Animism, Perception and Earthly Craft of the Magician by David Abram

Animism - coined in 19th century to designate projection of human attributes, first meaning rooted in Western perceptual experience of indigenous oral people

Perception is relational (ie capture our attention), focus on things we have been transformed by

• Perceiving self is not a disembodied mind but rather a bodily subject entirely immersed in the world it perceives

  perception happens involuntarily — it is more immersed in the world around us because it is observing constantly despite our focuses and distractions. our focus may not be necessarily on whatever object, but our perception will notice regardless we are susceptible to habituating to our environments and not noticing, but our perception always will (afai understand i’m not totally sure here

• being a part of an environment is not only us having that specific experience, but also the environment simultaneously experiencing us

  • perception = reciprocity
  • must be respectful towards the world, otherwise we risk “offend[ing] the very ground that supports us, and the winds and waters that nourish us”

Original definition of animism revolves around projection, which is inanimate and extremely direct

• contrasting indigenous definition which gives voice to the earthly world as the world discloses itself to humankind
• animism wasn’t invented in the 19th century because it already existed as a form of communicating with the world around us

Animism is embedded mode of perception the world is a community of subjects of which we are also participants

Interesting to note the references (the person referenced writing the book on Alaskan tribes, the person writing the haiku, might be worth double checking this)

Shamans

humans who can communicate with other communities in the world, sensitive and susceptible to expressions from the “more-than-human”

• communication happens by regularly shedding accepted logic of their culture to be able to relate to other shapes of sentience

  • readily able to slip out of collective perceptual boundaries
  • but, the lowered boundary also means a higher boundary with people themselves ⇒ cannot shed culture without consequences
• primary allegiance is to the earthly web of relations in which their human community is embedded

On Disease (dis-ease)

• disease is conceived as a disruption or imbalance, but does not lie in the individual person but the larger field where the person exists
• dis-ease = discomfort of the affected person’s community

Shaman is not central to culture despite narrowing the boundary between world and human community, rather the animate natural world

• worldview is “animistic” not “shamanistic”

Modern Magicians

• medium = perception

Symbiogenesis, Sympoiesis, and Art Science Activisms for Staying with The Trouble, by Donna Haraway

Sympoiesis = making with

• nothing is auto-poietic (productive)

Holobionts = entire beings

• beings that are dynamically engaging other beings in complex patterns
• they make each other through semiotic material involution
• symbiotic assemblages → NOT host + symbionts, but everything is symbiont to each other in a NETWORK

Symbiosis is not mutually beneficial

Margulis → new kinds of cells evolve primarily through the long lasting intimacy of strangers

• symbiogenesis - basic and mortal life-making process

Sympoiesis — collectively producing systems that do not have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries (M. Beth Dempster)

Even as these sciences lay the groundwork for scientific conceptualization of the Anthropocene, they are undone in the very thinking of Anthropocenic systems that require both auto-poietic and sympoietic analysis.

Models = miniature cosmos

Involution powers Evolution

• rolling inward enables rolling outward, push and pull

LOL SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

• more response-able living and dying

Anthropocene vs. Capitalocene vs. Chthulucene

• Chthulucene = time-space of the sym-chthonicones

  • to live and die well as mortal critters

• humans and coral reefs as holobionts

  what do we consider a holobionts and could the entire earth with all its cells inside it be considered one? or is it specific to system

Crochet Coral Reef

experimental life form takes diverse shape when crafters create irregular rows

made out of so many different materials

stitches the materialities of global warming and toxic pollution

practicing multispecies in order to respond to problems

Animism

not about belief but practices of worlding, about sympoiesis and sensible materialism

Thoughts

important definitions of inter-connectedness of symbiotic systems and holobionts

Why Interspecies Thinking Needs Indigenous Standpoints, by Kim Tallbear

https://culanth.org/fieldsights/why-interspecies-thinking-needs-indigenous-standpoints

Language of Animacy (Braiding Sweetgrass) by Robin Kimmerer

Puhpowee = force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight

breathe life into the language

many different verbs to represent living things — inanimate objects are nouns if the original noun is dead

loss of objectivity happens when adding he/she to a study object

Making Kin with the Machines by Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer

Optional: Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene