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| how_forests_think [2018-06-03 09:59] – created nik | how_forests_think [2022-01-02 11:26] (current) – nik |
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| ==== How Forests Think - Eduardo Kohn==== | ==== How Forests Think — Eduardo Kohn==== |
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| ([[reading notes]] from How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Kohn, Eduardo) | ([[reading notes]] from How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Kohn, Eduardo) |
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| <blockquote>Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte . . . [Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was that savage forest, dense and difficult . . .] —Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto I [trans. Mandelbaum]</blockquote> | <blockquote footer="Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto I [trans. Mandelbaum]">Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte... [Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was that savage forest, dense and difficult...]</blockquote> |
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| <blockquote>All life is semiotic and all semiosis is alive. In important ways, then, life and thought are one and the same: life thinks; thoughts are alive. This has implications for understanding who “we” are. Wherever there are “living thoughts” there is also a “self.” “Self,” at its most basic level, is a product of semiosis. It is the locus—however rudimentary and ephemeral—of a living dynamic by which signs come to represent the world around them to a “someone” who emerges as such as a result of this process. The world is thus “animate.” “We” are not the only kind of we.</blockquote> | <blockquote>All life is semiotic and all semiosis is alive. In important ways, then, life and thought are one and the same: life thinks; thoughts are alive. This has implications for understanding who “we” are. Wherever there are “living thoughts” there is also a “self.” “Self,” at its most basic level, is a product of semiosis. It is the locus—however rudimentary and ephemeral—of a living dynamic by which signs come to represent the world around them to a “someone” who emerges as such as a result of this process. The world is thus “animate.” “We” are not the only kind of we.</blockquote> |
| <blockquote>It is the product of the imponderable weight of the many dead that make a living future possible.</blockquote> | <blockquote>It is the product of the imponderable weight of the many dead that make a living future possible.</blockquote> |
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| <blockquote>“selva selvaggia” | <blockquote>“selva selvaggia”</blockquote> |
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| ===1. The Open Whole=== | ===1. The Open Whole=== |
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| We need to provincialize language because we conflate representation with language and this conflation finds its way into our theory.</blockquote> | <blockquote>We need to provincialize language because we conflate representation with language and this conflation finds its way into our theory.</blockquote> |
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| <blockquote>Although not exactly a word, tsupu certainly is a sign</blockquote> | <blockquote>Although not exactly a word, tsupu certainly is a sign</blockquote> |
| <blockquote>It is due to their privileged position relative to animals in the trans-species interpretive hierarchy that constitutes the forest ecology of selves that the Runa feel they can readily understand the meanings of canine vocalizations.19 Dogs, however, cannot, under normal circumstances, understand the full range of human speech. As I indicated earlier, if people want dogs to understand them they must give the dogs hallucinogenic drugs. That is, they must make their dogs into shamans so that they can traverse the boundaries that separate them from humans.</blockquote> | <blockquote>It is due to their privileged position relative to animals in the trans-species interpretive hierarchy that constitutes the forest ecology of selves that the Runa feel they can readily understand the meanings of canine vocalizations.19 Dogs, however, cannot, under normal circumstances, understand the full range of human speech. As I indicated earlier, if people want dogs to understand them they must give the dogs hallucinogenic drugs. That is, they must make their dogs into shamans so that they can traverse the boundaries that separate them from humans.</blockquote> |
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| <blockquote>When advising their dogs people in Ávila address them directly but in the third person. This appears to be similar to the Spanish usted system whereby third-person grammatical constructions are used in second-person pragmatic contexts to communicate status. Quichua, however, lacks such a deferential system. Notwithstanding, the Runa tweak Quichua to improvise one. | <blockquote>When advising their dogs people in Ávila address them directly but in the third person. This appears to be similar to the Spanish usted system whereby third-person grammatical constructions are used in second-person pragmatic contexts to communicate status. Quichua, however, lacks such a deferential system. Notwithstanding, the Runa tweak Quichua to improvise one.</blockquote> |
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