Ecologies of Participation: Agents, Shamans, Mystics, and Diviners 1498568157, 9781498568159

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Ecologies of Participation

Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in Religion and Theology Series Editor Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, Claremont School of Theology

Series Editorial Board Jon Berquist, Stephen Burns, Cláudio Carvalhaes, Jennifer Te Paa Daniel, Lynne St. Clair Darden, Christine J. Hong, Wonhee Anne Joh, HyeRan Kim-Cragg, Boyung Lee, Aprilfaye Tayag Manalang, Loida Yvette Martell, Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Jea Sophia Oh, Nicolas Esteban Panotto, Jeremy Punt, Patrick Reyes, Joerg Rieger, Fernando Segovia, Melinda McGarrah Sharp, Kay Higuera Smith, Jonathan Y. Tan, Mona West, and Amos Yong. This series responds to the growing interest in postcolonial studies and reexamines the hegemonic, European-dominated religious systems of the old and new empires. It critically addresses the colonial biases of religions, the academy, and local faith communities, in an effort to make these institutions more polyvocal, receptive, and empowering to global cultures and epistemologies. The series will engage with a variety of hybrid, overlapping, and intersecting definitions of postcolonialism—as a critical discursive practice, as a political and ideological stance concerned with exposing patterns of dominance and hegemony, and as contexts shaped by ongoing colonization and decolonization. Books in the series will also explore the relationship between postcolonial values and religious practice, and the transformation of religious symbols and institutions in postcolonial contexts beyond the academy. The series aims to make high-quality and original research available to the scholarly community. The series welcomes monographs and edited volumes that forge new directions in contextual research across disciplines and explore key contemporary issues. Established scholars as well as new authors will be considered for publication, including scholars “on the margins,” whose voices are underrepresented in the academy and in religious discourse. Authors working in subdisciplines of religious studies and/or theology are encouraged to submit proposals.

Titles in the Series Colonialism and the Bible: Contemporary Reflections from the Global South, edited by Tat-siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia. Ecologies of Participation: Agents, Shamans, Mystics, and Diviners, by Zayin Cabot.

Ecologies of Participation Agents, Shamans, Mystics, and Diviners

Zayin Cabot

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cabot, Zayin, author. Title: Ecologies of participation : agents, shamans, mystics, and diviners / Zayin Cabot. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2018. | Series: Postcolonial and decolonial studies in religion and theology | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018007477 (print) | LCCN 2018015701 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498568166 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781498568159 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Religion—Methodology. | Religions—Comparative studies. | Religion—Study and teaching. | Participation. Classification: LCC BL41 (ebook) | LCC BL41 .C327 2018 (print) | DDC 200.72—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018007477 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For My Wife, Elizabeth Who Was There Every Step of the Way

Contents

Preface: A Note on Terminology

ix

Introduction: Participatory Philosophia and our Planetary Predicament

1

1 Decolonial Mutations

31

2 Whitehead, Creativity, and Agential Functions

53

3 A Participatory Raft

75

4 Ecologizing Language: A Neo-Whorfian Agential Approach

93

5 Agential Bricolage: A Neostructuralist Hunch

121

6 Agential Participation: Toward Freedom and Concern

149

7 Participatory Knowing, Ecologizing Ethics

191

8 Mystics, Mutants, and Co-Authored Gods

215

9 Shamanic Perspectivism and Comparative Method

247

10 Talismanic Thinking as Comparative Method

271

Conclusion: A Guest Protocol

293

References311 Index331 About the Author

339

vii

Preface A Note on Terminology

In order to read the argument offered in these pages, a certain charity is required from the beginning. The use of terms like agents, shamans, mystics, and diviners will scare off many a reader that might otherwise benefit from engagement with this material. In writing this text, innumerable terms were considered—for example, shamanizing, shamany, shamaning; divination, divining, divinatory—but were all found too cumbersome. The argument in these pages moves us away from overly noun-based languages. It calls into question an over emphasis on individual experience, as well as tendencies to essentialize both “persons” and traditions. And yet, for ease of both reading and writing, nouns have not only been used, but highlighted. Shamanism, for example, too easily becomes a homogenous essentialized tradition. Shamanic body-swapping, the acts of shamans, can be freely associated with post-Protestant individual experiences. Both of these are problematic, and yet, again, nouns are used throughout this text. As such, there are four important points to consider about terminology and reasons some might dismiss the arguments in these pages before you begin. First, it is important to note that throughout these pages, emphasis is placed on four distinct linguistic starting points: relative, intrinsic, absolute, functional. Language can be relative and noun based, whereby the external ground is assumed in relation to a given person, place, or thing. For example, “Let’s go to the left side of the boat.” In contrast, language can be intrinsic and topographical. In such a scenario, nouns become less important than thick rich descriptions. Language can be verb based. These tend to be verb-based languages, where the act of description is more important than the speaker. For example, “Tree on hillside.” This might mean the same thing as going left around a boat, but the person’s verb-based assertion would not reference a viewer, but rather describe an action that is context specific. Pointing out what ix

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Preface

we might see as a tree on a hill to the left of a boat. In this setting, context, not person, matters. Language can also operate in an absolute way, wherein some arbitrary frame of reference becomes important. “Go west-northwest boat.” These linguistic assertions are based on polarities and assumed relationships. It must also be kept in mind that the examples of intrinsic and absolute statements above are lacking; they are written in English, which tends toward a relative frame of reference. Language can also operate in a functional way, whereby singular statements or assertions act as a unifying and relational force among seemingly disparate potentials. In its simplest form, if X, then Y. X stands in, not as a noun, but as a function that is capable of a unifying act. “If X, then turn to the left of the boat.” If a particular function is present, certain actions follow. So where nouns are used, please remember these subtle distinctions along with them. Throughout this text, these functional acts are referred to as agents (agential) and described as creative. The noun-based relative acts are referenced as mystics and as naturalist, while the verb-based topographies of intrinsic linguistic acts are understood as shamans and as animism. The arbitrary absolutes are termed diviners and talismanic. In this way, agents, shamans, mystics, and diviners becomes shorthand for the very complex modes of participation available to us through human language. There is a second reason many people will too easily dismiss this text. They will unfortunately associate it with the linguistic turn in academia. In contrast, this book argues for a multi-ontology approach. Yes, ontologies in the plural, whereby language in some very important way comes before our lived worlds. The third reason people will dismiss this book is because they associate it with a vulgar relativism. What comes first, language or our worlds? Language. That is the argument found in these pages. But this is not a positivist universalist argument no more than it is one of vulgar relativism. If language comes first, then language becomes a crucial key to the enigma that we all face. If language comes before worlds, then “language” is a mystery that can be found everywhere. This book focuses on human language, because, after all, that is where those reading these words must begin. But language, if it is a key to the act of co-creating worlds, must be present among bats, singlecell organisms, stones, and mountains. As such, language becomes a point of inspiration, more akin to a function than a categorical description of a world out there. The fourth reason people will dismiss this book is because it asserts a speculative argument. Ecologies of participation are predicated on an agentially realist position. There will be those who see this as yet another example of Western overreach. We should, they might push back, be talking about epistemology rather than metaphysics and ontology. This of course is the

Preface

xi

most disingenuous of reasons, as we each assert our ontological assumptions every time we speak. To assume anything else, is a peculiar form of modern ethnocentrism that is dealt with at length throughout this book. The argument, in the end, is not about essential categories. It is about finding ways to honor both similarities and differences. It is an example of comparative scholarship, at a time when dialogue is needed more than ever. Against the backdrop of a shared technological future, ongoing globalization, and the very real challenges of climate change—we are all facing a shared planetary predicament. May we find both new and old ways of coming together.

Introduction Participatory Philosophia and our Planetary Predicament

Ours is a planetary predicament. I sit writing these words in a small hotel, one kilometer from the Splendid Hotel that was attacked by Al Qaeda only a few days ago in the capital city (Ouagadougou) of Burkina Faso, West Africa. I have time to write because my flight has been delayed. Air France stopped flying into the country for a short time, and all flights have subsequently been affected. By tomorrow afternoon, I will be sitting in front of my first-year religion class. I wonder what I will tell them. How does one speak about the life of these people who live on the front lines of our changing planet? How does one speak at all about the changes—global climate change, the sixth mass extinction, globalization, profound religious and cultural pluralism, an increasingly technological present—that are bringing us toward an increasingly intimate understanding that we are part of the same predicament? Not just life on a shared planet, but life in the anthropocene! Our shared challenges force us toward one another. What sort of wisdom might our challenges and subsequent interminglings offer to those of us who feel pressed to inquire, to peek behind the planetary veil? These are the sorts of questions that drive this book. If you are paying attention, and I know most of you are, you have noticed that this world of ours has become complex in unique ways. The day after the attack, I happened to be sitting in a Muslim village outside Bobo-Dioulasso, another city in Burkina Faso. I had traveled there with a group of Dagara diviners (a community living two hundred kilometers east, toward the Ghanain border) who were going to meet a widely respected Dioula diviner (Dioula is a trade language spoken throughout West Africa). I was told by my companions that this Dioula diviner carried a traditional form of divination passed from generation to generation through his family. I joined them and found myself in the middle of a traditional West African divination, where 1

2

Introduction

I spoke into a Bic pen held by the diviner, who is also a Muslim imam. He wrote out the divination in an Arabic script, while his son caught the whole thing on video using his smart phone. The divination was translated from Dioula to Dagara (our diviner’s son to one of my Dagara companions), and from Dagara to English (another of my Dagara companions to me). ­Obviously, many languages were spoken, but what struck me at this time was the use of the pen, the use of the phone, and the easy relationship between Muslim prayer and West African divination. Together these point us toward the entangled and increasingly planetary worlds in which we live. The reading was clear: it hit its mark. This was impressive, but so was the man doing the reading. He was vibrant, quick to laugh, easy to smile, and willing, like so many people in Burkina Faso, to offer his hand to say hello or lend support. I visited this man with an eclectic mix of traveling companions but not a single Muslim among us, and yet we were invited in. What were we witnessing, exactly? Was it really the practice of Islam? Was it really Dioula divination? What in the world was he doing with that pen? Now remember, Al Qaeda terrorists had bombed a hotel in this small country, the size of the U.S. state of Colorado, the night before. My family was worried. Imagine what my grandparents in Wyoming would have thought had they known that I was not only in a West African village, but also packed into a prayer house with a Muslim imam and his community—a day after a terrorist group claiming to represent Islam had killed almost thirty people, several of them foreigners, and taken over a hundred hostages in a standoff with the local military. What did the American woman who was with us think when she was asked to sit outside the prayer house with the Burkinabe women? What did the children think as they cheered and jostled, wanting more than anything to have their picture taken with my iPad so that they might see it a moment later. Why did I even pull out my iPad? Because everyone in this little village had beaten me to it, smartphones in the air, recording both prayers and sacrifices. Who or what is a Muslim, a diviner, a professor, a white person, an African, a Dioula, a Dagara, or an American? Do these various identities bring us together, or do they keep us apart? Do words matter at the end of the day? These words vary in their level of abstraction. Thomas Norton-Smith (2010, 7) puts it succinctly when he writes, “[D]ifferent words make different worlds.” He goes on: “Any translation of an American Indian language into a Western language, no matter how carefully or neutrally crafted, will recast Native thought into the conceptual categories—hence, the ontology—of the Western language.” Despite these different worlds and different ontologies, however, translation is possible, albeit complex and often problematic. We are faced with a dizzying diversity of people, all of whom are facing the rising of the seas, soil degradation, and water crises. As storms wreak havoc, forest

Introduction

3

fires burn stronger and longer, and ice all over the planet begins to melt, the well-worn assumptions about “what it’s like around here this time of year” will falter. Each of these challenges, and so many more, press upon us. And who gets to speak about these challenges? Whose perceptions count? “If we wish to choose a single term to characterize the event of perception [world-making],” writes David Abram (1996, 57), “we may borrow the term ‘participation’ used by the early French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl.” I could not agree more. In characterizing basic themes within American Indian philosophy, Norton-Smith writes that in order to understand these traditions we need an expanded notion of personhood that includes people, plants, and any number of animals, birds, and differently animate others. Abram pushes a similar idea, highlighting the need to see everything as an everyone of some kind. The world is queer in its animacies, and the animate are ready to remind us they matter (see Chen 2012). For his part, Abram focuses on the reciprocal nature of participation, the ways in which supposedly non-human and non-animate others call us forward, inviting us to communicate, commingle, and inhabit a sensuous world. He has made us all animists (1996, 57). “To define another being as an inert or passive object is to deny its ability to actively engage us and to provoke our senses; we thus block our perceptual reciprocity with that being” (1996, 56). And of course, for Abram, this is a bad thing. We are all animists, and at bottom, we are made up of participatory events. Following Maurice MerleauPonty, Abram defends reciprocal events as his ontological units. The makeup of these events can contain no dualism, no distinction between the animate and the inanimate. But Norton-Smith writes of his Shawnee language that it is built upon this very distinction. “As in the case of gender in European languages, what is important here is that Shawnee uses the categories ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’ to organize experience, and in this way reinforces the difference between animated beings and those not animated as one of the most fundamental distinctions in the Shawnee’s constructed world” (2010, 7). What are we to make of this? Some of Abram’s animists are not playing by his rules. Abram (1996, 31) articulates a “philosophy on the way to ecology.” But Norton-Smith argued that there were multiple ontologies and multiple worlds; Lévy-Bruhl, as I argue later, did too. Abram wants a single unified philosophy. He is pushing us toward a sensuous monism. He is in search of “a singular domain [that] is the secret source and ground of all these other kingdoms and a remarkable realm that resides at the heart of all these others” (2007, 15). Like so many authors discussed later in these pages, Abram (2010) wants us to turn our backs on the allure of transcendence in our quest to become, or remember ourselves as, animal. But what about the distinction made by the Shawnee between the animate and the inanimate? If participation and

4

Introduction

commingling mean turning our backs on the world we live in, on the world that created the pen with which the Muslim imam practiced traditional West African divinations outside the city of Bobo, well then that seems like more of the same. This participatory turn toward philosophia becomes nothing but another attempt at the theory that explains it all. In his attempt to defend participation, Abram tries to disassociate himself from both the modern ontology that created the pen, as well as the monotheism that gave birth to Islam. He sets his theory, his assumptions over and against all others. This book is not about that. It is about participation, to be sure. It seeks to uncover what participatory events might be. And it does want us all to commingle. But it is not in search of a philosophy—some singular answer and/or methodological approach—but rather something more like philosophia, the love of wisdom. Not a philosophy, but a shared search for wisdom, with obvious Western roots (I am a product of modernity and what we call the West after all), whereby we might face the planetary tide that engulfs us. In this way, philosophy becomes more about praxis, more akin to a raft. Buddha worried about dukkha, death, and the possibility of liberation from our illusions. He found an answer that worked for him, and, though he was a philosopher himself (Smith and Whitaker 2016), he warned us not to get lost in the metaphysics. But this early Indian Buddha changed as he moved east. Different place, different praxis, different raft. The Mahayna tradition cut another middle path that encouraged more speculation (Faure 2004, 64–68). So which Buddhist raft sits on the correct “awakened” ground? Different Buddhists have done this very differently over the last couple thousand years. Buddha, Nāgārjuna, Dōgen? These are well and good, but I kind of like Chinul. But if Chinul, then should we reject the text-based traditions of the scholars? Should we forget the Theravada? I hear Spirit Rock has heated floors in their bathrooms. I love the complexities of Tiantai and the esotericism that leads to dzogchen. Should we choose the high flying scholastics, the down and dirty tantrics, or the some more popular version of heavenly pure land? Maybe one of these will finally show itself to be the way. Hwadu! No! Philosophia is not so much about finding a stable answer, an “awakened ground” but about practicing a multiplicity of awakenings, grounds, truths, bodies, myths, and/or performative knowings. Socrates asked us to dialogue. But we need to do a bit more than that. We need to participate. We need to entangle and complicate our ontologies. In order to do this we will have to try on different truths, theories, and horizons. With all the suffering in the world, why would we need another philosophical tomb? How are we going to come together, communicate, touch, move in new and helpful ways? How are we going to participate? What is it that keeps us apart? One obvious answer is that we simply are not communicating with each other. We are speaking past

Introduction

5

and beyond each other, and it is our unexamined philosophies, our ontologies and our metaphysics, that allows us to do so. So what is the philosophical raft that I propose in these page? The philosophia-cum-praxis? Ontologies, in the plural, are important. Metaphysics has been given a bad name of late. For the longest time, it meant meta, as in ontology in the singular, essential, one and only one. God, Allah, or Nature: take your pick (meta or physics), but they cannot all be right. Someone is closer to the truth. Among most scholars, even those in philosophy departments, metaphysics is a thing of the pre-modern past. Counted among the classics, metaphysics was practiced by those un-Enlightened souls that came before we knew better than to assert an answer or a speculative generalization. Of course, these modern Enlighten(ed)ment folks have a metaphysics (where the meta is nature), but that point I save for the last section of this chapter. Among the public, metaphysics points toward a section in the bookstore; a place to find angel cards, power animals, and New Age paraphernalia. ­Moderns have discovered nature and physics while they have relegated all things meta to the realm of superstition and epiphenomena, while those labeled New Age protest the modern reductio ad absurdum (if it is not measurable and reproducible—where reproducible becomes equivalent with the simplest phenomena—it is not real). Representatives of the modern see nonbelievers (the non-moderns) as either noble or savage. This is certainly how my students understand the sort of places I have been while in Burkina Faso. Metaphysics, in this framework, comprises everything in which those backward folks believe, the other-than-physics stuff, the beliefs we have left behind. But I argue here that we are going to need all that other-than-modern stuff if we are going to have a real chance at addressing our planetary predicament. What sort of stuff will we need? Well, how about divinations and speaking into pens! If we are going to remember the others, any other, human or other than, then we must see our physics, and our unexamined metaphysics, as anything but universal. Abram and Norton-Smith would agree on this point. Both are seeking different sorts of complexities that can be found when we notice that words make worlds, that participatory events are the best we can do to construct explanations, that we must make some sense of different ontologies, that this word can be plural, that translation is possible, though challenging. My own assumptions and inquiries have led me to adopt something I call ecologies of participation in this book. Inherent to these ecologies is the reminder that there are different ontologies. And this is a subtle point. Ontology, by definition, points us toward the essence of Being. Capital letters. Essential stuff. Not essences of beings in the plural, but rather, the One. Yet I defend a multiplicity of ontologies, by coming to understand them less as truths, and more as starting points. In order

6

Introduction

to accomplish this goal, I do at least five things. First, I notice that there are distinct ontologies—foundational assumptions, that is, metaphysics—held by different communities. Second, I limit the the number of ontologies that I focus on in these pages. This is not a rigid theory, but rather a useful and pragmatic practice. I do this by focusing on certain fundamental structural aspects of human language. With the help of recent linguistic anthropology, I locate three fundamental starting points—the basic structures of human language. Stephen Levinson (with Wilkins, 2006) terms these intrinsic, relative, and absolute frames of reference. With the help of recent ethnographic theory, I draw parallels between Levinson’s three frames of reference and what Philip Descola has termed animism, naturalism, and totemism. For my part, I utilize terms that are more readily available within the field of religious studies, shamanism, mysticism, and divination respectively. It is at this point that many readers will become wary. Not another theory! But I ask for some patience here, as there are two more steps we must take together. Third, I adopt a fourth ontology that asserts agency and/or participatory events as fundamental. I do this by problematizing and expanding Descola’s own fourth ontology, what he calls analogism. I develop this fourth ontology by considering Alfred North Whitehead’s actual occasions, Karen Barad’s agential realism, Ernst Cassirer’s emphasis on functions over substance, and Jorge N. Ferrer’s participatory events. Ferrer’s work owes much to theories of enaction (Maturana and Varela 1987; Thompson 2007; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991), and so I also pay close attention to these. Fourth, and this is maybe the most important, I do not assert my fourth ontology as the correct ontology. Instead, I see it more as a raft. Ferrer has written of a participatory turn in religious studies. I am interested in the ways that this fourth ontology can act as a participatory raft. I see it as a relatively new philosophical praxis— a contemporary philosophia—that both requires and allows for what I term in these pages, a multiple-ontology approach to comparative studies. This fourth step requires the entirety of this book to unpack, but in short, I find that history of mathematics and Western philosophy led primarily to and through naturalism and mysticism. Plato’s work—following my four-fold schema presented here—could be seen as a divinatory-naturalist ecology (the idea of ecologies is clarified in the fifth point below). Aristotle’s work was something more akin to an animist-naturalist ecology, but one that finally fell more on the side of naturalism. His substances, with their interesting animacies, seem to finally give up all animacy to his final cause—an unmoved mover. This move stands as an exemplar to me of what I call naturalist and/ or mystic styles of participation. There is a parallel story running here. As the distinctions between substance and final cause became ever more severe—think nominalism and God— Western mysticism leads eventually to Cartesian dualism. The bifurcation

Introduction

7

of nature, as Whitehead would put it. But it also gives us the possibility of unifying functions. This bifurcation, which has come to be thought of popularly as the mind-body problem, becomes the ground for a post-Cartesian, post-Kantian, ontology of functions, agencies, and participatory events. On my reading, these agential cuts (Barad 2007) or participatory events (Ferrer 2002) feel. A participatory event feels its relative past as effect and physicality. The same event feels its relative future as telos and mentality. Somewhere in between effect and telos lies an event’s contemporary moment, felt as an affective emotional field. Maybe most importantly, each event is radically atomic. Individual, unique, and available to a singular idiosyncratic idiocy and/or moment of enjoyment. This is an optimistic ontology of self/enjoyment. If we are reading and writing in English, then we cannot ignore our postmystic, post-naturalist, highly individual, Cartesian selves. We are split. Between insides and outsides, we feel at a loss. The fourth ontology of agency defended in these pages acknowledges its debt to Western traditions, but refuses to modern or postmodern in traditional ways. This entire project is predicated on the assumption of individual atomic acts, self/enjoyment, that perish as soon as they become. Every participatory event feels a relative past, it is lured by a relative future, and in the end it chooses to enjoy a novel moment of meaning. Then, it is done. Perished. No more. Beyond this process of becoming, Whitehead tells us later in these pages, there is nothing, nothing, nothing. This is an ontology of freedom, self/enjoyment, and concern. While it is the novelty of agency that is held up as most dear, this is not a theory of modern hyper-individualism. It is a theory of feelings, of agency, and responsibility for the concern of diverse events. But now is not the time to go into detail with regard to agency as ontology. For the moment I want to make sure the reader does not miss my larger point. This is a multi-ontology approach, and by focusing on agency, I am simply pointing us toward a participatory raft. This fourth ontology stands as the bedrock for my participatory approach. In order for the latter to work, the former must be assumed. This is not a neutral position. If agency, as I define it here, is true, then traditional ontologies from Abrahamic, to Amerindian, Confucian, and Yoruban must all be found lacking. And that is why I hold this fourth ontology more as a participatory raft. This multi-ontology approach, by leaning toward agency, opens a door whereby each ontology can be understood as healthy and creative, yet limited in some important way. And this is also true of my agential realism. By focusing on the self/enjoyment of participatory events, other important concerns are pushed to boundaries. And this is fine, because this is actually what we do. There is no human, no person, no community of enlightened or critically woke souls who have somehow managed to overcome their bias, their life

8

Introduction

ways, their assumptions. In order to move forward we need to be able to try on different ontologies. We need to wear them, live them, think them. We need to not only risk conversion, but bodily transformations, and oracular communications. We must admit to the pragmatic power of Western sciences, without missing the philosophical subtleties of Dioula, Achuar, and Tibetan traditions. And this brings us to the final point. Fifth, there are no pure ontologies. The “Western” tradition may lean toward naturalist mysticism, but it is also full of animist and divinatory modes of participation. Careful ethnographies of Amerindian communities tend to discover far more than animist shamans. There are important aspects of animism and mysticism within Africana divination. And the emphasis changes throughout Atlantic world. I can imagine an entire series of books detailing the various ontological commitments of Buddhist traditions through this multi-ontology lens. And so, in the end, what we tend to find are ecologies of participation. Making the word ontology plural creates a paradox that ensures that we stay alert. Keeping the word ontology with us at all times helps make sure that we do not reduce one ontology to another. But if we hold on too strongly to the idea that there are multiple ontologies (multiple ultimates), we risk our ability to comprehend one another. This would point to an incommensurability between disparate worlds, while what we are after in these pages is different forms of world making. And while I argue that we cannot every fully find an essential place to stand—no universal laws of physics, no universal final cause—the Sufi, the Dagara, the Achuar, and I can communicate meaningfully. Our lived worlds are ecologies, emphasizing certain ontological starting points that are never pure. Let this be a reminder that you come back to throughout these pages. I am not arguing that there is an ecology or a group of people who we might term shaman or shamanism. There are no such givens, no such easily essentialized communities to be found. I am not arguing for some vulgar relativism either. No one ontology is finally correct, but ecologies are everywhere to be found. You will meet shamans, diviners, and mystics in these pages, but remember that each is more a matter of emphasis than an essentialized ideal. In fact, you will find my own stories woven throughout these pages, highlighting the ways that I have lived each one of these ontologies in different ways. I am an amalgam of many different histories, stories, and streams. To use the terms that I define later in these pages, I am an ecology of participation in my own right. I am a scholar, trained in philosophy and comparative methods. I am a husband and a father, who is concerned for the world my daughter will inherit. I am a longtime practitioner of zazen, a Japanese form of a Chinese Daoist inflection of Buddhist meditation. I am also an initiated diviner and elder within an Africana tradition that has its origins in a community of folks that call themselves the Dagara. These folks live at the

Introduction

9

forefront of our planetary predicament in Burkina Faso. For generations they have lived beside Muslims and Dioula and Mossi, who have dealt with the colonizing efforts of Christian (see Tengan 2013) and European peoples (e.g., Goody 1977; Hawkins 2002), and who currently find themselves faced with increasingly obvious challenges caused by globalization and climate change. My role as a scholar-practitioner places me directly within the important tension between what Martin Holbraad (2007, 2012) has termed oracular (non-representational) and representational truth. If we examine the increasing commitment by some in academia to radical comparative studies that question the metaphysical assumptions of modern naturalism and postmodern constructivism, we find ourselves walking in parallel to what Holbraad (2012) terms a recursive methodology. Following his recursive stance, Holbraad takes the oracular truth claims of Ifá diviners seriously. Crucial to his methodology, Holbraad does not place Ifá oracular truth claims over and above modern assumptions about truth (e.g., constructivism and naturalism). Rather this recursive stance focuses on the scholar-practitioner as she stands in between what seem to be antithetical assumptions about truth. We need multiple ontologies and multiple ecologies if we are going to garner the kind of participation that we need to face our shared planetary predicament. Philosophy in this context is understood less as a search for universal truth than as a dance with alterity that transforms all parties involved. This recursive stance lies right at the heart of this project, and clarifies what I mean when I argue for ecologies of participation as well as participatory philosophy. Scholarship going forward must be uncompromisingly comparative. Divination is increasingly understood not simply as a viable window into the lives of local contexts and people, but as an important expression of and lens into modernity (De Surgy 2013; Ellis and Haar 2004; Meyer and Pels 2003). My role as a scholar, an initiate of what Sean Hawkins (2002; see also Goody 1977) has called the “world on paper,” and my role as practitioner— an initiate of Dagara divination practiced in and around the village of Dano, Burkina Faso—ideally locates me as a practitioner of such a participatory philosophia. The thrust of this project then is to ecologize philosophy. In doing so, I broaden the scope of philosophy, moving toward philosophia, away from the strict disciplinary boundaries that modern academia has imposed upon this practice (see Frodeman and Briggle 2016). Going further, I place this practice—participatory philosophia—outside the boundaries set down by the Greeks with their particular emphasis on method (see Lloyd 2012, 56–57; 2002, 49). I search outside the Abrahamic traditions and their emphasis on their logic and their Ones (see Schneider 2008, 83). Throughout this book I call into question the great Enlightenment of the West with its fascination with “nature” (Hanegraaff 2012, 177). In essence, a participatory philosophia

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Introduction

calls into question an overemphasis on essence. But please note, it does not reject essence or Being. It is critical of the inclination to assume the methods and logics of the One-cum-Being and of Nature as somehow more primary or fundamental than the ontological starting points and subsequent ecologies of others, but is not dismissive of this direction of thought. As I detail in the following chapters, this trend toward Being and Nature is beholden to what I define as naturalism and the practices of mystics. I include as much of the provincial folk wisdoms of the Greek and Abrahamic people as provincial arguments by the scientific secular modern people. But I do not wish to move beyond this naturalism. Naturalism, by my definition (passim), is that which seeks the perfect triangulation, the view from God, philosopher, objective observer. But as we all know—at least those of us who have paid attention to the many critical considerations of objectivity over the last many years—there is no such thing. Or, at least, we cannot find it. Kant knew this, and I have no qualms about inviting in Kant. In fact, I propose a post-Kantian metaphysics in these pages: not beyond Kant, but after Kant. I seek a participatory philosophia by emphasizing and thus allowing for new ecologies of participation, which may help us to face the challenges that are coming, alongside the ones that are already here. I ask the practitioners of not only contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, but continental, feminist, critical, postcolonial, and other trends in contemporary philosophy as well to sit down beside various nonmodern others. I use the term ontology to ensure we do not miss our differences, and purposely write of ontologies in the plural: an unorthodox usage, to be sure, but one that allows us a small space through which the onto-theo-logical naturalisms that dominate the world can be both included and contextualized in a meaningful way. I use the term ecologies to allow us to interact. Ontology by itself breeds conflict, implying that “I” am closer than “you.” Ontologies, while provocative, remain useful paradoxes, but have little place in our lives. Ecologies are more useful and livable, if we are going to come together, and thus I argue for participation, allowing for some sort of process whereby words actually do create the worlds in which we live. This last piece, participation, must be unpacked. A task I set myself up for in the following chapter. Through the writing of the words in these pages I have found a way to communicate with others whom I thought I knew, with others whom I had misunderstood, and found new ways toward others who might help me to make sense of my own lived experience. It is to this sort of participatory play, my own peculiar attempt at wisdom, that I devote the rest of the pages that follow. But please don’t take my emphasis on participation to mean something so simple as comparison. We cannot get where we need to go by simply coming together. We need something far more unsettling than mere dialogue. We need to come into each other’s worlds.

Introduction

11

What came first, language or the world? My answer, the one that it takes the rest of this book to unpack, is that language comes before our worlds. But please note. I am not making an argument in defense of the linguistic turn in academia. I am not assuming that language works like labels, and that we simply need to find the closest match to a given and discoverable reality. I do not think reality is given at all. Rather it is co-created. And I feel language is a key that unlocks diverse forms of participation. Language is code for the mysterious creativity whereby meaning, lived experience, and worlds come into existence. Lingusitic events are far more than analytic or logical games; they are the very activity of coming into being. In this light, language takes on an enactive quality, highlighting diverse modes of participation and becoming. But please also note that I do not mean to reduce language only to the spoken word of humans. Language, if it is anything, goes all the way through. It is not only there in the episodic culture of primates (Donald 1991). It can also be found in movements of metals (Bennett 2010), and in the way forests communicate (Gorzelak et al. 2015). What follows is my own attempt to face the planetary predicament that has come and knocked upon our door. SCHOLARLY-COMMUTERS, ALTERITY, AND ACADEMIA Throughout these pages, I out myself in a number of ways, locating myself throughout as both scholar and practitioner. I tend to think of my own journey as one of a practitioner-scholar, rather than the more conventional scholarpractitioner. As a practicing diviner inspired by a West African tradition, I tend to worry more about becoming a scholar than the more traditional scholarly conceit regarding the problems of becoming a practitioner. As I detail later in these pages, this is a slightly different stance than the one taken by most of the authors that I cite within this text. In order to self-identify this way, I must defend my position; I am writing for the academy after all. José Ignacio Cabezón (2006) writes that our academic studies naturally lead to an encounter with the “Other.” In his essay, “The Discipline and Its Other: The Dialectic of Alterity in the Study of Religion,” Cabezón illuminates three stages within our interactions with such alterity. First, he writes, we assume they are not like us. Second, we assume they are like us, but we are more rational than they are. This second stage can be found throughout modernity connected to an often unexamined belief in linearity and progress (e.g., they are primitive, while we are rational). It can also be found in other non-Western traditions: for example, in the assumptions regarding circularity from American Indian philosophers. When Viola F. Cordova (2007, 69–75) distinguishes between American Indian and Euro-American ways of knowing,

12

Introduction

she tells us that American Indian thought is more complex (inclusive) than Euro-American attempts to discern the truth. This is a good example of the trend toward assuming that they are less rational or mature than us. Cabezón’s third stage unfolds with the realization that “they are like us, but . . .” It is this last category that can get us into trouble in our contemporary milieu. Cordova, for her part, is a generous author, and yet she portrays American Indian thought as containing more depth and complexity than Euro-American thought. This could be read along the lines of Cabezón’s second stage, wherein American Indian thought is considered to be superior to Euro-American philosophy. It could also be read in relation to Cabezón’s third stage: we are similar, but in the end American Indians are more complex than Euro-Americans. Cordova’s claims to complexity must not be accepted uncritically. American Indian complexities and Euro-American complexities are different, though not necessarily better or worse. To the extent that Cordova—a philosopher whom I deeply admire—makes claims to the superiority of her traditions, she is on problematic ground, not unlike those who claim her tradition is primitive. Cabezón sees categories such as “Buddhist philosophy” and “African philosophy” as belonging to this last stage: they suggest that we all share some innate rationality, something universally human that can be categorized by reference to different cultural variations, but . . . they have it differently, and probably less of it. For his part, Cabezón asserts that the academy more often than not defines itself through this contemporary distinction: we are critical, they are not. We have methodological rigor, theory, and self-awareness. We are able to be critical scholars, and so should eschew any form of caretaking. We are postCartesian, post-Kantian, post-whatever. We, the academics, the post and the moderns, still win out as superior in this way. We can also see this within our popular culture. While issues regarding racism, sexism, and social justice in general are important, we find advocates for these positions dismissing large groups of people based on their own narrow moral high ground. My stepfather was as honest and forthright a man as one could ever hope to come across. He was also prone to unexamined racism and sexism. The person who has thought more about these issues can too easily place themselves on the moral highground. Being self-reflexive around structural racism does not necessarily parallel a high level of emotional intelligence or morality. Comparing my particular version of reflexivity to that of another is not always a fair point of comparison. Contexts are too complex for easy moral platitudes. Cabezón clarifies that this tendency is not always overt. Academics—and to a greater extent, the popular culture—do not articulate an explicit difference based on contemporary critical awareness; instead, they imply it. These authors do not overtly claim to be more advanced (progressive) than the general person living in another epoch, country, zip code, or lived experience.

Introduction

13

Instead, it is implied within the triumphalism of their own self-reflixivity. Take for example any number of assumptions commonly held by people everywhere regarding experiences that do not fit within the constraints of narrowly imagined scientific materialism in parallel to a restrictively determinded critical reflexivity. Consider the following statements: I am a working diviner, learned in various Western esoteric, neo-shamanic, and West African (i.e., Dagara) expressions of the practice. When people come to see me as a diviner I utilize a variety of bones, shells, and found objects to bring about what Holbraad (2007, 2012) calls oracular truth: a practice clearly uncommon in the day-to-day lives of most people I meet (at least outside of the Bay Area). During these divinations, I find myself having to communicate hunches or intuitions as if they were truth. I communicate with ancestors, stones, trees, animals, ghosts, and just about anyone else who happens to be available at the moment. I perform and share the private experiences of the person sitting across from me, making them public truths. To be more specific, I speak in fluid truths, truths that are universal as well as local. They are as true as they are fleeting, and they do not lack in efficacy because of this. I also engage spirits, ancestors, plants, and animals through a practice of sharing bodies whereby I am freed to enter various distinct realities/physicalities to receive important information for my clients. This is what Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998, 2012, 2014) has called perspectivism/shamanism. Nurit Bird-David’s (1999) revisited animism (though her assertion is more epistemological than ontological), or what Graham Harvey (2005) has coined new animism: animist-style body intermingling, whereby I can reach into the person across from me and take out something that should not be there. If you read that last sentence slowly you cannot help but be struck by how thoroughly unmodern that practice sounds. As a scholar, is it not my job to critique this all away (e.g., McCutcheon 2001)? No. If I were to explain away everything that did not fit within my limited ecology, how could I honestly approach those from other ecologies? This does not mean I leave my critical awareness and naturalism behind. But I must not allow it to wholly dominate my thought and actions either. If you are thinking that you might not be susceptible to modernity and its provincial ethnocentrisms, read on. Out of these sessions, I tend to prescribe rituals, some of which the clients do for themselves, and some of which I might facilitate with the assistance of my community. I hold a clear role within this community, one that is found in many traditions: that of a ritual choreographer. The Dagara see these rituals as utilizing technologies of relationship. Malidoma Somé, an initiated Dagara elder and mentor of mine who has been working with Euro-Americans most of his life, puts it this way: “What is the relationship between Spirit and the technological? This is an invitation to consider that there is something

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Introduction

technological in spirituality, as there is something spiritual in technology. It proceeds through believing that what is commonly regarded as fantasy is not impossible, for instance, that someone who dreams of becoming a bird can actually become one provided that he or she works at it” (Somé 1998, 66). Have I lost you yet? Where is the line that you have drawn between the modern and the primitive? Do you want to reject everything I have said because it does not fit within the narrow confines of your ethnocentric folk assumptions regarding scientific materialism. During these same rituals, it is often necessary and beneficial to acceptsacrifice the life of a goat or a chicken. These animals carry certain signatures and abilities that are different from my own. They have different elemental qualities. Within this tradition, chickens are known to be especially capable of traveling back and forth between different quasi-physical locations. They facilitate a dialogue between world/s (e.g., that of the ancestors, who we might see as “dead,” and persons like myself, who we might see as “living”) with an ease that is beyond my own abilities. There is a certain efficacy to such work that can create, manipulate, and/or embolden one’s life in novel and dynamic ways. Especially when you allow the chickens to do the talking. Now here is the test: What are your immediate reactions to what you have just read? Is this the kind of thing an academic should write about? Does this sound like New Age–style experimentation or colonial appropriation? Have you already dismissed the argument that I flesh out in these pages because of these words? Cabezón (2006, 32–33) writes, An increasing number of scholars are choosing to “come out” as believers and practitioners. While professing religious belief/practice may, once again, seem relatively unproblematic to those who work in western religions, the use of the term “coming out” signals the (still) problematic nature of such disclosure in fields like Hindu and Buddhist Studies, and perhaps more widely. How widely? There is good reason to think that there is still a widespread reticence to engage the question of the religious (or nonreligious) identity of the scholar within religious studies as a whole . . . despite this, scholars of nonwestern religions continue to “come out,” and by coming out—by disclosing their religious identity (or identities, in the case of those who self-identify as belonging to multiple religious traditions)—scholars (Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, etc.) have complexified through their person, as it were, the all-too-easy divide between “us” and “them,” the facile distinction between those who are critical and self-reflective and those who are not. This is because those of us who have (to use a problematic expression that is still in circulation) “gone native” embody a commitment to both the first-order discourses of religion and to those meta-discourses upon which we build our identity as scholars of religion. As Smith reminds us, “the ‘other’ . . . is, in fact, most problematic when he is TOO-MUCH-LIKE-US, or when he claims to BE-US.” This is true, but it is equally true that the Other becomes problematic when we claim to BE-THEM.

Introduction

15

I am claiming to be them, but a “them” that is potentially even more problematic than those claimed by Cabezón himself. I am claiming to be, at least partially, a contemporary traveler across multiple ontological borders. On one side, I risk outing myself as something other than modern. There is no longer a safe or neutral scholarly zone in which to stand, writes Frédérique ApffelMarglin. “Advocacy and scholarship,” she says, “can no longer be neatly disentangled” (2011, 10). She has outed herself. “The non-human aspects of the landscape are lively and active presences. They participate in rituals” (2011, 10). Yes, they do. On the other side, I risk losing my critical postmodern credibility. To use Jeffery J. Kripal’s (2007, 10) words, I have walked out of the “gardens of imagined ethnic, religious, and political purity,” and am subject to the critical gaze of postcolonial theory. I welcome this gaze, as well as that of the materialist/naturalist/mechanist modern. I invite these critical and skeptical gazes, just as I have accepted initiation as an elder in the neo-Dagara community that is finding roots in American soil. I have accepted the great diversity of requests that have and will be made of me due to this choice. I “hold the keys,” as it were, to the ancestor house here on what Somé calls “Turtle Island,” in deference to those who came before. I have gone alone into one of the holiest of the holy for the Dagara. I have agreed to walk into the Turtle Island expression of this inner sanctum, and have accepted the responsibilities that trouble the honorary of this gift. I regularly perform animal sacrifice, make what is called talismanic medicine, and have accepted very particular duties as a kontomblé diviner regarding certain “little people” within the Dagara cosmology. But aren’t these people simply primitive? Aren’t they making it all up? That is too easy. A handy foil to our modern. But something else is going on. Kripal’s own work takes seriously the assertions of what he calls “authors of the impossible”; these are the authors at the margins, who we adore but to whom we like to feel superior. Aliens, superheroes, magicians, werewolves, and witches are common fantasies in the popular imagination, but are rarely taken seriously. Can we let go of our strongly ethnocentric modernities for a moment in order to allow others to speak for themselves? If we move toward this more open stance, we might just find that our long cherished assumptions about nature and reality are also made up. But this is not bad. It allows new avenues of experience and dialogue. But we must risk getting dirty. Playing in waters that are uncitely and certainly not modern. I have engaged in very real encounters with biological others (Kripal n.d.) who belong to this marginal world. When my in-laws who live in New Orleans ask me what exactly it is that I do, I refer to the voodoo culture alive and well in their city. They laugh, but I do not. Voodoo, an honorable tradition inspired by the Ewe-speaking people who became part of the African

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Introduction

diaspora, bears a striking resemblance to the ways I spend my Sunday afternoons in the Bay Area. Can I be a scholar too? Religious studies scholar Nikki Bado-Fralick sums up these arguments quite well: “According to a kind of scholarly thinking once quite common in both ethnography and the academic study of religions, the previous paragraphs label me an ‘insider,’ a believer, and that immediately makes my scholarship suspect” (2005, 14). But suspect to who? This question pushes me to consider the changing landscape of academia, and to wonder what etic even means. Rather than referring to a single outsider academic stance, etic summons whatever current context (made up of particular scholars and changing norms of scholarship) exists in the moment. The paragraphs BadoFralick mentions paint a picture of her initiatory rite of passage whereby she became a witch in the tradition of Wicca. Her work as a scholar-witch makes her research especially relevant to my own purposes, maybe even more so than the work of Kripal and Cabezón. Yet we are all part of the changing norms of our fields of study. In her discussion of her role as a scholar-practitioner that follows the passage quoted above, Bado-Fralick asks the following question: is the insider/ outsider distinction even a helpful or valid one for academics today? Such distinctions, she argues, tend to be used far too quickly. They often maintain assumptions about objective-outsider-theory as distinct from subjectiveinsider-practice. This point is fundamental to the thesis of my project: namely that there are multiple ecologies of participation available to us that either manage categories such as objective, scholarly, subjective, and consistent in different ways or simply do not utilize them at all. We need to invoke a multiple-ontology approach in our scholarship and stand on transspecific ground. This is where Cabezón’s third stage becomes so important. We are like them, but . . . According to Bado-Fralick, the insider/outsider distinction all too often undergirds the assertion that there is only one objective voice. This is something, she confirms, that most scholars do not accept. Many of our critical scholars try to overtly bring awareness to the dangers of “epistemological colonialism.” Yet, as evidenced by Cabezón’s third stage above, this critical stance is not always honored to its fullest extent; as a matter of fact, my own work takes steps outside of the fields of inquiry where the insider/ outsider distinction is most often referenced. I place my project squarely in the hallways of contemporary philosophy. This is complicated territory for a practitioner-scholar who takes seriously the multiple and diverse insider understandings of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso and West Africa, as well as many other traditions, peoples, and assumptions that you will meet in the pages that follow.

Introduction

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In place of strong boundaries between objective researcher and subjective believer, Bado-Fralick suggests a shifting play of light and dark, whereby the “wondrous multitude of sights and perspectives possible in the human experience” are produced. Like so many of the other authors cited in these pages, she is asking us to rely upon our hunches—to play with diviners and their fluid truths, engaging with the tensions of the in-between. These words may strike the reader as metaphorical or even fanciful, but Bado-Fralick is offering something far more concrete, at least insofar as analogy and beauty can point toward a whole. She writes, “All knowledge—including scholarly knowledge—is a mixture of shifting degrees of objectivity and subjectivity, distance and closeness, outsider and insider, theory and practice. Knowing is an activity; it is a doing, a praxis—the dynamic participation in and creation of a ‘discourse of lights and shadows’ that constantly shifts and changes to reveal new perspectives or to accommodate new voices” (Bado-Fralick 2005, 6). Knowledge, according to Bado-Fralick, is dynamic and experiential. She suggests that by focusing on this play (rather than on the dichotomy of subject-object) through the practice of a practitioner-scholar, multiple perspectives are possible. She is defending something approaching a participatory philosophy that seeks a radically dynamic and comparative ground. A philosophia that is willing to include the ecologies enacted from multiple ontological starting points. In these pages, I argue for multiple ecologies, what you might call “worlds,” though the meaning of which we might disagree on. To this end, it is necessary at this point to offer one final “coming-out.” I identify myself as a philosopher, which in turn points to my intention to practice speculative philosophy. This point is crucial to remember throughout these pages. My identity as a philosopher first and foremost not only colors my divinations and rituals, but also informs this comparative project. This is a peculiar project, one that is particularly my own. As Bado-Fralick (2005, 16) writes, “[P]hilosophy is itself a doing, a practice, a temperament, an engaging of oneself with the world, a way of living in the world, a way of asking questions, a deep curiosity about the ways we are and why. In some important way, I had never left philosophy. Its familiar presence runs along all the threads in my tapestry, and in no particular one. Philosophy was not a thread in the tapestry—it was the process of weaving itself.” The punch line is that philosophy cannot be separated from action as scholarship and practice are inherently tied to one another. Bado-Fralick tells us that philosophy “weaves together the disparate and sometimes competing threads of [our] scholarly training and [our] life experiences into a coherent whole” (2005, 17). If we are going to practice philosophy in the face of our planetary predicament, we are going to need oracular and motile truths. We require an ethic of the cool. If we are going to practice philosophy in the anthropocene, we must take on

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Introduction

not only different perspectives, but different bodies as well. Philosophy in the anthropocene requires the participation of diviners, mystics, and shamans. This will seem a wild, flippant, or ridiculous claim—but only to the postChristian, post-Enlightenment moderns. In defending a turn toward philosophia, Richard King writes, “Emphasis shifted in some circles away from the spread of Christianity per se as a rationale for colonial rule, and increasingly focused instead upon Europe as the apex of ‘civilization’ modernity and the tools for establishing ‘freedom’ . . . [yet] the provinciality of Euro-American ways of understanding the world is [now] being highlighted” (2009, 37). As capitalism and globalization spread and the age-old, provincial EuroAmerican assumptions about life are disseminated by transnational corporations, colonization trends toward “virtual colonialism”; King (2009, 38–39) continues to argue for the decolonization of philosophy. In particular, King considers the turn toward post-structuralist thought found in Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, noting that while these traditions offer one viable critique of Eurocentric philosophy, these same critical theorists would consider the work you hold in your hands a step too far (King 2009, 38–39). Wondering why postcolonial theorists have largely ignored the self-understandings of the same people they claim to defend, King writes, “The trope of the modern, secular and liberal West, in contrast to a more religious, spiritual and/or superstitious ‘non-west’ has been a key feature in the construction of the West’s sense of its own modernity” (2009, 43). ­Philosophy, he argues, must negotiate the “cultural and ideological segregation” that has been fundamental to excluding African, Amerindian, Aboriginal, and many other non-modern traditions; these have been included within the academy only after having been “purified of much of their ‘foreignness’ or naturalized as ‘religions’” (2009, 45). In identifying myself as both philosopher and practitioner-scholar, I hope to contribute toward bringing this self-congratulatory purification process to a halt. As scholars, we are gatekeepers. We are supposed to keep them—the non-critical non-reflexive not quite modern other—out. And while I honor the histories of these boundaries, it is also clear that many of the gates must be torn down. David Hufford (1995, 69) writes that the kind of reflexivity that is needed by all scholars “necessarily introduces the individual: individual scholars including ourselves as scholars, and individual believers including all scholars, whether their beliefs be positive or negative or agnostic regarding the beliefs in question.” In Hufford’s account, all scholars become scholar-practitioners. We all have our hunches. As established in Bado-Fralick’s work, a diversity of practices can not only serve the common good but enrich our academic institutions as well—with, I argue, the more ontological assertions, the better! These assertions, however, come with a profound responsibility to those outside of the privileged world of academia.

Introduction

19

Bado-Fralick utilizes the term commuter in her work, postulating that we are all commuters to some extent, but that as scholars and practitioners we could all work a little on our (re)flexibility. Longer, broader, more challenging commutes could go a long way toward bringing fresh air and a feeling of renewed health into our academic halls. This kind of (re)flexibility, on BadoFralick’s own account, is both good for us and not easy to do. I agree, and yet I view it as essential to be a commuter between ontologies. That is why I argue for ecologies (see chapter 1 and passim). My self is deeply intertwined with words like shamanism, ontology, philosophy, divination, and talismanic medicine after all. It is a peculiar path, and certainly not for everyone, but it is my own, and so I defend it here with the help of Kripal, Cabezón, and BadoFralick, among many others. And this is where my self-implication becomes fully visible. Such thought, writes Alfred North Whitehead, “supplies the differences which the direct observation lacks. It can even play with inconsistency; and can thus throw light on the consistent, and persistent, elements in experience by comparison with what in imagination is inconsistent with them” (1978, 5). I am defending the possibility of cross-ecological participation and border crossings, and I outline certain protocols whereby we might own the violence of our comparative acts in later chapters. Is this enough? Cabezón writes, “I am often struck by how overly optimistic we are concerning our ability to expose our own intellectual baggage” (2006, 29). There is no doubt that I have “baggage” that I myself cannot see. The only way to address it is to continue seeking interaction with others. As both Jorge Ferrer and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro argue (in statements I discuss below), we need to risk transformation and ultimately heresy. We must risk pluralizing ontology, making it ontologies, uncertain as we do this if we are ever going to find our way back to the ontology (see chapter 1): pluralism as in not an ontology of discontinuity but a planetary ethic of comparison and dialogue (see Bauman 2014). The term ontology only makes sense to the extent that there is finally one. At the same time, we can no longer let naturalist assumptions hold us in their sway. There it is: my multiple-ontology approach, the heresy of this book on display. Multiple ontologies, ecologies, whatever; we must take a risk. King’s defense of philosophia must be reconciled with the state of the tradition. “Academic philosophers in the west tend to be fiercely protective of the boundaries between their own disciplinary identity and its ‘significant other’—namely those cultural traditions they associate with ‘the religious.’ In their inability to see this as a peculiarly western way of dividing up the world, their orientation is as unreflective as it is Eurocentric” (2009, 43). It is this very same Eurocentrism that we must ecologize if we are going to turn and face our shared planetary predicament. Morton invokes Emannuel Levinas’s

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Introduction

emphasis on coexistentialism when arguing that ecological thinking requires a renewed interest in the local. But in writing of the local, Morton does not mean to convey that local is somehow a place. “The essence of the local isn’t familiarity, but the uncanny, the strangely familiar and the familiarly strange” (2010, 50). We need to get back to this kind of overwhelming intimacy, and in order to do so we need to better understand and clarify the ways in which Enlightenment Eurocentrism helped deliver us into the anthropocene. We need to better understand how exactly this form of participation continues to reproduce itself. To clarify this point, I now turn to a consideration of Bruno Latour’s modern constitution. LATOUR’S POST/MODERN CONSTITUTION Alfred North Whitehead is a philosopher who has been crucial to my own thinking. It is with his help that I found a way to understand the diversity of voices and what seem to be conflicting interests that you will encounter throughout the pages that follow. This does not mean that Whitehead was right: “Metaphysical categories are not dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities” (1978, 8). Popular within modernity is the idea that we must not “do” metaphysics, but instead spend our time looking toward epistemology: trying to figure how we know, rather than what we know. There persists, says Whitehead (1925, 22), [a] fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call “scientific materialism.” Also, it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived.

This materialism persists—a metaphysical flatland—often to the extent that the metaphysical assumptions that underlie it are not called into question. Whitehead had a large part in springing me from the modern-postmodern, Cartesian, post-Kantian epistemological bind that has haunted so much of academia since well before Whitehead took up these issues at the turn of the twentieth century. It is Bruno Latour’s work, however, that lays bare the operating assumptions of this seemingly impenetrable epistemological chasm. In his book, We Have Never Been Modern, Latour terms this bind the modern constitution. Throughout the text below, I consider in detail the work of Philippe Descola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and the so-called “ontological turn” in anthropology. Following these authors, we can locate Nature and the

Introduction

21

moderns as crucial players on one side of this chasm. We can then turn to the Culture side of the chasm to find the postmodern. As will become abundantly clear, both positions (modern and postmodern) are in fact predicated on the same basic assumption (a shared continuity or Nature), and so from this point forward I use the term post/modern to describe the people who populate Latour’s constitution. These folks continue to hold an inordinate amount of intellectual power in our contemporary world. They are the flatlanders, the ones who have done away with all notions of spirit, psyche, self, spiritual, religious, ancestors, beaver people, ritual, power, divination, sacrifice, magic. The post/modern flatlanders did not emerge Enlightened and scientific from the medieval darkness that came before; they were born out, and are a continuation of, everything they sought to repress (Gillespie 2008; Gregory 2012). It did not happen overnight, but over thousands of years as they invented superstition ­(Cameron 2010; Martin 2004), magic (Styers 2004), religion (Chidester 2014; Masuzawa 2005; Nongbri 2013), savages (Williams 2012), and secularism (Asad 2003; Taylor 2007), among so many other things, by marginalizing the “others.” We must come to understand some of the basic assumptions of these post/moderns in order to explore the argument set forward in these pages. As detailed by Latour (1993), the post/modern paradox unfolds like this. We begin with two distinct areas of concern: the discovered and the created. Post/modern triumphalism rests on its ability to manipulate and utilize these categories in a very particular way. In step one, things—that which most interests inhabitants of Nature—belong to the realm of the discovered. This is what Ernst Cassirer, the neo-Kantian philosopher, would call substance. In step two, these same things are understood as created by culture. Step one, discovered, step two created; this is how we get Nature and Culture. In step one, more specifically, post/moderns have exclusive access to the world of fact, never before seen in the history of humankind. This is the point that drove Kant, a self-declared metaphysica naturalis, to do it differently—to pursue metaphysics as a science. Scientific objects are discovered. Kant believed in Newton. How could he have known about the coming of Frege’s logic, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, Einstein’s theory of relativity, Bohr’s quantum? Kant knew that Newtonian substances are not created. And he taught us something else. Everything else is. Sort of. While we can come to know scientific objects, the physics, we are left without recourse to the Meta. Later epistemologically inclined critical thought created Culture. We have scientific objects and cultural constructions. And our philosophy must align itself with this fact. This Enlighten(ed)ment revelation is a new dispensation that is framed as a contrast to all the pre-moderns who do not understand it. We are rational and scientific, that is, modern. We are critical and self-reflexive, that is,

22

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postmodern. They are the primitives, the savages, the ones we must civilize and bring up to speed. Their objects and things are created, not discovered. They are superstitious, believe in magic, have religion; we do not. See how we post/moderns are special. See how those pre-moderns are lacking in our particular kind of excellence. To put it another way, scientific objects are facts and pre-modern primitive objects are fetishes. Fetishes are superstitions in your pocket: natural (scientific materialist) things that have been confused with supernatural powers (pre-modern naïveté). We can now define Nature as the realm of fact. Nature points to those sorts of things that are discovered by means of appropriate scientific experiment. Everything else is relegated to the realm of the supernatural, and the facts of all pre-moderns are revealed for the trickery (however innocent or naïve) that undergirds them. Pre-modern objects, as it turns out, are created by fetishists. The “things” of the Yoruba-speaking people of West Africa, for example, are not facts. They are not objective. The Yoruba cosmology is at best a romantic ideation and at worst, a misguided creation. West African assumptions about their fetishes point us toward an earlier, less enlightened time, a time when primitives were certainly not modern. Their failed attempts to discover modern things are veiled in superstition. Following from the assertion that Nature is fact (discovered), Culture can be understood to represent that which is created. This is where we get the post- in our post/modern. Culture is made up of constructs, which are minimally based on interactions with the facts of nature. It follows from this post/modern assertion of Fact that traditional Yoruba people are not interacting “scientifically,” or in any way that is recognizable as post/ modern. It is at this point that we must note the post/modern emphasis on method. We have it—critical (post) or scientific (modern)—and they do not. We are objective or self-reflexive, and they are much less so. They, the pre-moderns, have not discovered the actual facts of Nature, much less the Western self-reflexivity to recognize that their constructs are bound to cultural assumptions. This last point is driven home time and again, as our post/moderns assure us that they are in fact humble people. We do not step beyond the bounds of reason, they tell us. We understand that our view of flatland Nature is based on hypothesis, and therefore that our facts are created. We also understand that Culture is larger than us, and that our ability to observe the true facts of Nature is colored by these creative cultural lenses. This humble position, writes Latour, is a positioning that ostensibly lands one between the counterarguments held by adherents of realism and constructivism. “Whereas before we could only swing violently back and forth between the two extremes of the [Post/]Modern repertoire [realism and constructivism] . . . we can now choose between two repertoires. . . . On the one hand we are paralyzed, like

Introduction

23

Buridan’s ass having to choose between facts and fetishes, on the other we pass thanks to factishes” (Latour 2010, 23). To put this simply, Latour sees post/modernism as a dead end. The either/ or of realism and constructivism must be seen through, especially by those nonmoderns (to use Latour’s term) who are not committed to a post/modern naturalism. The only answer that Latour finds is to flesh out the thoroughly nonmodern assumptions that are lurking there in post/modern thought. To do this, he asserts the existence of factishes, which is Latour’s basic co-created ontological unit. But the post/moderns are not ready to give up the fight just yet. They have one more trick up their sleeves. What if a nonmodern, a “primitive,” or a pre-modern notices the last step, and congratulates the post/modern on his or her humility? What if the nonmodern admires the possibilities opened up by these post/modern hypotheses, but at the same time warns the post/modern that applying some of his or her constructivist intuitions may lead to some less than desirable outcomes? “Au contraire Madame,” says the post/modern, “your objects are fetishes, they are made up, while my objects are actually facts. We have seen them! And others can see them too.” “Yes, well,” replies the nonmodern, “I thought you said they were hypotheses based on other hypotheses.” “Why, yes, of course they are,” says the post/modern. “Hypotheses, that is. But I assure you that our objects are in fact discovered, not created. We have facts, you have fetishes.” I am sure you can imagine this conversation going on for hundreds of years. Latour notices the post/modern bringing another player into the mix at this point, to add to what appears to be a rather obvious smoke screen. The player is God, though with a Protestant Deist twist. The nonmodern asks, “So where did all these ‘facts’ come from? Who created them?” The post/modern’s reply, according to Latour, is to proffer a crossed-out God (God). Almost-post/moderns such as Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz assert a God to ensure that their respective mathematical points and monads make sense, while thoroughly-post/moderns such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Hume locate God at an extreme distance from us to assure themselves that He will bother no one. In effect, creating God (Deist with nominalist origins, see Gillespie 2008), and thereby sidestepping very important conversations about causality. “Hey Ms. modern materialist” says the nonmodern, “how do your Newtonian atoms go bump in the night? How, exactly do they move. I mean with that strange Cartesian dualism, where God and psyche is somehow separate from the stuff, how do you get that stuff to move?” The post/modern ignores the problem. God? Psyche? Nope, all we have is stuff. Latour (2010, 34) explains this triple entendre thus: A threefold transcendence and a threefold immanence in a crisscrossed schema that locks in all the possibilities: this is where I locate the power of the [post/]

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Introduction

moderns. They have not made Nature, they make Society; they make Nature; they have not made Society; they have not made either, God has made everything; God has made nothing, they have made everything. There is no way we can understand the moderns if we do not see that the four guarantees serve as checks and balances for one another. The first two make it possible to alternate the sources of power by moving directly from pure natural force to pure political force and vice versa. The third guarantee rules out any contamination between what belongs to Nature and what belongs to politics, even though the first two guarantees allow a rapid alternation between the two. Might the contradiction between the third, which separates, and the first two, which alternate, be too obvious? No, because the fourth constitutional guarantee establishes as arbiter an infinitely remote God who is simultaneously totally impotent and sovereign judge.

What is hidden in this rather confusing back and forth is that things, objects, and facts are actually co-created—or fabricated, to use Latour’s term. They are factishes, he tells us, and this is actually OK. As I argue throughout these pages, the process of seeking that which is discoverable—for example, the essential things of Newtonian physics—is a powerful form of participation, and yet in order to accommodate this (naturalist) tendency of the post/modern we must imagine the act of creation or fabrication in a robust way. In On the Modern of the Cult Factish Gods Latour (2010, 6) uses the example of Black and Portuguese mestizos in contemporary Rio de Janeiro to qualify this point. He quotes a Candomblé initiate at some length: “I am from Oba, Oba is almost dead already because no one knows how to seat [fabricate, enact, co-create, participate with] her, no one knows the craft . . . for making her.” It is the tendency of Candomblé initiates to openly admit that reality is co-created. It is this willingness to allow that nothing—not Nature, God, or atomic unit—is ever wholly discovered that makes the premodern naturalist (monotheists) and modern naturalist’s jaw clench, while the postmodern naturalist smiles, completely unaware of the shared assumption—Nature—that undergirds all three positions. Now the point is not to assume that the Candomblé ritualist is right. That the post/modern is wrong. That fabrications are somehow equivalent to Africana divinatory truths. We need something a little different. First, we need a multiple-ontology approach. There is a naturalist mystic ontology that assumes we can come to some objective truth. There is a divinatory totemic ecology that assumes that we perform truth within the limited confines of an absolute cosmos. Latour seems to want to simply critique the naturalist, and move toward the divinatory, but that will not work. We have to, at minimum, take these two together. We can also complexify the issue by bringing in animist vitalities and the shared bodies of shamans. This would be fine as far

Introduction

25

as it goes, but it can never fully address Latour’s overarching concern—the post/moderns. We have been post/modern. We do live with a mind-body split. We have gone too far in our nominalist assertions. Too far in our Abrahamic truths. This is all important to acknowledge, and yet something did happen. Latour is well aware of Whitehead’s process work, but I think he has misread it as a straight forward relational ontology of events. He seems to see it along the lines of various divinatory leaning theories of relational fields. The way forward, for Latour, as well as those of us who have been sidled with this mind-body chasm, is toward agency, individuality, and the freedom of self/ enjoyment. It is only here, I argue, that those of us who are post-Cartesian and post-Kantian will finally find a place to rest. Now, this does not mean that other communities who have not gone down this road need to also take this up. There must be countless ontologies. Never ending horizons of participation and distinct modes of world making. I have named four basic human ontologies. For those of us writing and reading within Euro-American languages this is a sufficient start. I cannot pretend to know how other communities might address the same planetary predicament that we all share. And so I have written this book. A book that is sure to have its critics, and so before bringing this introduction to a close I consider very briefly some of the more obvious of these. ALL TOO HUMAN; ALL TOO WESTERN; NOT POSTHUMAN ENOUGH; IT’S JUST A RAFT Several critiques will be leveled at this work right away. The first is that what you find in these pages is entirely too Western. What’s with all the dead white guys!? While I sympathize with the critique, there are a couple important points to be made. First, I am a white guy. This is important. Far too many authors disengenously dismiss their own traditions. If I am going to take a seat at our planetary table, I should reconcile all parts of me. Both those that I would wish to ignore, and those that I simply cannot. Second, there is a dizzying diversity of people, communities, and lifeways in our increasingly planetary age, and we all need to figure out ways to ecologize and participate together. I cannot approach another ontology without first addressing the one from which I tend to lean. Third, the dominant narratives, which most of us have inherited through the post/modern constitution, cannot simply be thrown aside. And a lot of these, for the good and for the bad, have come from something that we can vaguely point to as “Western culture.” The thoughts

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and bodies of the people have shaped us, and so we must acknowledge them in return. A brief set of examples might help. Those of us reading and writing in English, are more Protestant than we tend to allow. We are more Catholic than we let on. Our sciences, our academia, and all those other things we hold dear are more Muslim than we remember. We are Gnostics in disguise. We are Cartesian through and through. We assume a Newtonian folk tradition as universal, and dismiss all others, even when we mean to honor them. To ignore our post/modern tendencies is to leave them festering and unseen. Latour, for example, seems to have located the process that Cassirer and Whitehead claim we have lost sight of, and he calls it fabrication. But Latour’s ontology is also flattened, for he has gotten rid of the mystics and shamans, bodies and subjects, selves and matter. He has done away altogether with final causes, telos, and their ilk. No more God, no more self, we are bereft ideas and forms. No more Jaguar people, Achuar people, and Jivarro. He has turned his back on animist traditions, diverse physicalities, and all but done away with effect. He has made subjects and objects into a series of networks. “Reason today,” he tells us, “has more in common with a cable television network than with Platonic ideas” (Latour 1993, 119). Latour’s insight into the fundamental nature of the post/modern sleight of hand is absolutely crucial, but we cannot follow him all the way. He gave us an important gift in naming post/modern factishes, but in their stead he gave us flattened networks of relations. In remembering the craft that the Candomblé woman spoke about above and the importance of fabrications and discontinuities, it is worth listening to Martín Prechtel (1998, 232), a popular author, when he writes, True creativity doesn’t just make things, it feeds what feeds life. In [post/] modern culture where people are no longer initiated, the spirit goes unfed. To be seen, the uninitiated create insane things, some destructive to life, to feel visible and powerful. These creations are touted as the real world. They are actually forms of untutored grief signaling a longing for the true reality of . . . togetherness.

The point is not merely to recognize that post/modernity does in fact engage in fabrications by enacting factish-things. The thrust of Prechtel’s words is to underline the point that in ignoring the process of fabrication, post/modernity risks destructive, insane, and uninitiated things. It risks anthropocene things: colonialism, industrialization, global warming, and the sixth mass extinction (see Barnosky et al. 2011; Maclean and Wilson 2011; Veron 2008). But, importantly, this does not mean we should turn our backs on the post/moderns, or the theists, or the Greeks, or the Vedic seers,

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27

or anyone else who has attempted to find some ultimate predicated on substances, factishes, or absolutes. To the extent that Latour and company have turned their backs on the post/moderns and the traditions that feed them, they remain in some hybridized post/modern world. So, what are we to do? My short answer: enact ecologies of participation. Now comes the second critique. It goes one of two ways, either I am a relativist or I am an authoritarian metaphysician. Either I am attempting to sweep away all ground (i.e., relativism), or I am trying to assert my assumed truth as the ground (naïve metaphysics). Neither is true. I have not just “gone and done it again.” I have not slipped my metaphysics, my ontology, in through the back door. I have come through the front door instead. I have put my ontology on the table. I have coupled this agential realism with a multipleontology approach to comparative studies. This is my own idiosyncratic iteration of what other authors have termed the participatory turn, what I think of as a participatory and/or agential raft. I can hear the groans: but the Buddha knew that philosophy is a raft. Metaphysics? Don’t do it. But he did, anyway, didn’t he (Faure 2004, 64; Smith and Whitaker 2016)? He made foundational assumptions, in the hopes that he would become more, or less, or fill in the blank. I have not asserted my own new philosophy and/or theory of everything. What I have done is imagine a philosophia, a renewed love of wisdom—one predicated on real limitations. We simply cannot know the Truth. We cannot be other than human. And this does not leave us in relativism. There are functions, process or realities, and they enact all manner of ecologies of participation. There are ecologies. Something is happening. We just don’t really know what it is. There is no Newtonian ground for us to stand on, to plant our methodological flags. Nature (empiricism) and Culture (critique) are great, and they are limited. There other ways of world-making available to us. And in this—turning toward ontologies in the plural—I follow Cassirer and look toward functions, rather than content. I notice along with Langer and Whitehead that there is some mystery surrounding our symbols that is Creative. This is my way forward, whereby I do justice to my comparative stance. I argue that we are all in some mysterious way, simply making it up. But that in very complex ways, our constructions are also real. I do not profess to know exactly how this works, but rather that we can find the all the too human functions with which we enact distinct worlds. All too human—this phrase must be underlined. Language, if it is anything, if it is Creative, goes all the way down, up, and through. I do not talk at length about the enactions of metals, plants, or animals within these pages. An obvious critique of this work is that it is not posthuman enough. And yet again I would ask that we go slowly. While I appreciate greatly and often practice different forms of inter-species dialogue, I also think it is too easy to assume

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we can overcome our all-too-human linguistic functions. Our ontologies, in the plural, run deep, and we cannot easily escape them. So, while I point toward posthuman thinkers in these pages, I continually bring the discussion back to our all-too-human forms. And now, before we go much further, that most important of questions arises—so what? Why are all these words important? What benefit are they to our increasingly planetary lives? I hope that the answer will become obvious, but in short what I offer is an interesting platform for comparison done as participation. A short example may help. Judith Butler (1988, 521) argues for a very particular performative philosophy. She writes, It is, however, clearly unfortunate grammar to claim that there is a “we” or an “I” that does its body, as if a disembodied agency preceded and directed an embodied exterior. More appropriate, I suggest, would be a vocabulary that resists the substance metaphysics of subject-verb formations and relies instead on an ontology of present participles. The “I” that is its body is, of necessity, a mode of embodying, and the “what” that it embodies is possibilities. But here again the grammar of the formulation misleads, for the possibilities that are embodied are not fundamentally exterior or antecedent to the process of embodying itself. As an intentionally organized materiality, the body is always an embodying of possibilities both conditioned and circumscribed by historical convention. In other words, the body is a historical situation, as Beauvoir has claimed, and is a manner of doing, dramatizing, and reproducing a historical situation.

Is Butler right? Should we finally do away with that substance metaphysics first begun by Aristotle, which found its final iterations within Newtonian and Lockean thought? What does this paragraph tell us? That Butler is right, and the history of substance philosophy is wrong. Butler has the correct anti-metaphysics, and those others do not. But this is not a metaphysics, says Butler, it is an emphasis on performance. We have been performing binary distinctions, and now we can perform them away. Eve Sedgwick offers an interesting critique of Butler in her book, Touching Feeling. Sedgwick is more than empathetic too Butler’s theories. Butler deconstructs Newton’s theory of space by recourse to Esther Newton’s theory of fabrication. “I would suggest as well that drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender” (Butler 1990, 186). There is no essentialist space, no inside, no outside, no substance philosophy. And yet Butler’s deconstructions are not quite enough. Can we do away with Newton’s space all together? Sedgwick seeks a middle way that looks less like beyond, and more like beside (2003, 8–9). “With the loss of its

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spatiality, however, the internally complex field of drag performance suffers a seemingly unavoidable simplification and reification. . . . I’ve consistently tried in Touching Feeling to push back against an occupational tendency to underattend to the rich dimension of space” (2003, 9). Who is right, ­Sedgwick or Butler? The answer that my multi-ontology approach allows is both. Where Butler affords a window into the performative tendencies of animists and shamans by critiquing the naturalist enactions of mystics (e.g., substance ontologies), Sedgwick unlocks the spoken truths talismans and diviners. ­Performative bodies (shamans), arbitrary though potent besides (diviners), and substances that elicit methodologically empirical eye views (mystics). Each of these points toward a distinct ontological starting point, an enactive born out of particular linguistic functions, and not one of them is right. This is the benefit of a multi-ontology approach like the one found within these pages. It lays a ground for comparison, whereby seeming conflicts can become points of dialogue whereby new entanglements and ecologies can arise. This is important. There are no pure ontologies, no perfectly formed worlds. These ontologies overlap, creating ecologies. Which is a closer approximation to what we live. I end this introduction with a quote from Edwin Abbott’s sci-fi thriller from the late nineteenth-century. “I call our [post/modern] world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. . . . Alas, a few years ago, I should have said ‘my universe’: but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things” (Abbott 1885, 11). I do not mean to assert a higher view, not exactly, but I do intend to overcome the flatland constitution that dominates our post/ modern world.

Chapter 1

Decolonial Mutations

In a fascinating work regarding contemporary decolonial methods, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, in Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide, argues that we must overcome abyssal thinking by catching ourselves practicing a hegemonic Western form of thought called lazy reason, in order that we might approach something like ecologies of knowledges. Abyssal thinking is relatively self-explanatory, and is aligned in most ways with what Latour defined as post/modern constitution in the first chapter. “Modern Western thinking is an abyssal thinking,” writes Santos (2014, 118). This abyssal thinking is predicated on the distinction between what is visible and what is invisible. Relative folk truths are made central only to the extent that other ways of living and knowing can be excluded. The supposed universality of scientific observations is always highly stylized and local. They are built upon peculiar objects like atomic units and lines. Objects that require intensive practices that narrow focus, and make invisible vast swaths of lived experience. How could these highly relative forms of knowledge make claim to a higher status than knowledge acquired through alternative methods (Santos 2014, 199)? “There visibility [post/modern objects and self-reflexivity] is premised upon the invisibility of forms of knowledge that cannot be fitted into any of these ways of knowing. I mean popular, lay, plebeian, peasant, or indigenous knowledges on the other side” (2014, 119). Most of my personal experiences shared in these pages obviously fit within these invisible realms. Far too many scholars would dismiss the words found here because they are shared side by side with experiences that should be antithema to rigorous scholarship. While this point is taken up at length in later chapters, it is also important to mention it here. There are so many lines that get drawn in order to maintain the hierarchies of post/modern rigor. Besides science, there is another important line that gets 31

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drawn, that of law. It is legal to wage a war on drugs. Legal to sell opioids, anti-depressants, antipsychotics, and, now, marijuana. But only if you are on the visible side of the law. All others, those invisible hustlers, should be placed in jail (Alexander 2011, 216). This is the abyssal thinking, the post/ modern constitution that must be overcome. Santos’s solution is to develop a “subaltern, insurgent cosmopolitanism” (2014, 135). One that is, “centrifugal, subversive, and blasphemous imagination” (2014, 57). By way of underlining such blasphemies, Santos looks to the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, who writes of the caricatured cannibal rising up to eat its less vital, less grounded oppressor. In examining the work of Andrade and others, Santos highlights the importance of the term mestizaje, the particular mixings—both forced and free—of bodies, hearts, and minds that has born generations of mestiza/o communities and theories throughout Latin America. With regard to this important idea, Oswaldo Guayasamín, the Ecuadorian painter who documented the anguish and destruction of indigenous peoples of the Americas, “claimed that mestizaje signified both the death of indigenous cultural expression and the most profound expressive reality of Latin Americans” (Miller 2004, 24). Marilyn G. Miller goes on to complexify the idea of mestizaje, clarifying the long complex history of this term and the ways in which Latin American governments used it as both a tool to control and limit the power of marginalized communities, while offering it as rallying cry for important nationalistic non-Western identities. By highlighting a term like mestizaje we cannot help but face the very real challenges and bloody histories of ongoing imperialist and colonial practices. Santos (2014, 59) agrees; mestizaje must be located at the intersection of multiple devastated logics. But we do not only find the destruction of popular, peasant, nonmodern, and indigenous logics, but also of the post/modern ones that have sought control through abyssal thinking. It is out of the ashes of such destruction that new logics can form. When Andrade (with Bary, 1991, 38) writes, “Cannibalism alone unites us. . . . The worlds’ single law. Disguised expression of all individualism, of all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties,” he offers an important warning. We must beware of the destructions that trail calls for individual rights, collective harmony, and planetary religions. But, we must also act or be eaten. “Only what is not mine interests me. The law of men. The law of the anthropophagous [cannibalismo/cannibalism]. . . . Against all importers of canned consciousness” (Andrade and Bary 1991, 39). As I argue more forcefully in later chapters, we are all cannibals. Our interactions and dialogues are destructive. We must own the violence, and we must continue to come together. There is not an easy naïve call for planetary utopias in these pages. When Andrade writes these words, he is speaking not only to our contemporary times, but to all of humanity. We move forward through

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consumption—cannibalismo. “The palpable existence of life,” he writes. “Pre-logical mentality for Mr. Levy-Bruhl to study. . . . I asked a man what is law. He said it is the guaranteed of the exercise of possibility. . . . I swallowed him” (Andrade and Bary 1991). There are vitalities and lived experiences that have not only been canned, but destroyed, through post/modern colonization. “Tupi or not tupi, that is [not] the question” (Andrade and Bary 1991, 38). Are you indigenous or not? Local like this or like that? Beware of the too easy generalizations, the attempts to usher in too much peace. And, we are not the pre-logical mentality for Mr. Levy-Bruhl to study. Why? Because we ate him. What is the potential offered by Creativity and ecologies of participation? The exercise of freedom, possibility, individuality, and so I ate him. And if you are not careful, then these pages might just eat you. Or at least, the lazy reason that is surely lurking among us. And what is this lazy reason? Santos (2014, 164–65) takes the idea from Leibniz, who noted that it had myriad forms—chief among these, those beholden to Muslim, Christian, and Stoic communities. The basic practice parallels linear assumptions regarding time. If time future is settled, what is there for me to do? I can either do nothing with regard to this external reality—Santos calls this impotent reason—or I can simply not think about it, because it is infinite and so foregone. Santos terms the latter proleptic reason. These he contrasts with arrogant reason, wherein absolute freedom is assumed, and so feels no obligation to defend or prove its worth because it is a foregone conclusion. Santos’s last category is most important for our purposes here, that of metonymic reason. The basic idea is this—if my linear way of thinking is the only viable mode of thought, then I have no reason to seek out and/or entertain other ways of knowing. The only possible use that these might have for me is as “raw materials” that I might manipulate to my own ends, that is, they are more primitive than I am, and so I can force their labor, ignore their logics, and maybe even help them to grow up—right after I take their land. Santos calls this lazy reason into question by first acknowledging that this linear style of thought is useful, but also limited. It is certainly not as universal as it pretends. Second, how we create and legitimate social power and hierarchies is deeply tied to our notions of temporality and time. Third, this linear form of temporality contracts the present into fleeting moments, while expanding the import of some not yet present future. There are, of course, other forms of temporality—other mutations of consciousness, as I argue below. We must be vigilant with regard to this lazy reason, especially the arrogant and the metonymic forms that so easily maintain the abyssal lines between visible and invisible life ways. We need, writes Santos, to turn from the monocultures of post/modern linearity—and all other monocultures as well—toward ecologies. By ecology, Santos writes, “I mean

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sustainable diversity based on complex relationality” (2014, 175). Ecologies value complexity, relationality, and diversity. Diversity, here, is defined in diverse ways. The choice of ecologies is political, and should be radically intercultural. Finally, says Santos, by focusing on ecologies we have found a path whereby we can not only nurture robust diversities but also maintain our vigilance against temptations to enact another monoculture (2014, 175). In this way, we can bring credibility to non-scientific, non-critical, nonmodern ways of knowing, but with the benefit of not discrediting scientific and critical forms of thought. The point is not so much to usurp, but rather to nurture broader dialogues between diverse forms of knowledge (2014, 189). Santos highlights the work of Nicholas Cusa here (2014, 109–10), arguing that we must immolate Cusa’s learned ignorance. In the face of infinity, linear thought can become arrogant and blind, as outlined above. But this is not the direction that Cusa took. If there is indeed something akin to the infinite, then we are left wanting with regard to any final or universal knowledge. The infinite cannot be reached through finite means. This is good, writes Santos, “[because] this principle of incompleteness of all knowledges is the precondition for epistemological dialogues and debates among different knowledges” (2014, 189). What you hold in your hand is one more theory of everything. Rather it is a fleshing out of at least four distinct ecologies of knowledge available to human beings. It is a consideration of different temporal ecologies, especially the point-like intimacies of shamans, the circular polarities of diviners, the linear telos of mystics, as well as the transparent time-freedom available through creative forms of participation. The latter ecology of participation could easily be read as my new theory if Santos’s warning regarding lazy reason above is not taken to heart. If the reader forgets themselves, and falls into post/modern notions of development and progress, then they will inevitably assume that this creative form of participation is more advanced. I beg the reader not to fall into this trap. Santos writes that “the ecology of knowledges lies in the idea of radical copresence” (2014, 191). It is through creative ecologies of participation that we realize this idea. But in order to fully grasp the meaning fleshed out in these pages, linear ideations of temporality must be put aside. In order to clarify what I mean by ecologies of participation, several distinctions between forms of participation must be made. In order to do this, I draw on several different sources throughout the following pages. Where Santos focuses on epistemologies, I turn throughout to ontologies in the plural. I find this to be a not only a more striking argument, but a more useful one as well. One of the primary inspirations for this multi-ontology approach comes from the work of several Western trained anthropologists who have ventured, at different times, into the realm of philosophy. I find their work especially telling as they have each in their own way let go of

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their lazy reasoning. They have reached out and touched invisible others, and found them fleshy and full of knowledge that is not allowable within the metonymic linearity of post/modern folk flatland traditions. I am especially indebted here to the work of Philip Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Both of these men were trained by the late Levi-Strauss, and both did extensive fieldwork among Amerindian peoples of the Amazon. Viveiros de Castro took the life ways of these Amerindian people seriously, and as such began to argue for an antithetic ontology to what I term naturalism, which has come to be understood as the new animism. Through intense debate with Viveiros de Castro and others that is considered in detail later, Descola began to articulate a neo-Whorfian neo-structuralism in order to make sense of these distinct life ways. He has developed the notion that different ecologies, to use Santos’s terminology, are predicated on different temporal and spatial assumptions. In particular, he highlights four basic modes of participation. First, there are those who assume a shared interiority with all others, while also experiencing radically diverse outsides, bodies, or physicalities. These are the animists, my shamans. The assume a shared Culture, a shared People, and then experience diversity through the wearing of distinct skins. The Tree People are people, just like everyone else, but experience differently because of the bark, roots, and leaves that make up their physicality, their skin. In contrast to these communities, we find the naturalists, the ones who we assume develop a sense of linear time and shared physicality, that is, Nature. Giving little thought to the continuity of their physical form, they busy themselves worrying about diverse insides, subjectivities, telos, ideas, and forms. These are my mystics, the ones who enact various subjective categories and interior subjective forms. In contrast to both of these are what I think of as diviners. They are the ones who assume a circular temporality coupled with a sense of both shared physicality and interiority. They enact a diversity of Cosmoses. What is interesting to these communities are relationships, as opposed to shamanic vital intimacies and mystic truths and methods. Where Descola uses the term totemic for these people, I utilize the term talismanic as a way to distinguish my own slightly different definition, and as a nod to my own West African influences and Neoplatonic roots. Finally, Descola outlines a mode of participation that assumes no continuity at all. These communities are born out of a form of participation Descola calls analogism. I go to some length to distinguish my own work from Descola here. Where he sees this form of a participation as one prone to nihilism, I understand it in a different way. Where Descola finds an ontology of radical discontinuity, I locate the beginnings of an agential realism—that is, radical individuality and free will. The naturalist ecologies fall into post/modern flatlands; here we can see something more creative at play. As I detail below, I understand this

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fourth mode as the beginnings of what I term creative agential participation. A relatively new form born out of the mathematical, Gnostic, Abrahamic, and Neoplatonic traditions. As we wend our way between nominalist, deist, mechanistic, and finally relativist assumptions about our realities, the givenness of the world starts to tear apart. A novel ontology begins to form. Through the rest of this chapter, I detail important distinctions between these four ontologies. But as I focus on important differences, we should also remember that these distinctions need not be taken as absolute or comprehensive. Mystics, agents, diviners, and shamans—these are useful points of clarification that should not be taken too strictly. In the end, we should be more interested in points of overlap and in-between. Ecologies rather than ontologies. But before jumping to that point, these different ontologies must be fleshed out. Another point must be underlined before we proceed too far. While most of this text focuses on important differences between human ontologies, we must not assume that these are primary, or that other ontologies are not also at play. To this end, we should at minimum recognize that there are in fact other ontological starting points available within other-thanhuman worlds. In an interesting text on the origins of our human minds, Merlin Donald (1991) outlines multiple evolutionary mutations that can be discerned when looking for the genesis of our human forms of knowing. He highlights procedural and episodic forms of memory as early precursors to our contemporary moment. Procedural memories can be found throughout the animal kingdom. Here we see the storage of complex patterns whereby needed skills are learned. Imagine riding a bike or typing. These actions lean on procedural memories that have been developed in response to certain tasks and can be found throughout non-human communities of simple organisms. Episodic memories, in contrast, are found in apes, among other mammals and birds, and highlight a certain situation-bound concrete style of special and temporal recognition. Here we have at least two forms of participation that are other-than-human, and of course, there must be many more. Plant cognition (Gagliano 2015), plant philosophy (Marder 2013), and participatory approaches to other-than-human research (Bastian 2017). These are all fascinating directions that could be taken, and yet it is worthwhile to first focus on more human forms of participation. Donald marks this trajectory by asserting a mimetic or archaic form of participation that becomes available to early hominids. “Mimetic skill or mimesis rests on the ability to produce consciousness, self-initiated, representational acts that are intentional but not linguistic” (1991, 168). This mimetic participation does not include speech acts like those we associate with human language, but for the purposes of my argument in these pages, language should be seen more broadly. I locate language in diverse forms of verbal and

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non-verbal communications. I also see language as a pointer toward distinct processes of participation. Toward a basic creativity inherent to both organic and inorganic life. It could easily be argued that in doing so I make the idea of language a useless idea. If defined too broadly, then it is stripped of all meaning. This is true, and yet, I think it is necessary at times to encourage a certain shock to rigid ways of thinking. Like with the term ontology, I tease more out of the term language than is there. I put it to work in places it might not belong, overtly challenging certain anthropomorphic ethnocentrisms. As we move from mimetic to more symbolic forms of participation, which Donald highlights as mythic, a new focus on defining the world results in different models, and, I argue, different worlds. “Once the mind starts to construct a verbally encoded mental ‘world’ of its own, the products of this operation—thoughts and words—cannot be disassociated from one another” (Donald 1991, 253). What does this mean, exactly? Analytic philosophers, positivists, and certain Chomskian-style universalists will argue in different ways that our language can be so precise as to map onto a given reality. Through careful linguistic analysis we can move closer to some discoverable natural world. Donald’s work calls this into question. “In other words, symbolic thought is primary; it is the driving force, the invisible engine, behind word use” (1991, 255). This point is drawn out in greater detail in later chapters, but the point is important to make now. Our abilities to communicate are just as prone to evolutionary (not linearoriented development) mutations as anything else. Different forms of participation create different models, different worlds. The temporal and spatial lives of dogs are not lacking, rather they are different. The spatial lives of ­Amerindian shamans are not less developed, rather they place emphasis on distinct temporal landscapes, landscapes that are also available to us, just as ours in one way or another are available to them. And these forms of participation are also present, though given less emphasis, throughout our lives. Procedural memory is not a lesser form. Any professional athlete can tell you this. Now it is at this point that I should also mention that Donald is not so much haunted by neo-Darwinians, but inspired by Darwin himself. He places important limits on a purely materialist reading of natural selection. “One thing is certain; if we compare the complex representational architecture of the modern mind with that of the ape, we must conclude the Darwinian universe is too small to contain” (Donald 1991, 382). More recently, Tim Ingold has written at length on these issues. In doing so, he has rather boldly claimed that neo-Darwinian theories are dead (Ingold and Gísli 2013, 1; see also Ingold 2007). In writing these words, he is particularly critical of authors like Alex Mesoudi (2011), who Ingold sees as attempting to reduce all of culture and meanings to scientific materialist stuff. This is a complicated conversation (see Lewens 2015), but one that should be considered. For my part, I fall

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on the side of Ingold, align my work with both process-oriented (Henning and Scarfe 2013) and enactive approaches (Thompson 2007) to evolutionary theories (see chapter 6). That said, the main take away at this point is fourfold. First, there are innumerable ontological starting points and forms of knowledge. There are, to use my own terminology, ecologies of participation. Second, it is not only useful to discern these diverse modes—it is necessary. Third, we must guard against abyssal thinking. To this end, we must not only encourage but honor expressions that fall far outside the acceptable categories of “rigorous” scholarship. Many of my own biographical sketches in these pages act as a case in point. And finally, we must also guard against lazy reasoning. We must not conflate the practice of distinguishing diverse modes of participation with naturalistic attempts to essentialized truth or post/modern attempts that see our work as progressive or developmental. What you hold in your hand is not another theory, but rather, something altogether alter. To this end we should encourage blasphemous and marginal imaginations. This point is important. Santos (2014, 101) writes, We live in a time in which criticizing the West in the West comes close to self-flagellation. To my mind, this stance is necessary and healthy, given the damage brought about by the imperialism and neocolonialism upon which the hegemonic West feeds itself. I believe, nonetheless, that devolving some of the objects stolen inside the West itself is crucial to create a new pattern of interculturallity, both globally and inside the West.

