être complété, commenté, enrichi et interrogé par qui souhaite y apporter son propre éclairage, selon les résonances qu’il aura su provoquer.

Avoiding epistemological extractivism, this essay tries to imagine a context that does not exoticize magical thinking or contemplate it exclusively within an ethnographic niche, seeking a Western animistic tradition. We propose so-called "dark ecology" as one of the keys to re-animate Western thought and transcend the modern separation between culture and nature, decolonizing thought and allowing us to value the knowledge of other culture-natures. Dialoguing with the work of various contemporary artists who are either interested in these issues or practitioners of forms of mediumship, one can glimpse an intricate mesh in which ecology, magic and decolonial thought come together.

Гваттари стремится к децентрированию субъективности, одновременно отделяя её и от субъекта, личности, и от человека. Его задача состоит в том, чтобы уклониться от оппозиций субъекта/объекта и природы/культуры, которые превращают человека в меру и центр Вселенной, выводя из субъективности и культуры специфические расхождения (различия): между человеком и животными, растениями, камнями, а также машинами и механикой (mechanics). Капиталистические общества осуществляют как гипервалоризацию субъекта, так и гомогенизацию и обеднение компонентов его субъективности (разбитой на модульные способности – такие как разум, интеллект, воля, аффективность, – управляемые нормами).

Jeremy Hayward : Maybe we could begin by talking a little bit about animism. It seems to me that the main thing you are trying to communicate in The Spell of the Sensuous is a sense that the world is not made of dead matter-that there's actually abundant life and intelligence everywhere.

ne of the things we scholars of mysticism lack are good, healthy autobiographical descriptions of mystical phenomena. We find ourselves often trying to tease our phenomenological description from a source's very complex interpretations, and it makes our work that much trickier. … Autobiographical reports are stronger "raw material" for the explorations of philosophers, scholars, mysticists (scholars of mysticism), and psychologists. 1