This is a clear defense of the project that you hold in your hand. As a person who was born and raised within the hegemonic post/modern flatland that we so often refer to as the “West,” I need to face the imperialist and colonial trends within this folk tradition. One obvious way to develop a postcolonial or decolonial philosophy of religions would be to deconstruct terms like religion and philosophy so that we see through there hegemonic tendencies. This work continues to be done very well, and so while I align myself with these trends, I chart another course in this book. A second obvious choice would be to focus my attention on nonmodern or non-Western traditions, and in one way or another defend them in lieu of and/or over and against some monolithic Western tradition. Again, there are innumerable people hard at work on this front. I invite many of their voices into these pages; many of whom harken from the nonmodern traditions I might highlight. And yet this is not the focus of this text. While I do bring in many different sources from many different communities, the thrust of my writing tends to unwind an assumed monolithic Western tradition. Here I follow Santos above.

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One of the best ways that I, especially as a person originating from the “Western” tradition, can begin to dismantle the Western hegemony is by rendering transparent the great diversity that has been conflated as some univocal whole. I am especially suited for this task, as I undertake it from the inside. I come from these traditions. I do not pretend to be other, and I do not mean to dismiss out of hand from whence I come. As such, when I speak of shamans, diviners, and mystics, I tend to focus on diverse traditions that might otherwise be reduced simply to the “West” or to some category like “feminist.” For example, in the last chapter I began to wonder if Judith Butler might be a shaman and Eve Sedgewick, a diviner. In later chapters I locate Karen Barad’s agential realism in parallel to my creative participatory events. Well-known authors like these are referenced and compared through my multiple-ontology lens throughout this text. But before going too far in this direction, I buttress Donald’s distinctions by turning to a less well-known author, Jean Gebser. GEBSER’S MUTATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Whitehead warns us away from a notion that not only haunted the ancient Greeks and the Christians but the entire history of Western philosophy right up to contemporary analytic metaphysics as well: the idea of perfection. He assures us that whatever is going on, it cannot be isolated to any static unity or immanent ground. But here he (1968, 81) offers a riddle, not unlike Latour, as he points us toward fabrication. There is some play of the actual and the potential, and, he tells us, “these abstractions of structure have been conceived . . . [with] no reference to creation. The process has been lost.” And what is this process? That is a question taken up at length in this book. I call this creative participation. In writing these words I am inspired not only by Cassirer and Whitehead, cited above, but by the work of Jean Gebser. Gebser is a relatively unknown author—a friend of, among others, Werner Heisenberg, Pablo Picasso, and Carl Jung—who lived through World War II. He fled Germany just as Nazism began to form, managed to get out of Madrid hours before his apartment was bombed, and crossed into Switzerland from France only two hours before the Swiss closed their borders in August of 1939. As so many of his contemporaries, Gebser was shaped by this unrest. He experienced a world in chaos, while envisioning something else—diverse mutations of consciousness. This program is problematic to the extent that neo-Darwinian materialisms are taken for granted. Tim Ingold (2007, 17) writes, By all means let us seek a way of embracing human history and culture within a wider concept of evolution: not, however, by reducing history to a reconstructed

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phylogeny of cultural traits but by releasing the concept of evolution itself from the stranglehold of neo-Darwinian thinking, allowing us to understand the selforganizing and transformational dynamics of fields of relationships among both human and non-human beings.

The point is important. Anthropologists and social scientists are not necessarily in conflict with evolutionary thought. Rather, the strict materialism of neo-Darwinian traditions should be called to task. Like other important issues that have arisen in these opening chapters, I consider the issue of evolution in greater detail later in this text (see chapter 6). In these introductory pages, I introduce my overall argument, as well as its inspirations, in a more cursory way. As so many other ideas that I develop in this book, the notion of consciousness will raise some suspicion. It does not help that I cite an eccentric author like Gebser as my inspiration. If I held to an analytic philosophy of mind I might get away with using the word consciousness. If I was writing specifically from the perspective of neuroscience the idea might have more weight. If I were to locate myself as a postcolonial or feminist theorist, and set about deconstructing and problematizing all generalizations found in Gebser’s work, then I would be on solid ground. But this is not what I am after. Not exactly. Traditions like these can be too beholden to the post/modern constitution outlined above. Too often they assume a flatland metaphysics and proceed to say away everything that does not fit within their narrowly imagined, largely ethnocentric, folk traditions. Flatland metaphysics is one of cornerstones of colonization and globalization that continue to ravage our lives. It assumes a radical discontinuity born out of Cartesian dualism. Gebser offers us a way out of this meaning-less cosmos. Through a careful study of the material culture, especially the art, of innumerable communities, Gebser locates a pattern of what he calls mutations of consciousness. He uses the term mutation for a couple important reasons. First, he wants to ensure that his work is not caricatured as a progress-oriented, linear, developmental theory. Mutations, like those found in Darwin’s theory, are not linear but discontinuous. They are not driven toward or by some shared telos. Second, these mutations have both flourishing and decadent aspects. They can be in states of flowering and decay. He writes, “[I] have disavowed the concept of evolution and prefer instead to speak of mutations. . . . No new structure proceeds from an exhausted one, but a mutation can readily spring forth from the originary presence of the whole” (Gebser 1985, 142). If read too quickly, one could see Gebser making a classic comparative mistake, whereby his own ontology is held up as more developed than those of others. It is important not to fall into this trap.

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For Gebser, there must be something like what Santos (2014, 191) termed radical copresence in his defense of ecologies of knowledge. Gebser writes that his position is not meant to “systematize but rather to elucidate the living and working interrelationships [of distinct mutations], and to convey vividly the vital and effective facts that result from these interrelationships” (1985, 117). Gebser locates his magic mutation as beholden to a point-like nondirectional consciousness. He finds mythic mutations focuses on the circular and complementary, while his mental mutation emphasizes triangular and binary forms of knowledge. While these distinctions have become unfashionable within our post/modern academy, the reader should keep them in mind. Especially as we turn to the neo-Whorfian anthropology of Stephen Levinson and Philip Descola in later chapters. While such distinctions have been misused, they also hold some pragmatic value as well. But the reason for highlighting Gebser’s work is not merely to rehearse these long held categories, but rather to point toward his integral mutation. If we follow Gebser’s lead, he writes, we find a “space-and-time-free aperspectival world where the free (or freed) consciousness has at its disposal all latent as well as actual forms of space and time” (1985, 117). As I argue later in this book, this integral agential position is not better than the other mutations available to us. Rather, it is different. Each comes with their own limitations, made especially obvious when we consider the ethical ramifications of each. While I touch on these issues later in this text, it is sufficient for now to underline how this radical copresence exemplifies a creativity that is prone to different expressions, intensifications, and events of emphasis. Gebser’s work outlines something akin to my multi-ontology approach, and while he leans heavily on his integral mutation of consciousness—just as I lean on my creative agential realism—he does not assume that this mutation represents progress or some naïve inclusivity that erases important difference. There is no singularity, no primary linear directionality to these mutations. They are discontinuous novel expressions, that should not be understood as leading to any final goal. Gebser is interested in an activity, where others have sought essential ground. He is curious how these mutations function, how they come about. In thinking about human-centric mutations, Gebser describes five: archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral mutations. The archaic mutation—which we might relate to Donald’s mimetic participation—receives the least amount of consideration as it is so different from what we have come to know. The magic mutation is episodic and topographical in relation to both spatial and temporal experience. But it should not be confused with Donald’s episodic memory. Where the latter is pre-verbal and easily available to any number of non-human animals, Gebser’s magic mutation can be placed as a first step within what Donald terms mythic memory. In later chapters I introduce

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specific instances of this mutation, which I refer to as animist and/or shamanic participation (passim). The mythic mutation is more circular and relational in emphasis. We can see this as a second step within Donald’s own mythic-oral mutation. Here you might think of any number of elemental theories that have been emphasized by human traditions. The keys to this form of participation are correlations, polarities, and analogies. Gods and ancestors are not metaphors, but rather quasi-physical others (Wiredu 1987, 2004) with whom humans consistently interact. Mythic forms of tradition are more generally found within oral traditions, and sound alien to the extent that one is trapped within what Gebser calls mental and deficient mental mutations (i.e., decaying naturalist ecologies located in the introduction as post/modern flatland metaphysics). As mentioned above, each mutation, for Gebser, includes both healthy and decadent phases. New mutations naturally grow out of the decay of other faltering mutations. This is a crucial aspect of Gebser’s work to consider. As Gebser’s mythic participation—which parallels what I term talismanic or divinatory participation—becomes decadent, as it becomes so baroque that it begins to falter under its own weight, something new must take its place. Mythic (talismanic) modes of participation can bring about worlds of meaning, like those found for example within Cuban Ifá divination. But myth can also begin to breakdown as it did for many Greeks, Jews, and Christians who sat at the crossroads of competing oral traditions. Thinking along trade routes and diverse communities of the ancient world made it exceedingly hard to believe in one’s myths (on whether Greeks believed their own myths see Veyne and Wissing 1988). Imagine Xenophanes writing the following words around 500 BCE: “But if cattle and horses and lions had hands or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do, horses like horses and cattle like cattle also would depict the gods’ shapes and make their bodies of such a sort as the form they themselves have.” As the oral traditions of ancient peoples bump into one another there is ample opportunity for them to begin to break down. Gods, for Xenophanes, are not really real. They are metaphors that we have made up to make sense of the chaotic worlds in which we live. It is at times like this that the Gebser’s mental mutation begins to take form. The healthy expression of Gebser’s mental mutation—what I term naturalism and/or mysticism—comes about through the faltering of decadent mythos. We find Plato seeking the Good, which is a naturalist mystic idea. But he does so within the context of cosmos built on the participation of polarities and the play of opposites. His is an ecology of participation in between mystic and divinatory ontologies. We see Aristotle focusing more intently on what he thinks of as physics. This is a substance philosophy that is based on naturalist (mystic) ideas.

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The very idea of a physics brings about considerations of meta-physics. It is important to note, that unlike Plato, Aristotle sees substance as something simple and given, something that can easily be objectified and categorized. In his work on ancient linguistics and philosophical thought, Peter Struck (2004) makes an important distinction between words that are seen as labels—for example, in the work of Aristotle; and words that are understood as talismans—for example, in the work of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus. A label camp is mystic leaning. Theirs is a naturalism that is unconcerned by the diversity of physicalities experienced by animists and shamans. They simply label physicality, and move on to higher—read interior—things like the meta- behind the physics and the nature of one’s soul. For those of the talismanic camp, words have power, and so are divinatory in nature. A trend away from such divinatory participation is part and parcel of a naturalist leaning mystic that undergirds so much Abrahamic, Gnostic, and Neoplatonist thought. It takes for granted the givenness of nature, and then is troubled by the vagaries of meta-, formal, and final causes. How do ideas, gods, forms, God, or the One interact with substances? With physics? This is the mystery that drives a mystic’s search for truth. This is also what Gebser would call a mental mutation of consciousness. Increasingly these communities focus their attention on discerning some perfect point of view. This is what is troubling. They take for granted a realm of nature—one that they also tend to disdain—and then spend their time contemplating the nature of insides, the state of souls, God, and the One. At the edges where these mutations meet, we are likely to find overlap and confusion. As one form of participation becomes ascendant, another is likely to be in decay. Again, the body of work created by Iamblichus in the third century is instructive. We find him rebelling in important ways against the mysticism of his day. “Plotinus thought that to re-establish contact with our higher self we need to turn to contemplation and philosophy, while Iamblichus considered that the help of the gods, actualized through theurgic ritual, was needed for the soul to ascend” (Addey 2014, 172). In her recent work, Crystal Addey has considered at length the philosophical import of Iamblichus’s emphasis on theurgy, divination, and ritual for rational thought (see also Struck 2016). Is it possible to be rational while also practicing rituals whereby one attempts to involve ideas, forms, and gods within the material world? This is a debate that was waged between Plotinus’s biographer and student, Porphyry, and Iamblichus and his student Proclus. While this is not the place to dive deeply into this fascinating back-and-forth, it is instructive to give it a cursory glance. ­Countless naturalist leaning scholars have dismissed Iamblichus’s claim to rationality, while emphasizing that Plotinus would have done the same (Addey 2014, 174). Crystal Addey reads this history slightly differently. She finds

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Plotinus open while also wary of theurgy, while openly hostile toward more sympathetic forms of magic that were practiced at the time. Plotinus is a naturalist mystics par excellence. Addey tells us that “Plotinus considers magic to operate through cosmic sympathy. . . . Yet the theoretical basis and operation of theurgy works according to a different model, according to the later Neoplatonists” (2014, 174–75). Here Plotinus is dismissive of what Gebser would call a magic mutation of consciousness. To practice magic is to assume an entanglement with materiality that Plotinus simply cannot abide by. Sympathy with the material cosmos is out of the question, but what about theurgy and divination? “We have seen that for Iamblichus,” writes Addey, “theurgy does not merely work through sympathy . . . rather, theurgy works by invoking the gods through their symbols . . . through the continuous emanation of divine energy from the gods down through their respective chains of symbols” (2014, 175). Here we find both Iamblichus and Plotinus easily rejecting shamanic forms of participation, what Gebser terms magic. We find Plotinus somewhat open to Platonic participations between ideas and substances (mythic/divinatory forms of participation), just as long as in the end the forms and ideas have the final say (the objectivity sought by naturalism). This is a generous and nuanced reading of Plotinus, for throughout his work—and certainly that of the Gnostic and many Christian thinkers—there is a clear focus on what Plato called the forms (gods and ideas), as well as that unmoved mover Aristotle thought of as final cause (e.g., God or the One). Iamblichus is less certain and wants to enact a naturalist-talismanic mode of participation. He focuses on symbolic representations, often statues, which are talismans, and the efficacy of locating divinity at this in-between. Again, the details are not so important for my argument. Rather, I point to this epoch by way of clarifying the play of different forms of participation, focusing on how they can be born, again following Gebser, out of the decadence of one another. This point is especially crucial for our time. If all that Gebser had to offer were these oft-noted distinctions, his work would hardly be worth citing here. It is rather in his consideration of an increasingly decadent mental mutation, and of the new mode of participation that is taking form within this decay. Gebser calls this new mode by many names. He often refers to it as integral, and as often as not by names like the anacrhonon, atemporal, aperspectival, verition, and awaring. Such terminology is intentionally obtuse, for Gebser wants to show us more than tell us what this new mode of participation is like. It is atemporal and aperspectival because it enacts a novel temporal and spatial world. It is not episodic, or circular, or linear at all. Neither is it solely topographical, polar, or extended in space. In order to enact such an ontology, we must be prone awaring verition, a being-as-truth that is aware not of some certain content but rather through something like diaphaneity. Rather than inclusivity, Geber’s diaphaneity calls for transparency. Rather than transcend

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and include everyone in our new theory of everything—see the popular work of “integral” theorist Ken Wilber (2000a, 2000b, 2007) here—Gebser’s work allows us to see the ways in which our different ontological assumptions can interplay, the ways in which they lead to ecologies, interwoven, enmeshed, and entangled ways of meaning making. Following a similar line of thought, Santos writes, “At the core of ecologies of knowledge is the idea that different types of knowledge are incomplete in different ways and that raising the consciousness of such reciprocal incompleteness (rather than looking for completeness) will be a precondition for achieving cognitive justice” (2014, 212). I would push this point further by arguing for ontological justice. To this end Gebser writes that we need a timefreedom, an ontological starting point in which multiple ontologies not only make themselves known, but can coexist and intensify one another in profound new ways—that is, ecologies of participation. This is the creative form of participation my multiple-ontology approach is predicated upon. Gebser goes on: “[This diaphanon does] not systematize but rather elucidate[s] the living and working interrelationships” that are concurrently available to us (1985, 117). “Intercultural translation,” writes Santos, “is the alternative both to the abstract universalism that grounds Western-centric general theories and to the idea of incommensurability between cultures” (2014, 212). This is what we must aim for. Not a better form of participation, but rather, a different form, one that is different to the extent that it can honor these others, while also bringing awareness to its own incompleteness. As such, we must root out the post/modern within us, the decadent mental mutation that believes that only others believe. We must negate triumphalist beliefs in history and progress and be wary of all developmental theories that assume to include us all. This is not a theory but rather a radical discussioncum-participation in the form of diaphaneity, radical transparency and alterity, without concerns for vulgar relativism and incommensurability. We must be aware of true believers: in scientism, self-reflexivity, critical theory, and new age neoperennialisms. Beware of those that have figured it out, the future we have been waiting for. For Gebser these are acts of ratio. Here, he tells us, “We meet up with the principal characteristic of the perspectival world: directedness and perspectivity, together with—unavoidably—sectorial partitioning” (1985, 74). We currently vacillate on the edge of vulgar relativism. Not just sectarian violence among religious groups, but between all groups that have fallen into the post/modern flatland trap. Both liberal and conservative, socially righteous and culturally righteous. Beware. So, what are we to do? How do we communicate and participate with one another going forward? Gebser writes, “The world and we ourselves—the whole—become transparent, and where . . . what is rendered diaphanous become the verition of the world, does the world become concrete and

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integral” (1985, 263). Transparency, diaphaneity, and verition: the latter word speaks to the embodiment required by this new form of participation. What I call creative participation is not another theoretical stance. It is about agential acts, functional moments of meaning making. The participatory events cannot be isolated or finally theorized. They are more akin to lived experience. The act of verition is not an act of abstraction in the sense of objectification. Rather, this is abstraction is a tradition of mathematical function, a bringing together of disparate inputs and outputs within the context of a momentary relational truth—not a theory but a happening. These agential events are not found within the domain of naturalist mystics. Naturalisms assumptions regarding an essential ground of being (whether Nature or God) assumes a spatiality that cannot abide agential creativity, novelty, and the discontinuities of mutation. There is no ground in integral mutation beyond agential functions of unification. The “ground” is one of intimate discontinuity. We are animists and shamans. We do take on different bodies and vitalities. We are talismanic diviners. There is truth here, but it is arbitrary and performative. We are naturalists and mystics. There is also something akin to objectivity and justice. But we are not, cannot be, any one of these only. The words diaphanous and transparent are more helpful. If we are going to honor the diverse iterations of human participation, one way forward is to attempt to become more available, that is, diaphanous and/or transparent to one another. To do this, we must stop hiding behind our post/modern assumptions. A truly decolonial philosophy of religions must leave its post/modernity behind. In order to take others on their own terms, we must find some unique ways of getting out of our own way. We must also notice the ways in which different ontologies have both flourishing and decadent aspects. A means of comparison and critique. Gebser offers one such opportunity, diaphaneity, but within the halls of academia it will not suffice. And so, I have written the rest of this book. I have grounded these ideas across party lines, utilizing an interdisciplinary approach. But I have also gone beyond academia, beyond abyssal and lazy reasoning. I have sought to encourage blasphemous imaginations. This becomes more obvious in later chapters as I include my own unique lived experiences. But to do this, I must make one more attempt to flesh out the post/modern flatland that stands in our way. For that I turn toward a deeper consideration of history that led to agential participation and Creativity. HUMANISM AFTER NOMINALISM: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALITY In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, mystics like Meister Eckhart, William of Ockham, and Francesco Petrarch all sought to simplify the

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cosmos while maintaining what they saw as the natural purity of God. For Eckhart, God is pure movement or becoming. For Ockham, forms and ideas must be rejected, due to a new theory of nominalism that rejected universals through an emphasis on parsimony and logic. Where Plato saw participation between ideas and substances (an ecology of mystic-divination), these thinkers begin to reject any and all such inter-play (a mystic rejection of divinatory logic). How could God be sullied by such things as things? Such ideas owe much to early Gnostic and Neoplatonic—especially Plotinus—thought (see De Conick 2016). The Gnostic-cum-nominalist God of these authors is infinitely distant. Mystic naturalists are fascinated by objectivity, methodological purity, and clearly delineated theories of causality. Michael A. Gillespie marks the assertion regarding the purity of God as the seed for what we now know as atheism and scientific materialism. The flourishing of methodological purity, naturalism, eventually leads to decadence—Cartesian dualism and the radical discontinuity of post/modern flatland. A nominalist cosmos, with its infinitely distant God, is no different from a “godless universe of matter and motion. . . . ‘Atheistic’ materialism thus has a theological origin in the nominalist revolution” (Gillespie 2008, 36). Where Aristotle’s naturalist substances are complex instances of diverse causal relations, the nominalist cosmos lends itself to a flatland spatiality. Following Gebser’s idea of flourishing and decadent mutations, we can see in the turn toward purified final causality—for example, Ockham’s God—the beginnings of decay, as well as the beginnings of something new. Following a similar line of thought, Gebser (1985, 13–15) finds Petrarch— in a letter to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro—climbing Mt. Ventoux in northeast Avignon in France in the fourteenth-century. Gebser’s telling of this story is striking. He suggests that by summiting this mountain Petrarch becomes the first person to experience a landscape as an individual having a specific perspective in relation to a vista of extended space. Naturalist objectivity gives way to space. The mental mutation finds its ultimate objectivity and begins to decay. Out of this decadence, Petrarch places an emphasis on individuality, the beginnings of an agential realism. Whether this is true or not, it is worth considering. Petrarch’s summit moves him to do two things. First, he picks up the copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions that he is carrying, whereby the “tenth book presented itself” (Petrarca 1898, 317). Petrarch reads this presented passage aloud to his brother and finds Augustine lamenting that humans too often wonder at the natural world, while forgetting to consider their own selves. This is important because it highlights two of Petrarch’s great contributions to a humanist turn (see Gillespie 2008, 70). “I was abashed,” he writes, “angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but

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the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself” (Petrarca 1898, 317). Here he is recognizing the importance of earlier authors who had cultivated their own individuality. This is an important departure from a medieval emphasis on church and saints. It is a recognition of the importance of the individuality of earlier thinkers. But this in itself is not enough. He goes on: “Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain,” he tells us, “I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again” (Petrarca 1898, 317). Petrarch turns inward, and contemplates his own individuality, but in relation to outward— that is, space. As insides and outsides are recognized in conjunction, they begin to break apart. This dualism is taken for granted today. This spatiality that gave way to individuality brought about our too-easy assumptions about having insides. On this point, Gillespie writes, “This journey led inward to the unexplored territory of a self filled with passions and desires that were no longer something mundane and unspiritual that had to be extirpated or constrained [in keeping with earlier church doctrine] but that were instead a reflection of each person’s individuality and that consequently deserved to be expressed, cultivated, and enjoyed” (2008, 70). Naturalist objectivity will begin to falter in the face of the recognition of individuals, bodies, and constructed cultures. Nature begets culture. Naturalism gives way to a mysticism—constructivism—in decay. Petrarch’s perspectivism and individualism is in many ways a response to the shocking sparseness of a nominalist cosmos as well as the never-ending entries into Being attempted by earlier scholastic mysticism. In relation to scholastic attempts to articulate once and for all the true nature of some divine unity—that is, mystic objectivity—Petrarch becomes fed up. He wants nothing to do with the theologians of his day and their highly abstract attempts to make sense of the world through Aristotelian categories (Gillespie 2008, 49). Aristotle and naturalism have gone into decay. Mysticism and objectivity have been relativized. And in the face of meaningless nominalist cosmos devoid of universals—a sort of pre-Newtonian space—Petrarch chooses to emphasize the importance of our humanness and individuality. Humanism and nominalism stand side by side, says Gillespie (2008, 75), both in different ways highlighting radical ontologies of individualism. To my mind, this is a fundamental turning point. As I argue in detail in later chapters, animisms are interested in diversities of outsides, while assuming some shared inside. Like the nominalists, they assume a plethora of diverse bodies, but unlike the nominalists, they assume a shared interiority (e.g., the People). Naturalists assume the opposite. Like humanists they assume a diversity of insides, but unlike humanists, they also assume a continuity of nature. For naturalists like Aristotle,

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substances are different, but their atomism or individuality is superficial. Change and alterity happens at a surface level, while continuity holds at the depths. Nominalism is different. A precursor to the contemporary atomism of physics, individuality is primary and so ontological. Animists assume a diversity of physicalities, held together by a largely unexamined continuity of inside (Culture). Naturalists assume a diversity of insides, held together by a largely unexamined continuity of outside (Nature). By removing God from participation in the day-to-day, while emphasizing an ontological of logic and parsimony, these naturalist mystics broke naturalism. There is another way to put this. In purifying naturalism of all divinatory and animist logics, mysticism went into decay. Gebser cites these moments as the beginning of a decadent mental epoch and the beginning of what he calls an integral mutation. There is an important point to be underlined here. The Western tradition is moving from largely naturalist-leaning languages like Greek, Latin, French, and English, to a more creative and symbolic language, that is, mathematics. In the process the post/modern is born. God becomes crossed out. The beginnings of a scientific materialism are well underway. This leads to a whole new cosmos made up of radically distinct individual physical units, atoms, but also insides—humans. Both outsides and insides have become discontinuous. In response to the subsequent lack of meaning that ensues, a profound interest in diverse individuals begins to hold sway. No longer are these humanists looking for the ultimate God. Instead, what becomes interesting and worth defending are individual rights and differences. The theorists of culture worry about diverse insides—culture, while scientists worry about distinct outsides—nature. The catch is that if we stay within a naturalist-mystic ontology, this new atomism and individuality— physics and humanism—leaves us wandering between nihilism and vulgar relativism. What are we to do in such a setting? Stuck between nature and culture, the post/modern has no answer. In the face of this newly mechanistic universe several important leaps of imagination become relevant. There is another passage in Petrarch’s letter that bears consideration. “Then a new idea took possession of me,” he writes, “and I shifted my thoughts to a consideration of time rather than place” (Petrarca 1898, 314). Where sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers continued to flesh out the underpinnings this new nominalist-cum-mechanistic universe, eighteenth-century thinkers like Leibniz and Newton started to articulate a new mathematics whereby relationships between these strange atomic units could be made sense of. As naturalist objectivity slides ever closer to relativism, these thinkers imagine a calculus of relations that sets the ground work whereby we might make sense of our agency. Petrarch’s individualism—his humanist pre-cursor to culture—can be seen as a reaction to the atomicity of the coming physics. Space gives way to self,

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which brings about an existential crisis. Petrarch looks inward and considers his temporality. And this time becomes all important for the nineteenth- and twentieth-century trends in biology, geology, mathematics, and physics that enacted a new temporal landscape all together. Mathematically inclined philosophers like Frege, Russell, Gödel, and Wittgenstein pushed our thought beyond axiomatic thinking. Theoreticians in physics like Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg began to introduce similar insights into their respective theories. They began relativizing time-space, whereby temporal units allowed us access to the multiplicities of futures and pasts. These thinkers relativized space by showing its inherent relationship to new understandings of time. Newton’s linear extended space gives way to event-based theories of timespace. Moments, acts, events of unification, whereby the past (efficient cause) and the future (final cause, i.e., telos) are enjoyed within the context of a novel and intimate participatory events. Relativity and quantum align with constructivism, feminism, postcolonial, and decolonial thought. Insides and outsides are atomized and contextualized, leaving behind the possibility of new ontological absolutes—agential functions, co-creative moments of world-making. But it is too early in our journey to dive into these distinctions in any detail, too early to discern this important distinction between the participation defended in these pages, and, for example, Platonic participation and too early to inculcate ourselves to the intricacies of such speculations. The point at this juncture is to underline that there are new linguistic functions available to us, borne out of mind-altering mathematical and experimental breakthroughs of the last several centuries. Authors like Barad (2007), Langer (1942), and Whitehead (1978) follow these new linguistic turns beyond naturalist assumptions about nature and culture. They help us to enact participatory worlds predicated on process-oriented theories of agential realism (Barad 2007), actual occasions (Whitehead 1978), and/or what I think of as participatory events. These authors offer us a new step toward a philosophia after Nature and Culture. But, and this is important, they are not right. Read in parallel to Santos and Gebser, these authors allow for avenues toward enacting new ecologies of agential participation. Cassirer addresses this turn through his neo-Kantian philosophy. He writes, “Kant’s basic conviction and presupposition consist rather of this, that there is a universal and essential form of knowledge, and that philosophy is called upon and qualified to discover this form and establish it with certainty” (1950, 14). The emphasis here is on a new form of knowledge, rather than some new content. A door is opened, agency can be found through an emphasis on symbolic functions. But where Kant thought there might be some universal form, Cassirer takes a different path. Writing after Newtonian physics was relativized and temporalized by the likes of Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg, he locates a multiplicity

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of languages. And through that journey Cassirer discovers a myriad of functions in the plural. This, then, is one of the important works of contemporary philosophical speculation. Rather than seek to discern a singular ontology, we must challenge ourselves to address multiple ontologies, multiple worlds, each enacted according to distinct linguistic, mathematical, or otherly symbolic beginnings. What is language? I don’t know; not exactly, but it is made up of symbols, and symbols, we come to find out, are the functions that help enact forms. “The philosophical study of symbols,” writes Susan Langer, “[perhaps] holds the seed of a new intellectual harvest, to be reaped in the next season of human understanding” (1942, 25). Somewhere in between the study of logic and the new sciences on one hand, and contemporary humanities like anthropology, psychology, religion, and sociology on the other, “we find a central theme, the human response, as a constructive, not a passive thing” (1942, 24). Through our symbols, languages, and ontologies, we are co-creating shared and entangled worlds. This is the basic assertion found detailed within these pages.

Chapter 2

Whitehead, Creativity, and Agential Functions

To better understand what I think of as different forms of participation, we must continue to unpack the history of the mental-cum-naturalist mystics. Especially to the extent that they broke their own world and co-created the flatland we live in today. Plato sometimes gets blamed for this, but Plato practiced his own form of participation that should not be confused with Cartesian dualism. For Plato, life was a dynamic play of idea (eidos) and intelligible form; Aristotle’s, meta and his physics. For Plato, the meta and the physics were unequivocally joined together through their participation, and it was our job to bring about the highest Good within this play. I like to imagine Gorgias when thinking of Plato. Gorgias was a Sophist, and you probably know how they were. When I am curious about how a word is held within the popular imagination, I like to look it up on Google Images. Sophistry, following this method, is associated with politicians, in a climate of distrust. These people are using rhetoric to manipulate the masses toward their own less-than-ideal whims. Plato, to be sure, was careful with regard to the Sophists. Gorgias thought that Being and/or some ultimate eidos could not be apprehended. “For that by which we reveal we reveal is discourse, but discourse is not substances and beings. Therefore, we do not reveal Being to our neighbors, but discourse, which is something other than substances” (Diels-Kranz and Sprague 2001, 46). Notice the gap. Parmenides’s poem is often read as if he called for a perfectly abstracted Goddess’s eye view—a Meta. The ancient Greek atomists like Democritus asserted Newtonian like bb’s that were indivisible and given—a precursor to physics. Gorgias called all this into question (see Grondin 2012, 15–20). Discourse stands in between us and both Being and substances. This is a scary idea for Plato, and not wholly unlike a Kantian critique. Gorgias, 53

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according to Plato, is an arbiter of opinions (doxa) rather than knowledge (epistemê). And what if rhetoricians and orators, those who practice doxa, are unjust? This is too much. Plato knows there is something akin to knowledge. And if you follow his practices of participation maybe you can get closer to the Good. But the world is not simple for either Gorgias or Plato. Within each there is an inkling that discourse might just create worlds. Somehow, in some way, we are participating, and if this is true, well then what is Good? It is not so certain. These are challenging ideas, but Aristotle will have none of it. There is physics, he tells us. Substance just is. In his naturalism, he asks us to stop worrying ourselves about the divinatory claims. Words don’t make worlds! They are labels. Naturalism points to an assumption that the physicality of our experience is continuous, that substances are simply there. While this might sound like common sense to you and me, at the time it was anything but certain. Are words labels, like in naturalism, or are they more like the talismans of divinatory ontologies? In this book, I argue that both are true. I assert that there is something like essence, following the mystics. But I also assume that there is something like embodying divinatory truths through ritual and performance, following the diviners. I also assume that there is a radical discontinuity of physicalities, following the shamans. And yet there is more, and less. We cannot ever fully know the truth of these things. Each ontology has its own absolutes, but they are all more than a little arbitrary. Gorgias, Cusa, and Kant all noted a similar sort of epistemological gap in their own ways. And we must accept this. If we are able to do so, we can once again get down with Plato, but in relation to Achuar and Yoruba, ontological assertions as well. Plato moved us toward the Good. Participation with the Meta. Though he never imagined, as he is so often misunderstood, that eidos could mean anything outside the participation with intelligible forms. He was a divinerbecoming-mystic and as such did not assume a strict post/modern dualism between ideas and materiality. Aristotle was more of a mystic, a naturalist who assumed substance and physics, while being troubled by formal and final cause. He said the meta- behind the physics, while interesting, was just too hard. Focus on the logical patterns within the intelligible forms. He was a naturalist, but not a post/modern one. He never imagined substance (physics) without eidos (meta); he simply chose to focus on the former. In this book, I argue that our post/modernity calls for a post-Platonic speculative philosophia in the tradition of Whitehead. I also argue for a neoKantian speculative philosophia in the tradition of Cassirer. Both of these thinkers wrestled with twentieth-century trends in physics and mathematics. Cassirer reimagines Kant’s critique in light of these new discoveries. He argues, following Kant, that we cannot know the content, the essence, of our ontological assertions. But we can know the functions, the linguistic modes

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of construction. Our new speculative project is to uncover the functions, the modes whereby we enact our worlds. Naturalist, animist, talismanic, and creative modes of participation are just that—modes. In considering them we should be most concerned with how they enact and co-create. Subsequently we should be far less interested in their distinct and often paradoxical contents. Cassirer finds Plato’s linguistic theory existing in and through the sensuous nature of symbols (1953a, 125). Symbols are mediators. “Participation contains a factor of identity as well as nonidentity; it implies on the one hand a necessary relationship . . . and on the other hand a sharp fundamental division” (1953a, 125). Is it possible to approach something like an ideal signification? Not quite. Participation is limited by linguistic and experiential limitations of being in between. We can strive toward, but never fully signify, pure being (1953a, 126)—that is, until Descartes and the modern mind. ­Cassirer locates Descartes imagining a lingua universalis—a universal language that parallels the certainty of mathematics—if we could just get down to the most crucial linguistic signs (1953a, 128). Cassirer sees Leibniz taking up the problem of language as well. Leibniz is trying to formulate the problem of universal language within the context of a universal logic (1953a, 129). This trend is important to keep in mind. Remember Gorgias. He did not think it possible to find a way past the gap between discourse and Being and/or universal substances. And yet he also knew that there is a mysterious power within discourse that helps create meaning, and maybe even—if we push him further than he might be willing to go—worlds. Plato agreed. He created an academy to enable people to do this well—that is, the way he would do it. You will never finally get out of the cave, he seemed to say, but if you train with me you empower your own participation. You cannot know the Good, but Beauty is within reach. Aristotle seemed to think it all rubbish. Stop worrying yourselves silly about the mystery of becoming. Substance just is. It is there to be categorized and graded. Words are like labels, and nature is there to be discovered. Descartes and Leibniz come much later in this story, but they are following Aristotle’s attempts to label and categorize. These are two of the greatest mathematicians of the seventeenth century, and they begin to think that we could find a way to some universal logic. We might have some mathematically certain philosophy of language within our grasp. Notice, however, how this certainty is an idealist one. It is a rational, logical, abstract certainty that they want to turn their consideration of language toward. Counter assertions would come from very different brands of empiricism found among the likes of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley. They each took a different turn. Locke writes that even among the “first beginners of language . . . nature, even in the naming of things, unawares suggested to

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men the originals and principles of all their knowledge . . . we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all but what originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we feel within ourselves from the inward workings of our own spirits” (qtd. in Cassirer 1953a, 134). “Here we have the fundamental systematic thesis,” writes Cassirer (1953a, 134), “upon which all empiricist discussion of the problem of language is directly or indirectly based.” C ­ assirer is bringing our attention to a relatively new linguistic turn in philosophy, one that still dominates to this day (see critiques of analytic philosophy and linguistic universalism passim). Hobbes thought he could save philosophy from metaphysics by focusing on a philosophy of language (1953a, 134). Where Ockham and Bacon were nominalists in their own right, we can locate Hobbes as a super-nominalist (Leibniz 1670, 128), assuming that a single word can be a universal, related as it is not to ideas but to objectoriented sensations. This is a brute and linguistically homogenous materialism—an extreme position, but one that is not uncommon within the post/ modern constitution. Locke goes a slightly different way. He notices that language points to ideas, but not in the Platonic or Leibnizian sense. There is no such thing as an objective idea, rather there are objective qualities, primary qualities, and the words, ideas, and subjective experiences we bring to bear on them. Here he is following in the footsteps of Galileo and Descartes. But his work becomes especially important as we consider the nature of the subjective experiences that we bring. They are secondary epiphenomena. Aristotle’s substances required the play of matter and idea. Mysterious to Plato, too difficult to discuss for Aristotle, but dynamic meta-participation-matter, where neither exists outside the play with the other. But Locke’s distinction pushes Cartesian dualism and nominalist physics to an extreme end. Along with Hobbes and others, he laid down a path whereby post/modern flatland factishes could take center stage. These factishes continue to be the bedrock of the post/modern constitution. Locke writes, “For division . . . can never take away either Solidity, Extension, Figure, or Mobility from any Body” (Locke 1975, 135). There is something atomic at bottom. Some given discoverable building blocks. The world is solid. These words are written within a series of chapters held together by the shared title, “Simple Ideas.” It is here, in these pages, that I locate one of the foremost iterations of the distinction between the objective world of factishes and the supernatural subjective nature of everything else, that is, epiphenomena. Locke highlights for us the important distinction between the primary factishes that are given and the secondary qualities that are imagined or assumed. After Locke, what need could we possibly have of metaphysics. The meta is an epiphenomenon of the primary, the given, the physics. The meta is not real. Descartes dualism has taken a full post/modern turn. Locke’s ideas above might seem innocuous enough, but in some basic way

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they shattered the world. This is not to say that Locke alone is culpable for simultaneously atomizing nature, while also relegating meaning to illusory phenomena. Rather, Locke’s work highlights a turning point toward what Latour calls factishes. What comes first, language or the world? Language. Our symbolic forms are enactive and creative. There is some mystery, some Creativity, that undergirds our lives. Different symbolic communities enact different worlds. That is my assertion in these pages, my rallying call for a better comparative philosophia. Stop focusing on content, and turn toward these different functions. And in order to argue this important point, this symbolically oriented linguistic turn toward the mystery of Creativity cannot be conflated with the analytic and scientific universalisms of English-speaking philosophy. Imagine for a moment John Locke sitting in his study. As he endeavors to uncover the basics of human understanding, he follows Newtonian physics toward a final end. The physics is given. Newton thought this too—along with the skeptic Hume and the critic Kant—but he also knew that he could not get his isolated individual atoms to move. At least not without God. Newton’s machine needed a final cause, an extreme and distant version of Aristotle’s own assertions on the subject. As post/moderns, we forget this. We follow this nominalist trend toward factishes, and in the end, we forget God, and follow Locke as he outlines the limits of our human understanding. Newton’s atoms could not move by themselves, though they were prone to some mysterious forces like gravity. Locke, like many of his peers, could make neither head nor tail of the theory of gravity. It was a nonsensical idea. But who is Locke to judge? In particular, who is he to judge the inclinations of “GOD.” For GOD [sic] can “superadd” almost anything—not the least of which is the faculty of thinking and motion (Locke 1975, 541)—right? N ­ ewton keeps God to the extent that he does not imbue his physical objects with superadditions like their own motion and thought. But Locke says that “GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to Matter” (Locke 1975, 541). This sets the stage for a thoroughly crossed-out God as detailed by Latour earlier in this chapter. Mobility is part and parcel of substance. Gravity, a peculiar spooky action from a distance, did not sit well with these thinkers, and so they looked to God. But when Locke assumes that God made such strange forces an aspect of substances he set the stage for the flatland of post/modern materialism. Substance is found by examining primary qualities. These primary qualities are solid and extensive and given. How do they change? How does matter, given in this way, effect or be effected? Post/moderns forget this, but mobility within their deterministic discoverable natural world is a gift from God. These primary qualities point to what is actually real—which are nonsensical without God. Everything else is secondary, imaginary, and subjective. “Besides this Ignorance of the primary Qualities of the insensible Parts of

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Bodies, on which depends all their secondary Qualities, there is another more incurable part of Ignorance. . . . [T]here is no discoverable connection between any secondary Quality, and those primary Qualities that it depends on” (Locke 1975, 545). Secondary qualities can now be either dismissed or reduced to the primary that is real. Again, we call these epiphenomena. Wait, writes Berkeley. Can I really find these primary qualities? Are they there. Is red just sitting there in the tulip, waiting to be measured? Primary qualities, he assures us, are also ideas. If you are not sure, go ahead and try it. Get closer to the things you think are there. A table, a hand, or an atom. The closer you get the more you find. There does not seem to be anything primary at all, nothing that is simply just there. The closer you get, the more you realize that you did not have a handle on the primary qualities of the thing itself, much less the thing. As you approach you realize you are still working within the realm of projections. The things of our lives are not so solid. Extension is only obvious from a distance. “Berkeley overcomes this dilemma by giving a broader meaning to his basic concept of perception, by including in its definition not only simple sensation but also the activity of representation” (Cassirer 1951, 111). There is some sort of activity, some Creativity, at play. By using words as labels, we have gained incredible control over what we assume is a continuous world. But these labels maintain a safe distance. By their very nature, they do not get too close. They are abstractions that pretend objectivity by keeping us too far to be touched through intimacy with others. Things, categories, and objectivity are fine in as far as we hold them lightly. As long we understand that solidity is a function of our narrowed focus. Objectivity requires blinders, lab coats, years of careful training in how to see. Great if you want to make a bridge, but not so interesting in other realms of lived experience. For Cassirer, philosophy is aimed at discovering functions rather than universal laws and truths. Naturalistic leaning mystics assume a posture, an objectivity stance. They label and categorize. Their analysis requires a certain method of remove. Scientific methods are forms of contemplation—modes of creation. We can never know if the content that we have discovered is primary or secondary. Things are primary to the extent to which we maintain a safe distance. As soon as we approach too closely their mysteries open up. While post/modern thinkers continue to wrestle with God, self-reflexivity, and nominalist objectivity, I am after something else. Rationalists like Descartes and Leibniz imagined a universal logic that would help us uncover a universalized philosophy of language. Empiricists like Locke try to universalize primary Newtonian things. But universals are no more assured within the realm of things than within the realm of ideas (Cassirer 1953b, 136). All reality is concrete (Cassirer 1953b, 136). That point bears repeating. Distinctions between natural and supernatural entities are arbitrary and problematic.

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My thoughts and emotions are no less concrete than your arms or your atoms. Rather, they are just differently so. Whether idea or thing, psychological or measurable, the entirety of our lived experience can be felt. From physics to chemistry to biology, we find increasingly mobile things. Atoms and organisms move differently. That does not make one more real. “We must therefore free ourselves above all from the false and illusory, the ‘abstract’ universality of the word. This inference is resolutely drawn by Berkeley” (Cassirer 1953b, 136). Berkeley reopened the door in the West for a radical empiricism. One that feels into all experience equally, while not being saddled with the assumption that language somehow represents exactly either things or ideas, that is, reality. Cassirer traces the interesting role reversal of empiricism that occurred within the debate between Locke and Berkeley. He tells us that—unlike Hobbesian materialism, later analytic metaphysics, and Chomskian-style universalism—we cannot find universals by examining symbols given to us through the sensuous. Language does not represent truth or things. We are never going to find the perfect labels. Language cannot get us to any universal content, no more than contemporary science or mathematics. “Berkeley was led . . . to a new fundamental view of cognition. . . . [H]e freed the ‘idea’ from all its sensationalist-psychological implications and restored it to its fundamental Platonic signification” (Cassirer 1953b, 139). Language does not tell us what the Good or the One or the thing really is. Rather, language acts as a key to the mystery of our participation. Langer, a student of both Cassirer and Whitehead, writes, “The philosophical study of symbols is not a technique borrowed from other disciplines, not even from mathematics; it has arisen in the fields that the great advance of learning has left fallow” (1942, 25). Here she makes a point crucial to this book. Symbols offer us a new key. By focusing on the creative nature of these communicative events, we begin to understand our lived experiences in more participatory ways. “In the fundamental notion of symbolization—mystical, practical, or mathematical, it makes no difference—we have the keynote of all humanistic problems” (Langer 1942, 25). By turning toward the distinct modes of co-creation available to us, we begin to chart a new path for contemporary planetary speculations. And this will not be the final word. “Perhaps it holds the seed of a new intellectual harvest, to be reaped in the next season of the human understanding” (1942, 25). Our understanding comes in seasons. The turn toward participatory philosophia that you hold in your hands is just another in a never-ending series of creative endeavors. Through an increased focus on the efficacy of symbolic language, Langer asserts, “We [find] a central theme, the human response, as constructive, not a passive thing” (1942, 24). By looking to the talismanic and creative functions of language we begin to understand the co-creative nature of our

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participation, and this is but another epoch in understanding. This point, a foundational assertion for the argument in this book, is not a final theory. We will never finally figure it out. But that does not mean we should not try. Because if we forget to examine our metaphysics in this way, then we are fettered by abyssal, lazy, and almost certainly ethnocentric folk reason. By turning toward the function of language in the way that I argue for in these pages, we gain an important tool whereby we can recognize the limitations of our post/modern inferences. “In the struggle between language and metaphysics, language has come off victorious . . . [at first] driven from the threshold of metaphysics [language] is not only readmitted, but becomes the crucial determinant of metaphysical form” (Cassirer 1953b, 139). That is an underlying theme of this book. This is where my work diverges from the more analytic linguistic turn of post/modernity. What came first, language or reality? Language. Or rather, linguistic forms and symbols are some of our contemporary keys in our search for wisdom. These symbolic clues do not point us toward some finally true laws of the universe, but rather the diverse ways in which we enact different worlds. How does this happen? I have no idea. But that it does happen, that is the argument undergirding this text. More specifically that human language, when pressed, has at minimum three basic linguistic forms. Mystics like Aristotle, Descartes, Ibn Sīnā, and Locke enact selves through their naturalist methods and linguistic forms. While they take for granted that things, however defined, exist, they enact diverse interiorities (or the lack there of). This is the true power of the mystic. Not so much the creation of materiality, but of the diverse subjectivities that we have today. Diviners like Lao Tse, Plato, Iamblichus, Aquinas, and Eve K. Sedgwick (2003) enact cosmologies through talismanic and oracular truths. Their speech acts are creative in the way they imagine novel polarities and relationships between seemingly disparate experiences. Shamans like Spinoza, Deleuze, David Abram (2010), and Judith Butler (1988) enact bodily perspectives through animist-oriented languages. They perform topologies and diverse physicalities. Do these different forms of communication really enact different worlds? Yes. Mystics assume substances—a continuity of Nature—and seek methodologies that can delimit diverse and frustratingly subjective insides. Diviners perform motil-truths-cum-cosmologies through a diversity of polarities, tensions, and arbitrary relations. Shamans swap bodies, effectively enacting new bodily perspectives-cum-points-of-view—literally. And it all begins with symbolic assumptions. This is a stronger claim than many readers will be willing to take. But to the extent that they continue to assume some one given reality, they also continue to assume the same post/modern constitution that so many of them mean to critique.

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The three primary modes of participation listed above—the naturalism of mystics, the animism of shamans, and the talismanic moments of meaning enacted by diviners—are basic to humanity, but there are other interesting iterations of language available to us. Some of the most promising are those formed from the soil of mathematical speculations and calculations. Newton’s physics has not reigned supreme only on the merits of experimental datum. His physics is predicated on mathematics—a calculus that helped open the door to a more creative form of participation. His atomic theory is the beginning of what was to become. After twentieth-century trends in physics and mathematics, we find ourselves in a land of relativity, incompleteness, and radically atomic moments of spooky action at a distance. Locke’s solidity and extension has been superseded. Mathematics moves us from a theory of representations toward theories of necessary connections. A focused consideration of the atomism and relativity required by the new physics leads us toward a new ontology—the one highlighted by Cassirer and Langer above—creative participation. And yet is to Whitehead that I owe my greatest debt here. WHITEHEAD AND THE MOVE FROM FLATLAND TO CREATIVITY Imagine two of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century struggling toward the final mathematical theory of everything. What better name could one come up with than the Principia Mathematica? Whitehead and Bertrand Russell set out to create a series of axioms and inferences from which all mathematical truths could be illustrated. Coming in at around one thousand pages, their magnum opus tried to do just this. But it was always a struggle and could not pass the test of time. Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorem in 1931, putting a nail in the coffin for any mathematical theory of everything. There could be no set of axioms, no universal logic, no final set of rules. Russell would spend the rest of his life trying to articulate some formal set of givens, while Whitehead went another way. Russell was holding on to his mystic-cum-naturalist roots. Whitehead imagined a renewed philosophia that relied upon this new turn toward symbolic functions. A new symbolic mode of participation was being born out of the mathematics of the day that placed emphasis on the seemingly paradoxical ability for linguistic events to simultaneously be atomic (radically individual) while also unifying (bringing a togetherness with all other events). Whitehead imagined a novel ontology of relative agency. Within this process ontology, moments of concern feel a relative past (physicality, effect) and a relative future (mentality, telos). Each moment makes a choice, an agential cut, to enjoy and/or feel a particular— heretofore potential—present. This affect or self/enjoyment is finally fully

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atomic. It happens, and then it ends. Beyond this process of becoming there is no thing, no given, no essential nature, cosmos, or final cause. These agential cuts are Whitehead’s ontological absolutes, beyond which there is no-thing. By placing the act of feeling and self/enjoyment as primary, Whitehead has clarified an ontology of agency and participatory events. We cannot ascertain the true content of being, or substances, but we can come to know the functions whereby they become. Atomicity and unity are now seen in a whole new light. This is the lesson Cassirer wants to teach as well. A participatory philosophia must seek the functions (i.e., agency) of becoming. This is a new ontology. An agential realism that emphasizes the freedom inherent in every event to feel what has happened elsewhere, and to choose what to enjoy in its one decisive moment. Whitehead envisioned a kind of enactive potential predicated on Creativity whereby novel atomic events—not substantive atoms—brought together all past and future events within the context of a single unifying moment of feeling and enjoyment. This is important. Where nouns in general are suspect, tending toward oversimplified labels, Whitehead makes Creativity a noun. Imagine I hold up a “cup,” and I ask you what it is. You say, simply, “It’s a cup.” But notice how this label has brought the Creativity and intimacy of this moment to an abrupt end. This “cup” is actually a plethora of unimagined possibilities. A dizzying diversity of intimate interminglings. This “cup” is alive with potentiality, and our way forward is to put down our labels, step a little closer, and practice a radical new empiricism. Cassirer calls these objects of the second order. We could simply call them objects of a new order. Feelings of novel events that consider all the comings and goings of those events that came before (effect), those that are relevant now (affect), as well as those that are yet to come (final, telos). “In general,” Cassirer writes, “wherever we unify the objects of our thought in to a single object, we create a new ‘object of the second order,’ whose total content is expressed in the relations established between the individual elements by the act of unification” (1923, 23–24). By acts of agential atomicity and unification. Whitehead will come to call these acts moments of concrescence. The new logic of sets and relations invites us to enact novel events based on new linguistic functions. This is what I term creative agential participation. “Linguistic thought makes use of a spatial intuition, where abstract, logical thought seems to call for a pure concept of relation” (1953b, 249). Logic provides us with sets and relations, moments of meaning that bring together spatial multiplicity within the context of a unitary event that is unique. Earlier in this chapter, I touch ever so briefly on Descola’s concerns regarding the nihilism of post/modern thought. He considers communities where both physicality and interiority have been atomized, individualized, and made discontinuous. This is the atomized world our post/modern selves live in. While I

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address Descola’s work in detail in later chapters, it is worth feeling our post/ modern world at this juncture. We are rife with anxiety, inhabiting a flatland that has lost all meaning. But it is in and through radical discontinuities—the very things we fear—that a symbolic language, built on logic, imagines a whole new form of relations heretofore unknown. Our discontinuities— atomic lifeless nature and constructed relative culture—give rise to agencies everywhere. If we read this turn in relation to Gebser’s idea that modes of participation become decadent and decay, these movements begin to make more sense. As our thought becomes available to both the discontinuous bodies of shamans and to the discontinuous interiorities of mystics, any sense of solidity will be lost. Through our nominalist logic of atoms, we shattered the continuity of the natural world. Through our humanist logic of cultures, we disintegrated the continuity of our interior world. Both outsides and insides broke apart. The great post/modern mystery ensued. Think Descartes. If these insides and outsides are actually distinct—that is, Cartesian dualism wins the day—how in the world do these radically different spheres of experience interact. How does the ghost in the machine touch these automated bodies? How do these machined bodies make sense of interiorities and non-physical things? What and where is the causality to be found within this system of discontinuities? How do non-physical things touch physical things, and vice-versa? ­Descartes’s cosmological arguments never satisfied. “God” is not a good enough answer. Where is the movement, the dynamism, the meaning? Are we to lose everything within a widening scientific materialism and cultural relativism? Humanists philosophers of all sorts revolted, but often to mixed results. How can be bring meaning back into our lives? Our journey through Western philosophy, religion, science, and mathematics has wrought exactly this: radical discontinuity. But it has also seeded a new flower, a new mode of participation that finds ground within the creativity of events. Within creative agential participation, temporal moments must exclude all other moments, they must “represent a simple, indivisible ‘now,’ a pure punctual present” (Cassirer 1953b, 239). When we look at the work of Whitehead below, we find him wrestling with this atomicity, struggling to make sense of how togetherness can be found. His answer—moments of concern that I term agential participation—underlies the entirety of this book. If there is to be anything akin to freedom, individuality, or choice, there must be something like atomic moments. Insides and outsides must be discontinuous. If everything is just physical, then we live in a deterministic world. If everything is just mental, the same thing happens. Materialist and idealist monisms cannot accommodate novelty, diversity, and issues of freedom. This is the problem of internal relations that both Russell and Whitehead struggled with in their philosophical work.

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At the turn of the twentieth century, these English-speaking philosophers were not only inspired by contemporary logics but also perturbed by the idealism of authors like Francis H. Bradley. Bradley argued that there is an ultimate idealistic reality holding everything together. If this is true, then there can be no real diversity or atomicity. We cannot find diversity along the lines of what Derrida termed différrance in our more established human ontologies. As we push for real freedom and actual choice, the ontologies we have inherited begin to break. Naturalist mystics assume a shared and continuous ground, Nature, and then worry themselves about diverse insides. This is predicated on a deterministic understanding of Nature—one that only fully flowered as the notion of Newtonian space and Clockmaker God fully came into view. Bradley’s work is an idealist rejection of flatland physics. A turn away from simple things that shares something important with the animism of shamans. There is an absolute lurking underneath each ontological starting point available to us. Where naturalists assume a continuity of physicality—that is, Nature; animists assume a continuity of Culture—that is, the People. Naturalism and animism, mystics and shamans, work only to the extent that these assumptions go unnoticed. Alternatively, talismanic ontologies assume an absolute Cosmos. While these divinatory ontologies present themselves as open-ended, there is no room for real novelty here. All différance is ultimately reduced to appearances within all three of these modes of participation. Within each of these modes of participation, diversity is an illusion, choice is not real. This point should be considered carefully by all defenders of diversity writing today. Most of these communities are saying away what they most want to defend. When new animists and/or new materialists like Jane Bennett, Manuel A. Vásquez, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro argue for a materialist monism, they unintentionally reduce all diversity to appearances and illusions. None of these authors has fully reckoned with this problem. Animisms and naturalisms are opposing dualisms that if pushed too far become contrasting monisms. If we argue a Chinese or West African cosmology of relations, then we are still left with this problem. There is no freedom to be found within these ecologies. The way forward in our contemporary milieu is toward functions and creative symbolic events. In chapter 5, I consider how different philosopher from Hegel to Russell wrestled with this problem, but for the time being I look specifically to Whitehead. WHITEHEAD, RELATIVITY THEORY, AND TIME-SPACE By focusing our attention in these pages on the symbolic, new notions of togetherness and relations become available. Another series, another set, another number-cum-unifying event. Cassirer writes, “In apprehending

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collective ‘togetherness,’ number bases itself on the intuition of space, but it requires the intuition of time to form the characteristic counterpart. . . . For the logical problem which number must solve consists not only in fulfilling these two requirements separately but in apprehending them as one” (1953b, 238). Each numerical event is both singular in that it is wholly unique, while also related to the multiplicity of pasts and futures. “Every numerically defined multiplicity is at the same time conceived and apprehended as a unit, and every unit as a multiplicity” (1953b, 238). To clarify this idea, I need to unpack Whitehead’s turn toward Creativity, especially as it relates to the defense of finite freedoms in the face of the problem of internal relations mentioned above. This relationality among atomicity is exactly what the new physics asks us to uncover. When thinking of Whitehead’s speculative work, I like to imagine him pacing back and forth in his Harvard classroom. Luckily, we have some of his notes that some of his students recorded for themselves during his lectures. In between the publication of two of his speculative works—Science in the Modern World (1925) and Religion in the Making (1926)—we find Whitehead becoming agitated. He has read Einstein’s theory of relativity and is trying to accommodate this new sense of time-space. This was something that had been in the air for quite some time. In 1908 Hermann Minkowski, a mentor of Einstein’s, put it this way: “The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics. . . . They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality” (Minkowski 1952, 75). This is exactly the sort of idea that Whitehead wrestles with in his classroom throughout the spring of 1925. We find him worrying the nature of an event-based ontology, wherein some meaningful moments can be both unbounded by linear space and time, while also maintaining some sort of relationship with one another. On April 4th of 1925 he is quoted within one of his student’s lecture notes as having said both that “realization is a generative process” and that “divisibility is the actuality” (lecture notes qtd. in Ford 1984, 279). Whitehead wants to make sense of world that has become atomic, both in relation to space and time: outsides and insides. He is frustrated, as “continuity and atomicity [are] always haunting [us] and under the influence of the quantum theory the atomic aspect has become more urgent than before” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 279). Whitehead sees his philosophical task as trying to make sense of these seemingly paradoxical ideas. His answer, not yet fully formed, is to assert an event-based agency, wherein decisions and choices are both free (atomic) as well as generative (allowing for some form of continuity). How can there be extension, real physical things, in light of the radical atomicity that is required both by Newtonian physics as well as in the atomic

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theories of relativity theory and quantum theory? In the same lecture on April 4th, Whitehead tells his students that both Kant and Hegel attempted to address this problem. He sees Kant as having limited his success as he articulated an “excessive subjectivism” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 280). He tells his class that Hegel “missed it.” He should have focused more on process and “generation” than on ideas (qtd. in Ford 1984, 281). Bradley, he continues, rejected acts of generation and novelty all together. This is as true for idealist who assert a naturalist monism (e.g., Bradley) as it is for the new materialists who assert an animist monism instead (e.g., Bennett, Vásquez, Viveiros de Castro). Not unlike our contemporary Spinozian and Deleuzian materialists, Bergson, on Whitehead’s read, is an active revolt against “the eternal side” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 280). Like so many other authors in these pages, he wants to rid the world of telos through his vitalized philosophy. Whitehead is doing something else. He is trying to imagine a contemporary Platonic form of participation between eidos (ideas) and the atomicity of quantum theory. How can he have them both? Continuity and atomicity? Whitehead will eventually articulate his theory of prehensions and propositional feelings, whereby he can make sense not only of agential participation, but of shamanic, divinatory, and mystic forms as well. But he is not there yet. The next lecture, on April 7th, finds him admitting to being muddle headed. While thinking on his feet in front of his class, he seems to be at an impasse. What direction does time take, he wonders, if it cannot be seen as simply linear (he has been reading Einstein)? What can extension mean if it is to be so closely associated with time? If every occasion is akin to time-space, has extension (spatial) but is also event-like (temporal), then how can this all be held together? A simply located Newtonian thing is isolated and static. Leibniz attempted to think up similar sorts of units, but ones that included some sort of dynamism. To the extent that he turned, like so many before and after him, to God, then he failed. Asserting Nature or Culture (e.g., God) creates the need for an interrelatedness that subsumes all novelty, dynamism, and diversity. Time, as Gebser argued above, has become unmoored from episodic, circular, and linear assumptions. Time-space points us toward time-freedom, a novel temporal landscape indeed. Lines, circles, and points are not enough. We need something else. Whitehead continues to pace in front of the room. How can “the individuation of each event [be brought] into a peculiar togetherness” he wonders aloud (qtd. in Ford 1984, 281). Both subject (insides) and objects (outsides) must be part of this time-space world. Both spatial and temporal, extended and fleeting. There can be nothing distinct from the universe (Ford 1984, 282), says Whitehead, which leads him toward agency as a novel solution to the problem of symbolic and generative participation. He tells us, “The subject is what that grasping-together is. ‘I am the apprehension

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of that’” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 282). And here it is: atomic decisions, novel agency, generative decisions that cut. Moments of enjoyment, that is what unifies disparate worlds, discontinuous insides as well as outsides, atomism and unification all the way through. The words of another process philosopher, Hans-George Gadamer, may help here. “Being that can be understood is language” (1989, 474). For Gadamer, like Whitehead, there is a process of concretization that is related to subjective language and feeling. Verbal events, subjective feelings, are always finite, and yet in some way they help to make sense of a continuity where there seems to be none. And “do we not need to know the whole,” asks Gadamer (1989, 430). Not if we follow Nicholas of Cusa, he says. Cusa knew that language and the world of insides, cultures, was inexact (Gadamer 1989, 430). Cusa, influenced by nominalism, looks to an “order [that] is created by differentiation and combination out of the given nature of things” (Gadamer 1989, 438). But this is not quite the relativity required by the post/modern world, says Gadamer. Following Humboldt and Leibniz, we need something approaching a “metaphysics of individuality,” one that makes sense of the infinite through finite means (Gadamer 1989, 440). “Verbal form and traditionary content cannot be separated in the hermeneutic experience” (Gadamer 1989, 441). Our hermeneutical-cum-linguistic experiences must be consummated. Truth becomes “not only its own truth in itself but also its own truth for us” (Gadamer 1989, 442). As such, language-view becomes world views (Gadamer 1989, 442). There is some symbolic functional make-up of worlds that suggests the importance of linguistic events in their formation. As such, it is only through dialogue that anything resembling truth can come into our understanding. Each linguistic set has a horizon, with distinct world implied within it. “That being is self-presentation and that all understanding [togetherness and continuity] is an event, this first and last insight transcends the horizon of substance metaphysics [naturalism] as well as the metamorphosis of the concept of substance into the concepts of subjectivity [post/modern cultures] and scientific objectivity [post/modern things]” (Gadamer 1989, 484). Understanding, intimacy, is always, for Gadamer (1989, 306), a fusion of linguistic horizons. Becoming is event-like, symbolic, and participatory. It is ideas like these that trouble and motivate Whitehead’s April lectures. This symbolic agential idea of participation is the point that really starts to sink in for Whitehead. The subject, the symbolic agent, is what brings atomic unity about (qtd. in Ford 1984, 282). What is real is transitory, discontinuous outsides as well as insides. “The transition is in the nature of what has become real” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 281). What is real is atomic and extended. This is a truly radical idea.

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Actuality, for Whitehead, becomes a series of discontinuous events. Each event surveys (through the process of prehension) all other events that have been and might be, relative to the positionality of the agent. Remember Einstein? Past, present, and future have been set free. We no longer need a linear conception of temporality. Location is relative to relative location and speed. Remember Neils Bohr? We no longer need a linearly imagined gridlike understanding of spatial extension. Atoms can be both particle and wave. They are influenced by feelings, prone, on Whitehead’s read, to moments of choice. This should be troubling, for shamans, mystics, and diviners alike.

WHITEHEAD, QUANTUM THEORY, AND AGENTIAL REALISM Niels Bohr famously said, “[A]nyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it” (qtd. in Barad 2007, 254). In a similar vein, Heisenberg is quoted as writing, “The solution can now I believe, be expressed pregnantly by the statement: the path only comes into existence through this, that we observe it” (qtd. in Gilder 2008, 105). Two recent studies have gone a long way toward driving this point home (Handsteiner et al. 2017; Shalm et al. 2015). There is something like what Einstein called spooky action at a distance, the world is not as given or continuous as we once thought. But how can this be? How can we have both extension (spatial physical existence) and also be so prone to choice and change (temporal and event-like)? Karen Barad, in fleshing out the philosophical ramifications of Bohr’s radical quantum physics, writes, “objectivity is about being accountable to the specific materializations of which we are part” (2007, 91). We are part of the world’s becoming, and our “practices of knowing are specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world” (2007, 91). This is what Barad calls agential becoming. And how does Barad come to such ideas? Through what she calls a diffractive methodology. A rigorous interdisciplinary approach to scholarship whereby she remains “rigorously attentive to important details of specialized arguments with a given field without uncritically endorsing or unconditionally prioritizing one (inter)disciplinary approach over another” (2007, 93). Reading such a work could be dizzying—kind of like the book you hold in your hand. We need this kind of interdisciplinary scholarship, but it can be both hard to create as well as to comprehend. The new physics, with its paradoxical wave-particle duality, calls into question easy assumptions about the so many of our cherished, and unexamined, ideas. The world really is solid, it is given, it is there. Right? Whitehead is still pacing back and forth in front of the room. By April 9th we find

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him concerned with the problem of internal and external relations, the same problem that so many authors in these pages forget to consider. How can we have real freedom and diversity, while maintaining those obvious everyday experiences that philosophers discuss as extension and/or internal relations? The table seems solid. I can talk to my mom. “The whole,” Whitehead tells us, “is a NOW, a duration” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 284). He is almost there. Each related whole is only momentary. Every actual thing is like an event. ­Spatial extension is more akin to a feeling, a momentary enjoyment, a decision or choice. Somehow the past and future are brought together in a subjective feeling. Our symbolic logic brings us toward an event-based theory of becoming. If we mix ancient Greek and Abrahamic ideas with contemporary logic, we get a philosophy of incarnation (see Gadamer 1989, 428) but not of some one God-become-person. Rather, incarnation is the basis and ground for all our relations. For Whitehead, there is nothing but events. Agency is akin to incarnation, over and over again. There is no singular essential event, substance, or God. Rather, there is a radical discontinuity, held together by agential becomings. Underlining this point, C. S. Peirce writes, “[W]hile in non-relative logic negation only divides the universe into two parts, in relative logic the same operation divides the universe into 2n parts, where n is the number of objects in the system which the relative supposes” (1960, 141). The “two parts” that Peirce is referencing above is the Aristotelian idea that something is either true or it is false. This is the representational logic that Karen Barad and company reject. Within such an orientation the universe is a given, and so discoverable. After Aristotle, we begin to label dynamic events, enacting things (knowns) and selves (knowers) by way of naturalist leaning mystic ecologies of participation. And it works. This form of naturalist manipulation has a lot to do with my ability to use this keyboard to type. It is why and how I trust that the building I am sitting in will not fall down. The assumptions of self-existent things makes complete sense within Aristotle’s “non-relative logic.” But mathematics and their logics have come a long way. Creating, I argue, a whole new avenue toward agential participation and allowing for creative ecologies of participation. Naturalist mystics co-created incredible things, diverse selves, but they also colonized our worlds. Naturalism, expressed as post/modernism, is nihilist, relativist, and prone to consumption on an incredible scale. Stripped of meaning, the nominalist (natures) relativist (cultures) turn toward discontinuity is helping to create our shared planetary predicament. We have to wake from our dogmatic slumbers and invoke radically novel horizons of meaning. New ecologies of participation can invite both old and new life ways into the fray. Our current movement toward relativizing old colonial and imperialist truths is important, but it cannot be done by wholly ignoring the ecologies from whence they come.

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Our moment is radically discontinuous, and that is ok. William James makes a similar point as Peirce above when he writes, “[T]he universe is not an order, but that which every type of order is only a limited aspect. . . . The world is a selection in the making, amidst a superabundance of the unselected” (qtd. in Perry 1938, 106–8; see also Weber 2011b, 62). Michel Weber, a Whiteheadian scholar, interprets James to be flipping Plato’s allegory of the cave on its head. Plato sees his cave as a dark place of relative ignorance, surrounded by the incredible light of day and eternal knowing. Those in the cave have mistaken their small fire for the infinite light abounding around them. Plato’s movement from the cave is movement toward the clear light of naturalism. He begins a journey toward the Good, a journey that inspires Aristotle’s final cause-God, a Gnostic radically other-God, Plotinus’s One, as well as a nominalist universe set in motion by a purified and distant God. James sees the cave as illuminated by the faint light of particular localized knowing—Barad might call this an agential cut, an intra-activity—and this is all the knowing allowed by James. Unlike Cusa and those that came after him, Plato had no sense of an infinite. He was not troubled by the impossibility of participation between finite and infinite things. James has inherited Cusa’s learned ignorance, and on this view, moksa, nirvana, Self, Nature, and Christianized ultimates are all localized truths. James’s cave is surrounded not by eternal abundance of knowing but rather the wild buzzing reality of darkness and mystery. This is the kind of radical empiricism we need if we are going to face the discontinuities of our post/modern lives. There are precursors here to Heisenberg’s paradox of path and observer, as well as Bohr’s quantum paradox. Upon first meeting Heisenberg, Bohr suggested that one must approach atoms with poetry, by way of creating connections and images, rather than clear and distinct mathematical formula (qtd. in Giles 1993, 28). Here we find a movement toward propositional logic and ontological pluralism, away from Aristotelian logic and naturalist monisms. But we must be careful. Vásquez writes, “Even a thinker of the caliber of ­William James, who had a materialist and pragmatist outlook . . . ultimately fell prey to subjectivism” (2011, 8). This is true, and we should not wholly disregard all subjectivism. We cannot—like Vásquez and the new materialists, affect theorists, and new animists—disregard all subjectivity in our worlds. If we do, we will be left with post/modern discontinuities (culturesnatures), one or the other of an unexamined naturalist or animist monism (Nature or Culture), or some arbitrary talismanic absolute (Nature-Culture). The togetherness we seek cannot be found here. The point is not to reject any of these, but to find another more participatory way. In order to do so, we should move toward James and Peirce, toward Heisenberg, Bohr, and Barad, toward Whiteheadian agential participation. What ground is left? The mystery of functions and Creativity are what we have, not the truth, but rather, an ecology of participation that can make sense of our post/modern milieu.

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In a nod to Deleuze, Weber (2006, 2011a, b) terms this land of percolating and perishing paths the chaosmos by way of contrasting it from the idea of a single knowable cosmos. Creative process thinkers, following Weber, begin their work beholden to a radical empiricism and assert a discontinuous epochal percolating wherein true novel forms become actual and then perish away. Barad tells us that her agential realism need not subscribe to an individualist metaphysics. But when she writes this, she should consider seriously what Gadamer termed a metaphysics of individualism, read agency, above. But she demurs, “Any realist account worth its salt should not endorse such idealist or magical beliefs” (2007, 56). Why single out idealist beliefs as “magical” when she clearly defends materialist matterings and doings? This is a blind spot in so many theorists highlighted in these pages. Barad is arguing for entanglements against idealisms. But as written, her agential realism will fail. She has not considered the paradox of freedom in light of external and internal relations. There is no diversity to be found in her materialist monism. She needs to take more seriously the importance of agential cuts. If we follow Barad, we find ourselves in an “I am right and you are wrong” scenario. How does she know she is right? A better path forward is provided by first placing animist (effect), naturalist (final cause), talismanic (affect), and creative (agency) ecologies of participation in dialogue. Our current moment does not call for materialism alone. That makes no sense. We need sense—insides to go with our outsides—and so much more. We need a diversity of horizons, ecologies, not materialist ontologies. We must realize the limits of our own knowing. Like Cusa we must practice a learned ignorance. Like Kant and Fichte, we should be skeptical. A participatory philosophia does not place entanglements and creative agency over and above shamanic, mystic, and divinatory forms of participation. Rather it notices that there are at least these four forms of participation available to humans. Maybe there are more; there certainly are other forms when we start to think more honestly about the lived worlds of mountains, plastics, and corn. But we are not there yet. We must still unpack what Whitehead means by creative participation and compare this to the various theories found within this chapter. Quantum theorists have asked themselves, “What if we see a plethora of events, and connote to this perception the attributes of a line or path? What if there is no path outside the relationship of the knower and the known?” Following Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, what if the path does not exist outside the relationship of path and atom? What if there is only entanglement? Whitehead speaks to such a process when he writes, “‘becoming’ is the transformation of incoherence into coherence, and in each particular instance ceases with this attainment” (1978, 25). He is speaking to James’s darkness, out of which coherence emerges ever so briefly, only to give way once again

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to the darkness. Whitehead writes, “there is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming” (35). Gebser (1985) writes that continuity denotes a very superficial level of perception. It is a useful abstraction that is projected by those working within his mental epoch back upon what has become. This is the problem with an Aristotelian logic in the hands of Newton. It assumes substance, and moves to the clear and distinct. Aristotle lived in a continuous cosmos, while Newton (and friends) atomized their cosmos. Aristotelian logic works fine within one cosmos, but such a singularity is no longer available to us. The only option available to us is a “punctuated equilibrium,” as Lamarck wrote. In a post-Newtonian, post-evolutionary, post-quantum world, continuity (an interrelated unity, whether Spirit, Emptiness, or Godhead) is an abstraction that does not hold. I agree with both Barad and Vásquez. We have lived for too long in an Aristotelian world of substance (Nature-cultures), and a post/modern world of things and their constructions (natures-cultures). We have forgotten the complexity of our lived experience. Following from this, the full discontinuity of day-to-day life is somewhat hard to grasp. Heisenberg writes that “there is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality” (qtd. in Piechocinska 2005, 42). He should have also said that there is a fundamental error in separating the whole from the parts. We need a logic of unity and complementarity, a logic that makes sense of both wholes and parts without privileging one over the other. This is what a creative process philosophy must account for. Simple unity leads to monism; simple atomism leads to a mechanistic scientism. As Bohr writes, there are “two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd, and profound truths, recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth” (qtd. in Rozental 1967, 328). The point is that within the revolution in the physical sciences and logic, the idea of a single cosmos, reality, thing, or Absolute has lost all ground. These are “trivialities,” in the words of Bohr. “Reality,” if we must call it as such, is something far more vast and mysterious than any one localized truth, system, or cosmology can ever hope to achieve. Whitehead’s is a theory attempting to approach unity and complementarity. The difference, I suggest, lies in his epochal (or creative) process thought, wherein there is no need to assert a single internally related unity or some continuous give ground. This leads Whitehead to the introduction of a contiguous atomism. Contiguity suggests a series of distinct events, that are so close in proximity that they appear to be continuous. For Whitehead, the very notion of such a truly continuous unity is understood to be both illogical and trivial. The ultimate metaphysical “ground” is seen as an epochal contiguous

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symbolic atomism, rather than as a continuous trans-formation (becoming) of one reality. His work should not be read as correct, but rather in relation to other ontologies. A relative and useful truth. Whitehead’s theory of prehension is speculative outcome of turning toward James’s mysterious blooming and buzzing, what Whitehead termed “experience in the mode of causal efficacy.” By virtue of this turning toward radical empiricism, Whitehead accounts for the complexity—and ontological pluralism—of his experiences by virtue of his epochal theory of actual occasions. Lucas writes, “[T]he innovations of the Whiteheadian interpretation of process seem to be epochalism and the doctrine of prehension” (1989, 70). As Whitehead continues to walk back and forth in front of his classroom in April of 1925, he has yet to fully put it all together. In January of that same year he walked in front of his class at Harvard and wondered how these events can be related if not through some monism. “I take prehension,” he told his class, “as holding together without reference to cognition, which I am not sure is involved” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 270). By April, the importance of linguistic decisions, agency, seems to be taking shape. But by the end of the semester, he has not yet figured it out. How his epochalism and theory of prehensions makes sense of the paradox of atomism and continuity. By the spring of 1927 he will be much closer. “The percipient subject is any one of a set of acts of experiences. . . . Prehension is more general than ingression [the agential act of a percipient subject], for it is the general way in which things come together as objectified for an [event]” (qtd. in Ford 1984, 322). Over the course of the following school year, 1927–1928, Whitehead will more fully put these pieces together. In preparing for his G ­ ifford Lectures, he will finally put agency, epochalism and prehension, together in a coherent way. This is an incredibly important turn, that is fundamental to my multiple-ontology approach. For this reason, I have decided to wait until chapter 5 to fully flesh this out. It will make more sense to the reader after my diverse forms of participation have been better introduced. So, for the immediate future, I look toward the participatory turn in religious studies by way of more fully unpacking this story.

Chapter 3

A Participatory Raft

Now remember: I said that I am in search of ecologies of participation. In order to come closer to this goal I must approach the parallel notions of enaction and participation. Whitehead (1978, 39) famously wrote that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. The reality is that all philosophy is not a footnote to Platonic thought. African, Indian, and/or Chinese communities need not reference Plato or the history of Western thought. But those writing in English, in French, German, Spanish, and other related languages must at minimum be aware of where their thought comes from. Though the seeds of what I term participation can certainly be found in Platonic ideas of participation, my use of the term is different in an important way. While I hoped to have begun to clarify this distinction in the last chapter through a consideration of different thinkers, there is still more to be done. Participation, as I use the term, is more like the flower of Platonic thought, but not Platonic thought in isolation. As I outlined in the last chapter, there are important histories to consider. The advent of Abrahamic, Gnostic, and mathematical trends are all important. In Plato we find distinctions between talismanic and naturalist modes of participation, but he is wholly unaware of most of what came from these other turns. Yes, Socrates, as described by Plato, asked us to question everything, but this should not be conflated with Cusa’s learned ignorance. For example, neither Plato nor Socrates could have dreamed of anything remotely approaching an infinite. Neither would have imagined a nominalist cosmos or a distant and fully non-participating God. In this chapter I take another path by way of clarifying what I mean by participation. In the following pages I unpack an early distintion made by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, especially as it relates to the participatory turn in religious studies, most notably brought about by the work of Jorge Ferrer (2002, 2008b, 2017). Writing in the field of religious studies, Ferrer’s work 75

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originally sought to overcome tendencies toward perennialism and constructivism within comparative scholarship. In order to find a way through these trends, Ferrer articulated what he called a participatory turn in comparative research—what I like to emphasize as a participatory raft. There is an ontological assertion underlying this raft, one that accentuates participatory enaction. He developed this enactive approach by adapting a body of work that came out of the biological and cognitive sciences over the last several decades (see Maturana and Varela 1987; Thompson 2007; Varela, ­Thompson, and Rosch 1991). While I examine this enactive approach in more detail in following chapters, in this chapter I consider the importance of Lévy-Bruhl’s work with regard to Ferrer’s argument that there are in fact different modes of participation available to us. In arguing for participatory enaction, Ferrer helps lay the groundwork for my ecologies of participation. By placing a process of enaction over and above the outcomes or content of any given enactive event, Ferrer allows for the possibility that multiple and seemingly contradictory outcomes can be held simultaneously. Ferrer (2008, 142) tells us that the participatory turn he is advancing assumes “that no pregiven ultimate reality exists, and that different spiritual ultimates can be enacted through intentional or spontaneous cocreative participation in a dynamic and undetermined mystery, spiritual power, and/or generative force of life or reality.” The careful reader will notice something quite distinct from the process of fabrication and extended networks defended by Abram and Latour in the introduction. Where both Abram and Latour sought to rid his nonmodern world of spiritual ultimates, ideas, and teleologies, Ferrer tells us that there are many of them, each equally real and efficacious. He offers several examples, including Yaveh, the Buddhist dzogchen, and the Hindu Brahman. Ferrer speculates as to whether each of these might be the products of some co-creative participatory process of enaction, a kind of participatory knowing that can be understood as a “passionate activity that can involve not only the opening of the mind, but also of the body, vital energies, the heart, and subtle forms of consciousness” (2008, 137). Here he points to an epistemic quality of enaction. For all three authors, this epistemic quality “is not a mental representation of pregiven, independent objects, but an enaction, the ‘bringing forth’ of a world or domain of distinctions cocreated by the different elements involved in the participatory event” (Ferrer 2008, 137). But unlike Latour, Ferrer has allowed for the inclusion of not only correlary events of diviners—the fabrications of Latour’s network—but also the various subjectivities (e.g., God, scientific observers, and/or God) of mystics, as well as diverse bodies (e.g., those of the Achuar and/or Jivaro) of shamans. Similarly, when Abram argues for his own version of participatory events, he means to allow this kind of enaction only within the realms of diverse bodies. Where Latour limits enaction to the

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talismanic performances diviners and Abram’s limits co-creation to animist shamans, Ferrer opens the door not only for these ecologies but also those of mystics and others. Ferrer’s work has opened the door for diverse modes of co-creation knowing that it can enact diverse worlds. This is important; for in his attempts at contemporary comparison, he has not turned his back on the theists, the ancient Greeks, or the Vedic seers. Nor has he dismissed spaces that our post/ modern scientists and critical theorists might inhabit. All of these, in their own ways, enact different ecologies of participation. One might ask at this point, however, just how successful Ferrer has been at holding these disparate and distinct realities together. He admits that his is a “conciliatory strategy” and cautions, “I submit that it is only by promoting the role of human constructive powers to the very heart and summit of each spiritual universe that we can preserve the ultimate unity of the mystery—otherwise we would be facing the arguably equally unsatisfactory alternative of having to . . . reduce spiritual universes to fabrications of the human imagination” (2008, 145). The reader would do well to pause here and contemplate this statement. Only by promoting the constructive powers of the human can we make sense of diverse spiritual ultimates, divergent Truths, and multiple Natures. In his own way, Ferrer shares the metaphysical commitments that lie at the heart of this project. When Ferrer writes of participatory events he is pointing to something like what I term creative participation. As outlined by Gebser and Santos in the previous chapter, our contemporary milieu requires some means whereby we can approach the radical copresence of multiple ecologies of participation. This is an important direction to turn if we are going to be successful in our attempts to embody any sort of justice with regard to the multiple life ways available to us and others. And here in Ferrer’s emphasis on the constructive powers of the human, we cannot help but see a nod to Kant and his critique of metaphysics. It will become ever more apparent as this book unfolds just how crucial it is to decide how one is going to read Kant’s critique. It is my own assumption that after Kant one cannot really assume that humans have no role in the creation of distinct worlds. Kant placed humans at the center of an epistemic chasm. But too many read Kant as if he allowed us nothing but social constructions. On my reading, Kant—not unlike Petrarch and Cusa and so many before them—helps to open the door for something altogether unique. His work forced young German Idealists like Hegel to consider that some intermediary creative force like chemism might be at play. His critique inspired Cassirer’s neo-Kantian turn toward the functions of our symbolic languages. By helping to place humans at the center—he did not do it alone or in a vacuum—Kant helped lay the foundation for the enactive approach that I defend here. But in order to better understand this point, we need to follow Lévy-Bruhl’s example.

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LÉVY-BRUHL AND MULTIPLE ECOLOGIES OF PARTICIPATION Building on the work of various authors (Hanegraaff 2003; Saler 1997; Tambiah 1990), Ferrer and co-editor Jacob H. Sherman (2008a) articulate a theory of multiple modes of participation in relation to Lévy-Bruhl’s early twentieth-century French philosophy. In the introduction to their text The Participatory Turn, Ferrer and Sherman outline three different modes of participation: archaic, romantic, and enactive. In a chapter included in this text—“A Genealogy of Participation”—Sherman makes a further distinction within the Western tradition between formal (e.g., Platonic), existential (e.g., Thomistic), and creative (e.g., Whiteheadian) modes of participation. He develops this genealogy further within a recent book, Partakers in the Divine (Sherman 2014). Reading these genealogies together we can discern five distinct forms of participation. Archaic (following Lévy-Bruhl), formal (e.g., Platonic), existential (e.g., Thomistic), romantic (e.g., Schelling), and creative-cum-enactive (e.g., Whitehead). In the section that follows, I focus primarily on the contributions of Lévy-Bruhl to this idea of participation, as well as on the important role played by an enactive (creative) participatory approach. As I hinted at above, Ferrer and Sherman’s distinction between archaic and enactive modes of participation is rooted in the work of Lévy-Bruhl, who first introduced the term participation mystique in 1910. In dialogue with LévyBruhl’s distinction, they hold up their enactive form of participatory knowing as a post-critical remaking of the term participation. On this account, archaic participation is more affectational and tends to lack the strong subject-object division that enactive participation has had to overcome. Used in this way, Lévy-Bruhl’s participation mystique can be seen as a mix of what I have termed animist and talismanic forms of participation. Enactive participation, for Ferrer and Sherman, is different in that it is postCartesian, and therefore must cope with a strong subject-object dualism in a “self-reflexive” manner. As I showed in the previous chapter, enactive/creative participation grows out of a variety of different distinctions, including those made by Abrahamic, Gnostic, humanist, Neoplatonist, nominalist, and mathematical trends in thought. Ferrer and Sherman (2008a, 38) understand this enactive self-awareness as beholden to a “highly differentiated though permeable individuality or participatory self” that is arguably different from the “interconnected” (more communal, less differentiated) sense of self found among people beholden to forms of archaic participation. This participatory self parallels the diaphanous event-based self presented by Santos, Gadamer, and Gebser in the last chapter. Both pre-Cartesian and post-Cartesian people, on this account, are capable of some form of participatory knowing, and yet

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there is some important distinction that must be made between the archaic and enactive modes. The distinction revolves around Ferrer and Sherman’s (2008a, 38) notion of what it means to be self-reflexive. They write, “Whereas archaic participation (as articulated by Lévy-Bruhl) avoids the subject/object divide through a prereflective mystical fusion with the other and the natural world, emerging modes of participation overcome Cartesian dualism self-reflexively by preserving a highly differentiated though permeable individuality or participatory self as the agent of religious knowing” (2008a, 38). At first glance, this distinction is problematic to the extent that it offers critical selfreflexivity to their post-Cartesian post-Kantian enactive participation, while Lévy-Bruhl’s participation mystique (archaic participation) is relegated to a pre-critical past. Emphasis on linearity and hierarchies of development like this are exactly what Lévy-Bruhl himself worked so hard to rectify and clarify throughout the entirety of his career, something Ferrer and Sherman (2008a, 36) are quite aware of. To this end they write, “Lévy-Bruhl relaxed the contrast between logical and participatory mentalities indicating that, instead of being exclusively associated with modern and primitive modes of thinking respectively, both cognitive styles coexisted to some extent in all human beings.” This further underlines the importance of what Gadamer would termed a fusion of horizons, and Gebser termed verition (see chapter 1). In order to better articulate this point, I consider Lévy-Bruhl’s work in some detail below. Lévy-Bruhl (1985, 386) brought his book How Natives Think to a close with these words: “If it is true that our mental activity is logical and prelogical at one and the same time, the history of religious dogmas and of philosophical systems may henceforth be explained in a new light.” Lévy-Bruhl would eventually drop the term prelogical from his work, a word he originally used to underline the contrast he meant to illustrate through his work between logical and other-than-logical forms of thought. Scholars have often discounted Lévy-Bruhl based on their assumption that he meant “prelogical” as an equivalent to “irrational.” If we are going to understand Lévy-Bruhl, the emphasis in the citation above should be placed on the words “one and the same time.” This allows us to approach the potential Lévy-Bruhl sees for a new explanation of age-old problems (at least in the history of Western philosophy). Namely, that there are something akin to ecologies of participation. After writing several texts in the field of philosophy, Lévy-Bruhl published his first sociological work, Ethics and Moral Science, in 1903. Influenced by Émile Durkheim, this text garnered a certain amount of acclaim for Lévy-Bruhl, who accepted a position as chair of the History of Philosophy Department at the Sorbonne two years later. In this text, Lévy-Bruhl argues that there can be no universal or absolute ethic, in large part due to the

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incommensurability of different cultural landscapes, including what he termed “primitive mentality.” Emboldened by the possibility of new insights, Lévy-Bruhl focused the rest of his career on the distinctions afforded him by considering “native” or “primitive” thought. In these later writings Lévy-Bruhl is inspired by what he understands, through reading ethnographical and popular accounts, as a distinct way of imagining and relating to the world that he finds most pronounced among “primitive peoples.” To this end he writes, “The collective representation[s] of primitives . . . differ very profoundly from our ideas or concepts, nor are they equivalent either” (1985, 37). Where the ideas or concepts “we” (post/moderns) are familiar with follow natural laws, especially the rule of non-contradiction, the “primitive representations” are not subject to such rules. Proper respresentations (i.e., labels) and noncontradiction are only important within naturalist ecologies enacted by mystics. Animists and diviners and creative forms of participation have no qualms with such things. Lévy-Bruhl understands this when he writes, “Not being genuine representations, in the strict sense of the term, they express, or rather imply, not only that the primitive actually has an image of the object in his mind, and thinks it real, but also that he has some hope or fear connected with it, that some definite influence emanates from it” (1985, 37–38). It is important to underline the importance of what Lévy-Bruhl is doing here. Rather than dismiss other modes of participation, he is highlighting their existence and important differences. In these passages, Lévy-Bruhl is wrestling with the knowledge that there are people who participate in very different ways from the ones associated with post-Enlightenment, post-Romantic Euro-American thought. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Lévy-Bruhl located what he thinks of as affective (i.e., shamanic-talismanic) participation solely in “primitive peoples,” while defending the thesis that only post-Greek and Hellenic Western thought relied on representational logic (i.e., naturalistic participation). While Lévy-Bruhl did not defend this position, many of his critics understood his work to be doing just this, among other questionable things. Lévy-Bruhl has been roundly criticized for being an armchair ethnographer (see Hays 1958, 303–4), given his tendency to generalize all “primitive people” as if they comprised a universal category (see Evans-Pritchard 1934), and for clearly demarcating a primitive form of participation wherein so called primitive people did not have logical or rational thought available to them. In the introduction to the 1985 edition of How Natives Think, C. Scott Littleton counters these criticisms by offering a strong defense of Lévy-Bruhl’s original contributions to the field of anthropology and academia at large. In considering Littleton’s defense, it is helpful to examine the letters and critical

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papers exchanged between Lévy-Bruhl and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, one of the earliest and most respected of our social anthropologists. Evans-Pritchard, who was one of Lévy-Bruhl’s earliest supporters, was also one of the first authors to recognize Lévy-Bruhl’s serious lack of fieldwork. Littleton writes that Lévy-Bruhl was well aware of his lack of actual contact with the people he was considering. Lévy-Bruhl wrote to EvansPritchard in response to this criticism that he understood the dangers of using technical ethnographies and the memoirs and traveler’s tales that had been so popular throughout the last several hundred years. Ethnographies and Jesuit memoirs, he argued, were helpful not because they understood or interpreted what they saw in any acceptable way, but because they managed to record experiences outside the norms of European culture. This is an important point to keep in mind when considering Lévy-Bruhl’s contribution to the academy. Lévy-Bruhl (1985) finds in these ethnographic works a worthwhile starting point for his own assertions that there are in fact different ways of knowing available to human beings. He is most concerned with the possibility of multiple ways of knowing, and less concerned with the accuracy of these memoirs and early ethnographies. As Maurice Leenhardt (1949, xi) notes, Lévy-Bruhl never attempted to describe any particular group of people; moreover, “it would even be possible to say that the primitive man of whom he speaks does not really exist.” This is a crucial point, and one that must always be held close when considering my own ecologies of participation. There are no pure animist forms of participation, no more than there are purely naturalist, talismanic, or creative forms. In every instance there is some ecology of participation—some entangled admixture of many, if not all of these. Ecologies can be located more by emphasis than immaculate instantation of a particular form of participation. Following Lévy-Bruhl, we cannot locate any purely shamanic culture. Rather, following Santos (2014, 188), we must seek a dialogical ground of interknowledge. “The average Euro-American,” writes American Indian philosopher V. F. Cordova, “lacks this experience of competing worldviews and value systems” (2007, 57). This point is true not only of most Euro-Americans but also of most philosophers of religion and comparativists. “The greatest bridge between cultures,” she continues, “is the person who is schooled in the philosophies and histories of both cultures” (2007, 57). At an early point in her life, Cordova decides that if she is going to survive she must “study White People” (2007, 42). While it might not at first be obvious, Lévy-Bruhl’s work opens the door wider for this possibility. His contribution is not ethnographical as in the positivist leanings of the British anthropological tradition. He is not describing the “other.” Instead, it is philosophical as in the French anthropology of the early twentieth century (see Holbraad 2007). Lévy-Bruhl is telling us that there are, as I call them, multiple ecologies of participation available to all of us, no matter who we

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are. Cordova emphasizes the importance of Benjamin Whorf’s work on American Indian languages. “He has contributed to the awareness that . . . other languages, may not contain the same concepts. My own experience confirms this” (2007, 76). Language, for Cordova, offers a window into distinct worlds. This is the key insight offered by Lévy-Bruhl—there are distinct forms of participation. If participation can be both logical (representational) and “mystical” (non-representational) at the same time, then new solutions open up to old dilemmas, not only in anthropology, but in philosophy and religious studies as well. If we push “representational” over the constructivistturned-enactivist cliff, this point becomes even stronger. This is the radically dialogical sense of selves authors like Gebser, Gadamer, and Santos are after. If his contributions to the participatory approach that I defend in these pages are taken seriously, Lévy-Bruhl can be located as a visionary who laid the groundwork for current authors who represent the ontological turn in anthropology, such as Roy Wagner (1975), Marilyn Strathern (1988, 1992, 2004), Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998, 2012, 2014), and Phillip Descola (1992, 1996, 2013). But this is not how Lévy-Bruhl’s work was originally received. The reaction against his terminology (e.g., prelogical, primitive, native) was swift and far reaching, while appreciation of his work has only recently begun to appear in academia. It is certainly true that he could, at times, overstate his evidence to prove a point. Jonathan Z. Smith (1972, 119) offers one very important example of this in his essay “I Am a Parrot (Red).” Smith points to a passage in LévyBruhl’s How Natives Think in which Lévy-Bruhl quotes at some length from Karl von den Steinen’s (1887–1888) Unter den Naturvilkern ZentralBrasiliens, an ethnographical report on the Bororo people of Brazil. For his part, von den Steinen maintains that the Bororo people think of themselves as red parrots but that this understanding is beholden to a kind of metaphorical ambiguity. Lévy-Bruhl removes all ambiguity when quoting von den Steinen, asserting that the Bororo think of themselves as red parrots in the literal present tense. Smith points out that scholars from James G. Frazer to Ernst Cassirer took Lévy-Bruhl’s account to heart, each in their own way downplaying the ambiguity of the Bororo story as relayed by von den Steinen. Smith offers an important reminder of how easily ethnographical materials can be bent to a scholar’s purpose. And while we should heed his warning, Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism (animism), which we turn to in later chapters, requires a more flexible scholarly outlook. Viveiros de Castro is clear: Amerindians are forever swapping bodies, literally becoming peccary, jaguar, or snake—in essence, exactly the same point Smith critiques Lévy-Bruhl for making, but one that came almost a century later and represented what Roy Wagner (2012) and many others have understood as a radical new beginning for the field of anthropology.

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It is also true that Lévy-Bruhl did not deserve all of the criticism that came his way. Following in the footsteps of Franz Boas, Paul Radin wrote a book titled Primitive Man as Philosopher in 1927. Adhering to the cognitive relativism put forward by his mentor, Radin (1927) takes aim at Lévy-Bruhl’s “unfortunate” and “erroneous” claims that so-called primitive persons lacked any form of logic. He paints Lévy-Bruhl’s work as beholden to an outmoded way of thinking and lacking any regard for the ways in which non-European people have developed their own working logics. In the foreword to Radin’s text, John Dewey asserts that Radin has opened up radically new horizons of thought regarding cross-cultural conceptions of what it means to be an intellectual. Radin’s work, on Dewey’s account, will inevitably become the “storm-center” of heated debate, as it formulates the thesis that many if not all earlier cultures produced a small intellectual class no different in kind from those found in “civilized” European culture. To this end, we can see Radin’s work as an early precursor of the Sage Philosophy of Henry Odera Oruka (1990) and the conversation regarding ethnophilosophy set off by the publication of Paulin J. Hountondji’s African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (1983). But this is not what is happening within the ontological turn. Much like Oruka did with philosophy, Radin is trying to find non-Western exemplars of Western-centric thought. This is the complete antithesis of Lévy-Bruhl’s—and my own—insight. In later chapters I highlight the ontological turn in anthropology. The ground of this turn is found in the term ontology. By making ontology plural, we gain a tool whereby the superiority of “Western” thought can be delegitimized. By defending an multi-ontology approach to our comparative studies, we call into question the very idea that there is some one given reality. This is the “lazy reason” that underlies so much of academic and post/modern discourse (see Santos 2014, 164–72). If we follow Radin’s critique too closely—if we miss important differences between distinct modes of participation—we lose sight of Lévy-Bruhl’s contributions to our contemporary academy and will never take the turn that Wagner, Strathern, Viveiros de Castro, Descola, and so many others have taken in recent years. Radin was a student of Boas, as mentioned, and heir to the cognitive relativism that marked modern anthropology throughout the twentieth century. Littleton (1985) qualifies his introduction to How Natives Think when he titles it “Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and the Concept of Cognitive Relativity.” Littleton makes a case for Lévy-Bruhl’s important contributions to the very trend (cognitive relativity) in anthropology (and academia in general) against which he is starkly contrasted. Where Radin and several others read Lévy-Bruhl as defending an indefensible triumphalism of the European intellect, Lévy-Bruhl understands himself to be doing quite the opposite. Leenhardt (1949) points out that to a large extent the choice of terminology was intentional and deployed to highlight differences—not among people,

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but rather modes of participation. Littleton adds to the conversation by tracing Lévy-Bruhl’s struggle through his written work to overcome some of these objections. It is helpful to consider again the important dialogue that emerged between Evans-Pritchard and Lévy-Bruhl on these topics. In an early essay Evans-Pritchard recognizes Lévy-Bruhl’s tendency to universalize the category of primitive, while pointing to a host of other serious criticisms leveled at Lévy-Bruhl’s work. But almost in the same breath he (1934, 44–45) writes, The criticisms of Lévy-Bruhl’s theories which I have already mentioned, and I have by no means exhausted the objections to his views, are so obvious and so forcible that only books of exceptional brilliance and originality could have survived them. Yet each year fresh polemics appear to contest his writings and pay tribute to their validity. I suggest that the [powerful influence of] his writings, in spite of their methodological deficiencies . . . is due to the facts that he perceived a scientific problem of cardinal importance and that he approached this problem along sociological lines instead of contenting himself with the usual psychological platitudes. . . . We must not, therefore, dismiss his writings with contempt, as many anthropologists do, but must try to discover what in them will stand the test of criticism and may at the same time be considered an original contribution to science.

Evans-Pritchard offers a series of relevant questions with which future scholars might approach Lévy-Bruhl’s work in a useful way. He wonders what Lévy-Bruhl means when he writes that there is some clear distinction between “primitive modes of thought” and “educated European” modes of thought. He wants to know what Lévy-Bruhl really intends with his categories of prelogical, mystical, and participation. In defense of his own work, Lévy-Bruhl (1952, 118–19) writes, My intention was to introduce the idea (which seemed to me to be new), that there is a real difference between primitive mentality and that of more developed civilizations. . . . I do not at all deny mystical elements exist in the mentality of the English and French peoples, etc.: but I thought I ought to insist on the rational character of this mentality in order that its differences from the primitive might emerge clearly. I admit that in my work (and it is here that “I plead guilty”) the savage is presented as more mystical and the civilized man as more rational than they in fact are. But I have done this “on purpose”: I intended to bring fully to light the mystical aspect of primitive mentality in contrast with the rational aspect of the mentality of our societies. . . . Perhaps I have been wrong in insisting so strongly on these differences. I thought that the anthropological school had done enough to make the similarities evident. On this point, I think those who will follow us will know how to keep the right balance.

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Evans-Pritchard (1934) was convinced by this exchange with Lévy-Bruhl, and continued to understand his work in a very favorable light. Littleton (1985, xx) picks up this thread when he writes, “What his critics failed to realize, of course, was that Lévy-Bruhl was as much, if not more of a [cognitive] relativist as they were.” By asserting his “law of participation,” Lévy-Bruhl had already set the stage for the upheaval Dewey imagined Radin’s work might stir up. Contrary to so many of his peers, Lévy-Bruhl’s theorizing posited multiple modes of participation that were different in kind, rather than degree. On his account, European rationality—to the extent that it emphasizes something like naturalism—is not a more advanced version of primitive ways of knowing. Rather, European rationality is a notable expression of one form of participation (i.e., mysticism/naturalism), while what he termed “primitive mentality” is a pronounced expression of another kind of participation altogether, participation mystique. This is what I term animism and/or shamanism. Lévy-Bruhl’s point was not to assert a progress-oriented linear development from primitive to modern—a style of thought that must be overcome if we are going to approach nonmodern ways of participation—but rather to point out that there are multiple ecologies of participation available to human beings. Rationality and logic is not lost on the Nuer (see Evans-Pritchard 1965), the Crow (see Lowie 1937, 220–21), or the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea (see Heinz 1997). Nor is nyāya logic equivalent to ancient Greek, or ancient Greek equivalent to contemporary modal logics available to us today. In fact, the distinction between the latter will lead us to discern between naturalist and creative modes of participation throughout this chapter. Lévy-Bruhl follows this basic point by reiterating that there are different logics available to human beings. He writes, “The essential difference between these ‘savages’ [here he is referencing the terminology of the Jesuit missionaries] and [Chinese and Western people] . . . is not the result of an intellectual inferiority peculiar to them . . . it is an actual state which, according to the Jesuit fathers, is explained by their social conditions and their customs” (1978, 22). By making use of certain anthropological data and Jesuit memoirs, Lévy-Bruhl notices that some of the non-Western people encountered by the narrators in these written accounts walk in the world in a way that emphasizes a different form of participation than most Europeans and “civilized” persons. This is not to say that the Crow or the Europeans are not capable of one or the other forms of participation, but that they place value on different ecologies and ontological starting points. What is important for Lévy-Bruhl is the possibility that such ecologies might exist. He sees in this a great explanatory power that could solve many philosophical and religious problems faced by not only Western authors, but

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by any person who seeks to move into a comparative stance with regard to the incredible diversity of people and ecologies of participation available to humankind. In passage after passage, Lévy-Bruhl references authors’ accounts that note a difference in cultivation rather than physiology or mental capacity. He continues, “In them, therefore, as in the Iroquois, the distaste for the discursive processes of thought did not proceed from constitutional inability, but from the general customs which governed the form and object of their mental activity” (1978, 22). One set of circumstances (hunting in a forest) requires a totally different mode of participation than another (writing in an office). Lévy-Bruhl quickly dismisses all judgments offered by the Jesuits and travelers that he reads. These non-Western people are not incapable, lazy, or naïve. They are actually quite proficient, wise, and competent—capable of scientific and discursive thought. But this is not what interests Lévy-Bruhl most. Unlike Radin, he cautions against assuming that everyone should reason like us, advocating instead for exploring the different ways that people reason, think, and engage their lived experience. So-called “primitive mentality” is not interesting as a precursor to logic, or, going back to Ferrer and Sherman, a precursor to creative participation. Lévy-Bruhl’s mode of participation is a highly refined and subtle form of participation that is markedly different from the other forms of participation highlighted by Ferrer and Sherman, yet no less reflexive. Lévy-Bruhl (1978, 24) writes, Then we shall no longer define the mental activity of primitives beforehand as a rudimentary form of our own, and consider it childish and almost pathological. On the contrary, it will appear to be normal under the conditions in which it is employed, to be both complex and developed in its own way. By ceasing to connect it with a type which is not its own, and trying to determine its functioning solely according to the manifestations peculiar to it, we may hope that our description and analysis of it will not misrepresent its nature.

What is offered in the pages of his Primitive Mentality is the cognitive relativity that Lévy-Bruhl’s critics are so quick to point out that he lacks. There is even the hint of a stronger stance, such as the multiple-ontology approach that I defend in these pages. Though open to many criticisms, his scholarship sets out to be comparative in the best sense of the word. He does not seek to incorporate the Iroquois, the Bantu, or the Barotse into his own Western-European framework; rather he is struck by their particular ways of participation. Cordova tells us that “the Euro-American does not acknowledge that he has an ‘inherited’ worldview” (2007, 72). She goes on to underline the importance of metaphysical distinctions. “The recognition of the rightful existence of the ‘other’ is based on

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the metaphysical notion that the world consists of very different places and circumstances” (Cordova 2007, 72). I think Lévy-Bruhl is pushing us even further. He is opening the door for the philosophical stance that there are multiple worlds that are very different places. I think Cordova would agree. “Is it necessary to carry about a tract outlining the metaphysics of a particular group in order to ‘understand’ what they are saying?” (Cordova 2007, 72). Maybe not she says, but it certainly is important for good scholarship (2007, 72). For his part, Lévy-Bruhl does not dismiss non-naturalist forms of participation. In fact, he opens the door for multiple modes. It is this intuition into radically different ecologies of participation that marks Lévy-Bruhl’s contribution to the academy. IN BETWEEN SHAMANS AND MYSTICS: TWO FORMS OF SELF-REFLEXIVITY Following the outline of Lévy-Bruhl’s basic intuitions regarding multiple ecologies of participation, contemporary authors such as Walter Hanegraaff (2003), Stanley J. Tambiah (1990), and Benson Saler (1997) have all sought to discern at minimum two distinct forms of participation. Tambiah turns to Lévy-Bruhl because he sees in his work the beginnings of a truly pluralistic understanding of humanity. He admires Lévy-Bruhl for turning away from the linear developmental models of his contemporaries (Tylor, Frazer, Mauss, and Durkheim in particular), and for seeking to honor so-called primitive ways of knowing on their own terms. Rather than interpreting the thought of various indigenous people as lacking or irrational, Tambiah understands Lévy-Bruhl’s approach to these different ways of living and knowing as containing their own coherence and rationality. Tambiah takes from this project a distinction between participation and causality. These are the terms used to underline the assertion that there are indeed diverse ways of knowing available to human beings and that modern notions of logic and rationality are not to be heralded as the only forms available to us. When we look to some of Lévy-Bruhl’s last writings we find him struggling to be understood. Throughout his posthumously published notebooks he looks for new terminology, or wonders what is wrong with the terms like prelogical that he worked with in his How Natives Think. While I have addressed the importance of his work above, I have yet to fully describe his own distinctions between what he sees as something akin to modes of thought. Lévy-Bruhl has read innumerable ethnographies, diaries, and field notes by this point in his life, and he keeps coming back to the idea that there is something like “participation” or the “mystical.” He sees this when different

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communities of people both allow seemingly contradictory points of view to be held at the same time, and when individuals interact with animal others in ways that seem to confuse who is who. A recurring example is when a person becomes an animal, and vice versa. “[A] transformation takes place as soons as he enters the skin of the leopard, and ceases as soon as he leaves it (for primitive men a change of skin is equivalent to a change of body)” (Lévy-Bruhl 1975, 31). This body-oriented form of participation is what I term shamanism and/or animism. In another instance Lévy-Bruhl finds three different instances in French Guinea over the course of sixteen years whereby a person is said to both turn themselves into animals and snakes in order to harm another person. “He turned himself into a snake in order to bite Issifou; he caused him to be bitten by a snake under his orders” (Lévy-Bruhl 1975, 40–41). For these people, both instances are true. The person did turn themselves into a snake—or in another example, a crocodile—and at the same time ordered the animal to attack. Lévy-Bruhl contrasts this body-swapping sense of self with a description of what I term naturalism in these pages. “For us, the necessaity to choose between the two incompatible assertions flows from the fact that both relate to the naturally perceived reality” (1975, 42). Naturalism can be found when a continuous ground—that is, Nature—is assumed to exist, and when following from this assumption we are said to be able to represent this natural world with more-or-less true descriptions. For Edward Tylor, animists are simply people who come before scientists. They assume the world is animiated by some unknown power, and so wrongfully seek out relationships with rocks, crocodiles, and others. For Lévy-Bruhl there are distinct modes of thought that engage the world in very different ways. In an important essay that laid the groundwork for what has come to be called the new animism in academia, Nurit Bird-David puts it this way: “Within the objectvist [naturalist/mystic] paradigm informing previous attempts to resolve the ‘animism’ problem, it is hard to make sense of people’s ‘talking with’ things, or singing, dancing, or socializing” (1999, 77). For objectivists—that is, naturalist mystics—“learning involves acquiring knowledge of things through the separation of knower [Culture] and known [Nature]” (1999, 77). Bird-David describes animism in a wholly other way. She sees animists as performing relationships, a series of events, which she calls participation frames. These participation frames are found in a diversity of communites. She writes, “Relational epistemoloiges function in diverse contexts where other epistemologies enjoy authority, including Western contexts. . . . [W]e animate computers we use, the plants we grow, the cars we drive” (1999, 78). This point is important. We don’t begin by personifying the computer, rather we “personify them as, when, and because we socialize with them” (1999,

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78). We are more computer-like because we hang out with computers, and the opposite is also true. But how far does this go? In a commentary included with Bird-David’s essay, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro points out Bird-David’s emphasis on epistemology. He writes, “Anthropologists in thinking that in order to explain a non-Western ontology we must derive it from (or reduce it to) an epistemology. Animism is surely an ontology, concerened with being and not with how we come to know it” (qtd. in Bird-David 1999, 79). I discuss Viveiros de Castro’s work in great detail in following chapters, but bring in his thought here to show the subtle edge upon which Lévy-Bruhl’s much earlier work is sitting. How different are his modes of thought? Do they actually point to multiple ontologies? “And if it be true that our mentality is both logical and prelogical, the history of religious dogmas and systems of philosophy may henceforth be explained in a new light” (Lévy-Bruhl 1985). I have read through all of Lévy-Bruhl’s work, and I cannot say exactly where he falls on this point. But if we follow Viveiros de Castro, as I do, then we begin to see philosophy in a whole new light. People really do become snakes and crocodiles. Bears really do become human. Within animist ecologies there is some shared interior, while what is different is our clothing (Lévy-Bruhl 1975, 50–51). Naturalists assume Nature, and become interested in difference perspectives, Cultures, and subjectivities. Is my view point true? Animists assume the People, and become interested in different bodily perspectives, skins, and intimacies. Is my bodily point of view vital and worthwhile? There are others to credit for this multiontology approach, but Lévy-Bruhl is chief among them. Tambiah (1990, 89) writes, “In short we are asked to face the possibility of other cultures, civilizations, or epochs presenting us with alternative categories and systems of thought, which would exercise to the utmost our powers of empathy and translation.” He underlines this point by looking to the French School of History (the Annales School), especially to the work of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. Both of these authors acknowledged the importance of Lévy-Bruhl’s work on their own scholarship. Febvre (1982) documents the all-pervasive role of Christianity in sixteenth-century European thought. He asserts that it would be absolutely impossible for someone writing during this time to want to escape Christianity. To rebel or chafe against Christian orthodoxy would require that someone question it, which, according to Febvre, was well-nigh impossible during the sixteenth century. Though his point may be overstated, it still requires a certain pause (see Rowland 2008; Canone and Rowland 2007). Tambiah looks to the example of the witch hunt craze of the seventeenth century to further underline this point. The differences in what constitutes rational and logical between various cultures cannot be divorced from the

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context wherein these modes of thought and action are established. The witch hunt craze might seem completely irrational from the perspective of postEnlightenment post/modern society, but in the early seventeenth century this was simply not the case. Thomas Hobbes, for example, was vilified for not believing in witches, rather than the opposite. “Many of the opinions which in seventeenth-century England got Hobbes vilified as an infidel would not even raise an eyebrow [today]. . . . Nowadays it is the people who believe in witches, and not those who question their existence, who are more likely to be ushered out of an English church” (Gottlieb 2016, 80). The existence of both witches and magic makes complete rational sense within the preEnlightenment Christian cosmology and worldview. This is no more strange than asserting the existence of gravity, an invisible force that breaks important laws of Newtonian physics, and atoms—invisible primary units that can be felt but not seen. A similar point can be found in comparisons of neo-Darwinian and constructivist assertions in the natural and social sciences. The kind of post/modern flatland materialism that is so easily assumed in today’s academy would seem very much a “craze” to sixteenth-century philosophers. In fact, during the two thousand years leading up to the Enlightenment, no rational person took the idea of atomism seriously (Lindberg 2007, 30). Does this, then, locate the modern atomist within the irrational? We can find here the first lesson Tambiah draws from Lévy-Bruhl. Considerations about rationality need not jeopardize our ability to understand very different societies, premises, and categories as internally coherent. If we are going to make comparisons across cultures, contexts, and epochs, then we cannot do so via the category of rationality as understood from within our own culture or epoch. We cannot divorce our comparisons from our cultural milieu. We cannot, therefore, hold someone like Robin Horton (with Finnegan, 1973; 1967) up as an exemplar and student of Lévy-Bruhl’s work. It is not generous to attribute pre-modern Africans with theoretical thought, as Horton has done, only to eventually relegate that same theoretical idiom to an inferior position when compared to Western theoretical systems. In a similar way, it is not appropriate to follow Oruka’s (1990, 28–29) sage philosophy, whereby we look to individuals that exibit the didactic second-order logic of Western philosophy. Lévy-Bruhl lays the foundation for a different kind of comparison altogether, one that honors different ecologies of participation on their own terms, in their own contexts. This is done without reference to more evolved, developed, or self-reflexive ways of knowing and living with which any particular theorist identifies herself. At this point I can almost hear two distinct critiques gaining force. For those that would sound the alarm of vulgar relativism, let me be clear. My multiple-ontology approach does not relativize away all meaning. Within

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any given ecology a coherent definition exists regarding what can be considered rational. Rationality is not relative within a context, but rather between ontologies. This, of course, is not how early modern, modern, or contemporary scientific and analytic thinkers view truth. But as Tambiah (1990) points out, it is certainly in keeping with a post-Kuhnian philosophy of science. It is also in keeping with most postcolonial and postfeminist comparative philosophy and religion currently underway within the academy. Such arguments might go on ad infinitum, yet if we adopt a multiple-ontology approach we might just be able to put conversations of relativism to rest. As for those that would defend the claim that our post-Cartesian world has gained a certain level of self-reflexivity absent from earlier or other non-Cartesian traditions, I would ask them what they mean by “self.” The Amerindian shamans with whom Descola and Viveiros de Castro have ­ worked, for example, have highly reflexive understandings of bodied selves. Viveiros de Castro (1998) has termed this multinaturalism and contrasts it with the multiculturalism of the post/modern world. But if we read both of these opposite forms of participation, the animism of the Amerindians and the naturalism of the post/moderns, how can we call them anything other than opposite reflexivities? The animist assumes a shared interior or People-ness and worries about her sense of physical self; the naturalist assumes a shared exterior or Nature and worries about her sense of subjective self. For the former, “self” refers to the skin, physicality, or body one is wearing, with a nuance given to these multiple co-created physicalities that is clearly lost on the post/modern mononaturalist. We find ourselves with at least two distinct forms of participation, each of which is capable of enacting multiple worlds. The difference is not in the level of self-reflexivity, but in the fact that the animist enacts multiple natures and bodies, while the naturalists enact multiple subjectivities or spiritual ultimates. By way of tying the current discussion into my own comparative project, we can look to Tambiah, who brings us back to the distinction between participation and causality. Tambiah (1990, 87) writes, “The second major legacy of Lévy-Bruhl’s later thought was the postulation of two coexisting mentalities in mankind everywhere—the mystical mentality and the rationallogical mentality, though their relative weight and salience may differ from primitive to modern times.” This is a subtle point that must be considered carefully, while always keeping in mind the important role of cognitive relativity in Lévy-Bruhl’s thought. It is important at this juncture to point out that Tambiah speaks of participation and causality (instrumental causality for Hanegraaff) as two poles of a continuum. It is also necessary to recognize that I use the term participation and mysticism somewhat differently.

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In essence, I have decided to locate the variety of attempts at worldmaking as participation. So the animist computer scientist, to the extent that she spends all her time with computers, is literally starting to live in another world as experienced when wearing computer-like clothing. At the same time, the naturalist computer scientist, to the extent that she thinks about computers all the time, is literally starting to live in another world as experienced when one focuses their attention on computers. Intimacy with computers creates bodily perpectives (animism), while thinking about computers creates mental perspectives (naturalism). The former are shamans, the latter are mystics. Both of them participate in different ways, and so help co-create different worlds. So where for Lévy-Bruhl and Tambiah, participation is a style all its own, I follow Ferrer and Sherman and see participation all around. Animism is a form of participation, but so is naturalism. Following from this change in terminology, Tambiah’s causal mentality can be framed as an ecology of naturalism, the playground of mystics. What Tambiah and Hanegraaff refer to as participation—often with a reference to mystique or mystical—can be understood as a reference to an ecology of animism, the sort of spaces inhabited by shamans. Having clarified this change of terminology, it is necessary to take another step toward clarifying the multiple ontological starting points I highlight in this comparative method. In the chapter that follows, I begin to flesh out in more detail the important differences between shamanic, divinatory, mystic, and agential ecologies of participation.

Chapter 4

Ecologizing Language A Neo-Whorfian Agential Approach

In his recent work, Beyond Nature and Culture, Philippe Descola presents comparative scholars throughout the academy with a rich theoretical project consisting of four distinct ontologies grounded in human language (see table 4.1). His theoretical approach offers a path toward the cross-ecological multi-ontology approach I defend. After his own careful reading of the ethnographical and psychological literature available to him, Descola makes the conjecture that there are diverse ontological starting points available in human language. Each of these is predicated on distinct spatial assumptions. In chapter 1, both Gebser and Santos called for a careful consideration of different temporal ecologies. Gebser, focused on the differences between archaic (following Donald, a pre-speech act gesture-based temporality lacking the self-reflexivity offered through human language), magic (episodic point-like time), mythic (circular time), mental (linear time), and integral (time-space freedom). While focusing on temporality is crucial to these authors, Descola turns his attention more toward spatial assumptions. Through a careful examination of the ethnographic materials available, he finds humans relating to both interiority (subjective, insides) as well as physicality (objective, outsides) in one of four ways. A group can assume a shared interiority (we all have the same inside, Culture) or a discontinuity with interiority (we all have different insides, cultures). A group can also assume a shared physicality (we all are part of a continuous outside, Nature) or assume a discontinuity of physicalities (we all have different outsides, there is a discontinuity of natures). These assumptions can be expressed in four different combinations: Nature-cultures (shared outside, different insides); Culture-natures (shared inside, different outsides); Nature-Culture (shared insides and outsides); or cultures-natures (a discontinuity of insides and outsides, i.e., no shared ground). 93

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This idea is similar to one put forward by Cassirer (1953a, 244): In many languages, the etymology of the first numerals suggests a link with the personal pronouns: in Indo-Germanic, for example, the words for “thou” and “two” seem to disclose a common root. In speaking of this relationship Scherer (1878, 308) concludes that we stand here at a common linguistic source of psychology, grammar, and mathematics; that the dual root leads us back to the original dualism upon which rests the very possibility of speech and thought.

Cassirer (1953a, 243–46) is following a German tradition, whereby language is associated with a basic intuition into distinctions between “I” and “thou.” In taking a similar theoretical leap, Descola shows his readers that he is far less interested in the diversity of structures (e.g., kinship, economic, ritual, and/or cosmological) available to people than in the modes of identification relative to physicality and interiority that he sees as holding these structures together. Descola’s work focuses, like that of Cassirer, on the functions of multiple ontologies, rather than given structures or contents. Again, Descola tells us, people tend to identify with other-ness in at least one of the following four ways. The first he calls totemism, whereby identification occurs in reference to both the interiorities and the physicalities of others. Totemic ontologies assume a shared insides and outsides. Imagine, for example, an elemental theory that assumes a single shared Cosmos, wherein interiority and physicality are relative relationships. In a traditional West African (Wiredu’s quasi-physicalism) setting there is no distinction between physical (natural) and non-physical forms (supernatural). Rather dreams, thoughts, emotions, ancestors, gods, trees, and stones are simply differently quasi-physical. They are more akin to Nature-Culture. If you are reading this in English you tend to think of the world as a shared outside (Nature, objectivity) with diverse insides (cultures, subjectivities). This is what Descola terms naturalism. Totemic ontologies assume no discontinuity between self and other. Some particular iguana, for example, potentially shares a more similar interiority (hot/fire) and physicality (slow/mineral) with a particular person, than that person shares with another person who might be cold/water or fast/nature. I adopt the term talismanic to reference Descola’s totemic category throughout this book. I do so to distinguish my own understanding Table 4.1  Descola’s Four Ontologies Similar interiorities Dissimilar physicalities Animism

Totemism

Similar interiorities Dissimilar physicalities

Dissimilar interiorities Similar physicalities

Analogism

Dissimilar interiorities Dissimilar physicalities

Naturalism

Source: (Adapted from Descola 2013, 122)

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of the mode of participation from Descola’s, a nuanced point I make later in this book. The second form of identification considered by Descola is animism. ­Animist identification occurs only with the interiors of others. Shamans, those performing an animist ecology, assumed a shared Culture with all those around them, while experiencing a dizzying diversity of bodies. Animists experience a discontinuity of physicalities—that is, natures. Within a shamanic leaning ecology, an iguana would share the same interiority—for example, the Iguana people and the Achuar people are all people to the extent that they share a single Culture—but they possess different physicalities or bodies. The Achuar people experience different physical worlds than the Iguana people because they have different bodies. Descola’s third form of identification is understood as naturalism. Naturalist mystics assume a shared physicality with others. This is the deeply held assumption that will stand in the way of so many people reading this book. English-speaking people tend to lean this way. There is a common ground, Nature, and they are not willing to consider any other set of assumptions. They also experience a discontinuity of selves—distinct subjectivities and interiorities (i.e., cultures). For the mystic, the iguana is made up of the same physical stuff (Nature) but has a very different interiority (cultures). Different people all shared the physics, but they have very different beliefs. If the reader is going to approach the radical turn toward ecologies of participation argued for in these pages, they will have to hold these naturalist assumptions lightly. The fourth form of identification is labeled analogism by Descola. This is a troubling mode of identification for him. Ecologies that lean toward this style of participation would not identify with others at all. They would live in radical discontinuity, where neither the interior nor the physicality of other would be shared. Analogical thinkers experience a discontinuity in both bodies and selves, cultures and natures. For these ontologies, there is no shared physicality or interiority to be found. Descola, I argue, both conflates the elemental theories of talismanic diviners with his category of analogism, while missing the ways in which this radical discontinuity opens the door of enactive and/ or creative participation. As I detailed in earlier chapters, the nominalism of Ockham and others atomized Nature, setting the stage for atomic natures. At the same time, the humanism of Petrarch and others responded to this diversity of natures, by doubling down on the importance of diverse cultures, that is, individuality. Both trends read together lead to a turn toward symbolic logic, and the importance of functions. Newton and Leibniz individually imagined calculus as they faced the radical discontinuity of an atomized physics. Later mathematicians and physicists continued this trend toward symbolic functions, sets, and individualized relations. While I address these

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distinctions between my own four-fold schema and that of Descola below, it is important at this juncture to continue to follow Descola. He writes that this basic relationality (identification/non-identification, physicality/interiority) seems to be present in all communities in one way or another. Notions of physicality and interiority seem to be universally present within human language, which gives a ground for considering the functions whereby humans enact a diversity of worlds. He tells us that “a proof of this would be that there is no known case of a conception of the ordinary living human person that would be based on interiority alone—let’s call it a mind without a body—or on physicality alone—a body without a mind—or not at least, in the latter case, until the advent of materialist theories of consciousness of the late twentieth century” (Descola 2006, 3). Here we see a nod to post/modern discontinuities—the natures of scientific materialists and new animists as well as the cultures of constructivists. Another point that must be addressed later in this chapter. For the time being it is important to consider certain critiques that might be leveled at Descola and his work. He is well aware—within his neo-structuralist stance—that he must qualify his assertion that there is some basic relationality that is fundamental to human experience. Acknowledging the dangers of a naïve Western universalism, he tells us that his schema is not one of Greek origin, Christian theology, or Cartesian mechanism. His binaries are not beholden to a Western Naturecultures bifurcation—for example, a Cartesian mind-body dualism—but rather parallels the ethnographic materials we have available to us. His work should not be too easily dismissed as a Western form of ethnocentrism. The challenge is to stay open to this point long enough to consider both the ethnographic and linguistic literature in some depth. The danger for so many post/ moderns is that they too easily assume they have overcome Nature-cultures dualism from which they came. The power of a multi-ontology approach like the one you hold in your hand, is that it brings in a wealth of data that helps us to humbly face our all too human limitations. The binaries might be as basic to us as the bifurcation of our brain. Here Descola looks to the work of Edmund Husserl and Paul Bloom. While Husserl identifies the importance of body and intentionality (Descola 2006, 2–3), Bloom writes of a basic polarity at the heart of what it is to be human. Our reproductive success requires of us the ability to understand the world as made up of both static experiences that follow fairly clear patterns and more fluid experiences that move with the ease of thoughts and emotions (Bloom 2004). Descola’s intuition into a basic fourfold set of binary relationships to insides and outsides offers a starting point to his thought experiment that limits possible forms of participation available to human beings. As an interesting addition to this conversation we might bring in the recent work of Iain McGilchrist (2009) and his work on our divided brain. The left brain

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is always on the lookout for continuities, and so a focus on this side would lead to assumptions of shared physicalities or interiorities, depending on the point of emphasis. The right brain is forever in search of distinctions, diversities, and on the lookout for what is missing. By placing emphasis here, there would be a tendency to see diversities of both insides and outsides, depending on where one looked. Again, the point is not necessarily to limit all forms of participation to these biological, psychological, and linguistic starting points. Rather, the point is to be honest in the face of our lived experience, to notice the limits of our humanity, and to open the doors for other non-human forms of participations as well. Following Bloom and McGilchrist there seems to be something fundamental to Descola’s four-fold schema. It could be that there are more ontological starting points available to us beyond those offered by Descola. It might be that Descola’s basic binary is not nearly as universal as he would have us believe. But his use of this basic binary is compelling. Through turning toward the variety of more-or-less concrete experiences available to us, he gives us a tool whereby we can begin to notice our own assumptions. And what could be more important than this as we set out to defend diverse ecologies of knowledge and participation? This turn can allow us to more fully invite the other in, not by including them within our world-view and/or more robustly, our world, rather, by noticing and honoring their differences—which may allow us in turn to put down ours. My project rests in large part on the conjecture made by Descola and others that there is in fact a finite number of starting points whereby people might organize and co-create their worlds. In order to adopt this approach, I answer some of the most lucid critiques of his position (e.g., Kapferer 2014; Sahlins 2014) in the following chapter. But for the purposes of my argument here, I set out to defend a neo-Whorfian turn toward the importance in language with regard to how we enact our worlds. NEO-WHORFIAN LINGUISTICS AND ONTOLOGICAL RELATIVITY As I continue to defend what amounts to a multiple-ontology approach to contemporary philosophia, it is prudent to inquire into my use of the term ontology, as well as my assertion that there are a limited number of distinct ontological functions that can be found within the languages utilized by most human beings. In arguing for an admittedly radical multi-ontology approach to language, it is also important to ask if I may have confused linguistic and ontological differences. Am I making all this shaman, mystic, diviner stuff up? In two recent and wide-ranging texts (Cognitive Variations and Being, Humanity, and Understanding), the historian of ancient Greek and Chinese

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science Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd (2007, 2012) has taken up the question of whether there is some shared psychic unity underlying all human endeavors. This is as good a place as any to begin if we hope to get to the bottom of the term ontology and its use in the so-called “ontological turn” in anthropology. Lloyd undertakes a vast interdisciplinary endeavor, bringing his considerable knowledge of ancient traditions, including Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and Chinese, to bear on recent conversations in cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology and thus complexifying the conversation regarding comparative metaphysics within the ontological turn. In doing so, he considers certain strong assertions of psychic unity, as well as the possibility of a universal grammar and/or ultimate quantifier that points toward this underlying continuity. In considering the potential for communication and translation between the diversity of linguistic groups available to us, Lloyd makes a threefold distinction that is helpful here. He distinguishes between the Chomskianstyle universalism assumed by many analytic philosophers, a neo-Whorfian assertion of linguistic relativity (the position with which Lloyd seems to feel most comfortable), and a stronger, more radical assertion of ontological relativity—the position that I hold throughout these pages. Lloyd associates the latter with the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Descola, two authors who are crucial to the speculations in this book. In order to better understand my multi-ontology approach, it is helpful to consider the distinctions Lloyd makes between these three positions. To clarify these distinctions, I look to the work of Stephen C. Levinson and his neo-Whorfian peers, who assert that there are three basic frames of reference identifiable in human language in relationship to our spatial assumptions. Human language generally rests on one of three assumptions about spatial experiences and their relationship to that of the speaker to it. Levinson asserts this threefold schema in an overt critique of analytic universalism Lloyd associates with Chomsky above. The idea of a linguistic universalism is part and parcel of a naturalist metaphysics. The assumption that there is one Nature, many cultures, and if we just improve our methods we can reduce the impact of these cultures and get closer to the real truths of Nature. Mystics, fearing the relativity of cultures, seek Culture. For his part, Levinson has written at length about the “original sin of cognitive science and linguists” (we might also include contemporary metaphysical presumptions of analytic metaphysics here). This critique is important, as it allows us to lessen the grip that naturalist assumptions about meta- and physics has on us. We must be wary of Chomskian-style triumphalism, and the too easy assumption that it is possible to generate a universal conceptual representation (see Levinson 2012; Levinson and Evans 2010, 2009). In contrast to this Chomskian universalism, it is the linguistically relative positions of theorists like Lloyd that Levinson is at pains to defend.

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Underlining the major thrust of this linguistically relativist position, Levinson and David Wilkins write, “Frames of reference are coordinate systems whose function it is to designate angles or directions in which a figure can be found with respect to a ground” (2006, 541). Levinson and Wilkins outline their threefold schema by distinguishing between intrinsic, relative, and absolute frames of reference (see table 4.2), each of which are expressed with regard to some particular relationship (binary, triadic, arbitrary-absolutepolarity respectively) between figure (viewer, insides) and ground (spatial outsides). Animists (those enacting more shamanic ecologies of participation) tend toward the intrinsic and binary forms of spatial assumptions (discontinuity of ground, continuity of interiority). Alternatively, naturalists (those enacting more mystic ecologies of participation) tend to the relative frame of reference with its triadic perspective (continuity of ground, relative/discontinuity of viewer/insides). Naturalist frames of reference are important to consider, because they are ones emphasized within the English language, and by most of those people reading this book. It is especially interesting to note the emphasis on a point-of-view that is relative to an assumed objective ground. Naturalist leaning mystics assumed a shared objective ground, and then worry themselves to no end about methods whereby they can minimize the inherent relativity of their subjective point-of-view. Mystics are concerned with relativity, while other forms of participation are not. Relativism, and especially vulgar relativism, is meaningless within shamanic, talismanic, and creative ecologies of participation. To the extent that critiques fear that the work of Descola and myself veer toward such vulgar relativism, you can be certain they are inhabiting a naturalist ecology of participation. They are not available to anything else. Levinson’s third frame of reference can be seen as beholden to talismanic ontological assumptions (those enacting more divinatory ecologies of participation). Diviners speak arbitrary absolutes that align with Levinson’s absolute frame of reference. These different frames of reference require more fleshing out if we are going to be able to compare them to both Descola’s schema (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism) and my own (shamanicanimist, mystic-naturalist, divinatory-talismanic, and creative-enactive ecologies of participation). We start with binary relations, which Levinson and Wilkins characterize as the closest frame of reference that we have to a universal. Much like Cassirer’s reading of the German tradition (through Scherer and Humboldt), the datum collected by these linguistic anthropologists points toward a universal. But not a universal language or a universal content. Binaries are the basic beginning functions of human language. While Derrida might role over in his grave, and critical theorists throughout academia must raise alarm—I ask for

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Table 4.2  Levinson’s Three Frames of Reference Intrinsic/animist-shamanic*

various facets of object designated; simple figure—ground binary

topological geometry of object

Absolute/talismanic-divinatory* arbitrary absolute bearings designated

north, west, east, south uphill/downhill

Relative/naturalist-mystic*

front, back, side, right, left with reference to a viewer/ relative position

mapping bodily coordinates; triangulation of three points

* My own three forms of participatory knowing

patience. Derrida taught us how to invert the inherent hierarchies of binary assertions. He taught us to tend the creative memes that arise out of this good work. But that does not mean that we should or even can turn our backs on the ontologies that gave birth to his work (see chapter 5). The point of this project is not to defend the hierarchies of the past, but rather to face them honestly and with courage, so that new functions and ecologies might emerge. Going a step further toward honest scholarship, I find the performative acts of Derrida and later Butler to be less non-binary than differently so. I take them to be inverting the naturalist binaries and replacing them by shamanic performances of ever changing animist topographies. Deconstructions like Butler are moving us away from the relative frames of reference enjoyed by naturalist mystics, toward the binary frames of shamans. They encourage us to perform novel intimate descriptions that invert naturalist hierarchies—which highlight a privileged point of view relative to some assumed ground—and unlock heretofore secret vulnerable and unspoken places. This is the work of animists, the detailing diversities of bodily perspectives. And if we read Descola’s multi-ontology schema next to Levinson’s neo-Whorfian theory, we find a parallel to what he terms intrinsic binaries. Intrinsic binaries articulate a variety of topological intricacies (facets of particular physicality) without reference to a triangulated viewer (i.e., the relative frame of reference emphasized in naturalism and mystic participation) or an absolute set of bearings (i.e., the absolute frame of reference spoken in talismanic and divinatory participation). Animists assume a shared inside (Culture, the People), and then initiate a process of self-determination in relation to a diversity of physicalities (natures)—they enact diverse bodies. What are we to do with naturalist hierarchies? Quoted in Butler’s Bodies That Matter, Luce Irigaray writes, “One way is to interrogate the conditions under which systematicity [naturalist hierarchies of points of view] itself is possible: what the coherence of the discursive utterance conceals of the conditions under which it is produced” (qtd. in Butler 1993, 3). Irigaray is asking to uncover the ways in which naturalist mystics enact their worlds (cultures).

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“For example,” Irigaray writes, “the ‘matter’ from which the speaking subject draws nourishment in order to produce itself” (qtd. in Butler 1993, 3). In order to understand how animist shamans enact, we must first come to understand how naturalist mystics produce their own worlds. The quote above could not be clearer. The mystic focuses on an object, a thing, some “matter,” and then proceeds to produce itself by nourishing a particular point of view. The matter is no more given than the subject. This is a process of co-creation. “All these are interventions on the scene; they ensure its coherence so long as they remain uninterpreted. Thus they have to be reenacted” (qtd. in Butler 1993, 3). Irigaray makes the same point made by Latour in the introduction as he points toward our factish gods. Substances and subjects require constant tending. They simply do not exist outside mystic ecologies of play. Butler is quoting Irigaray to make a performative point. In an attempt to deconstruct cognicentric hierarchies, Butler finds feminists positing a body prior to language. Are there bodies before language? It depends on what language is. If language points to the functions of Creativity that enact meanings and worlds all the way through, then language might just come before bodies. And yet this is not quite Butler’s point. “This is not to say that the materiality of bodies is simply and only a linguistic effect which is reducible to a set of signifiers . . . .[but] materiality posited will retain that positing as it constitutive condition” (1993, 3). We cannot step out of language, as much as we would love to imagine that we can. Butler goes on, “Derrida negotiates the question of matter’s radical alterity with the following remark: ‘I am not even sure that there can be a ‘concept’ of an absolute exterior” (1993, 3). If we follow this line of thought all the way then we find ourselves without a shared continuous body (Nature), and in its place, we find ourselves performing bodies. Natures, in the plural. A shared inside (Culture), in parallel to a discontinuity of outsides. I take this to be an exemplar of shamanic performance. We can locate animism as beholden to a binary frame of reference with little or no allusion to an interior. But this is not because there is not one; rather, it is assumed, while a diversity of bodies is pursued. The People, a shared interior (Culture), is not of particular concern. Animists do not worry about diversities of insides and subjectivities. They do not worry about relativism in the form of different beliefs and truths, because they have an inverted hierarchy that places emphasis on distinct bodies rather than cultures—not a body, or a Nature that comes before language, but rather bodies in the plural that are performed. It is important to underline the fact that this is animist participations are still based on a binary dualism, only in reverse of the way we often think of such things. Where naturalist binaries create hierarchies relevant to privileged points of view, animist binaries cannot help but create hierarchies based on privileged intimacies and bodies. On the extreme side,

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a purely intrinsic frame of reference without recourse to relative or absolute position is rare, but also very instructive. The work of Eve Danziger (1996, 1999, 2001) with the Mopan (Mayan) of Central America offers one very good example of this style of discourse. Danziger’s work with the Mopan points to an intrinsic (animist) frame of reference that makes very little or no reference to relative frames (naturalism’s diversity of interiorities). Danziger (1996, 72) makes this point in an early paper wherein she distinguishes between relative (orientation-bound, e.g., those found in Euro-American languages) and intrinsic (orientation-free, e.g., frames of reference like those found in Mopan Mayan languages). “In short,” she writes, “Mopan speakers do not refer to spatial location in ways that presuppose information other than that present in an original dyadic configuration” (1996, 73). I speculate, in parallel to the work of Descola and Viveiros de Castro, that animists assume a shared interiority (Culture), and so can be found emphasizing binary relations present in a particular physicality. Animists are concerned with topological intimacies and distinctions (natures), not internal or subjective ones (cultures). Shamanic physicalities are performed by articulating a discontinuous topography. This in direct contrast to very different triadic frame of reference (relative position of viewer to solid ground in naturalism) that I see more aligned with my naturalist communities and their tendency toward mystic enactions. The strong emphasis on intrinsic binaries (animist/shamanic enactions) leads the Mopan to several unique ways of configuring spatial relationships that are quite distinct from relative frames (naturalism/mystic enaction) and absolute frames (talismanic/ divinatory enactions) of reference. Some examples might help to clarify this mode of enaction. To begin, we can take a look at simple examples from relative (naturalist) and absolute (talismanic) frames of reference. With regard to the perception of parts or objects, an English-speaking person, when emphasizing a relative frame of reference (naturalism), might say that a boat is traveling on a river or that a picture is hung on a wall. A Warrwa speaker, utilizing one of the rare languages that places the greatest emphasis on absolute frames of reference (talismanic enaction), and makes little or no reference to intrinsic binaries (animism), might say, “Boat water float,” or “Picture wall attached” (McGregor 2006, 126). The speaker of this language would use certain locative markers to clarify float and attached to encode a “static spatiallocational” relation from the point of view of an absolute position (the motile truths and hunches found within divinatory ecologies), rather than a relative position (the relative triadic logic of mystic ecologies). Speaking to this phenomenon, William B. McGregor writes, “Like many other Australian Aboriginal languages, Warrwa uses its locative marker to encode general static spatial-locational relations of contiguity, containment,

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adjacency and so on; that is, it covers relations expressed in English by prepositions such as at, in, on, by, over, near and so forth” (2006, 124). Both of these frames of reference (absolute/talismanic and relative/naturalist) express a triadic relationship, whereby the boat on the river is understood as such from the point of view of a perceiver (diverse cultures) or located in absolute space (a singular Cosmos, Nature-Culture). In contrast, the Mopan speaker might say something more like “The boat is on the torso of the river” or “The picture is in the belly of the house.” In such cases the third variant (perceiver or absolute position) is not necessarily present. Derrida and Butler might find interesting new forms of signification here. Ones that tend not to privilege certain points of view. The catch is that they still privilege different intimacies. Danziger explains this intrinsic mode of enaction by writing that the Mopan language limits the relational information available to the object (boat/picture) itself, without reference to an external landscape (shared physicality or shared physicality-interiority), which would require a third variable (a naturalist viewer or an absolute talismanic/divinatory hunch). In a potentially more telling example, Danziger placed three objects in a line (a toy person, pig, and cow), and asked various Mopan speakers to locate the center object. The toys are aligned with the toy person closest to the Mopan speaker, while the pig is in the middle facing away from the toy person, and the cow is on the right facing the toy person. Where an English speaker might say that the pig is at the right foreleg of the cow or alternatively at the left hand of the toy person, the Mopan replies by saying that the pig is “inside her right ‘hand’ to the cow” and/or “inside his left hand to the man” (Danziger 1996, 73). The Mopan, Danziger (1996, 71) tells us, understand the object as “a configuration of specifically related and non-separable internal parts.” Right and left in this case do not make reference to a viewer, but rather are internal to the configurations (topology) of objects (see Levinson and Wilkins 2006, 542). It is also worth remembering that, in contrast, Warrwa speakers do not utilize either relative (naturalist) or intrinsic (animist) spatial indicators. McGregor explains, “[Warrwa] speakers do not use an egocentric system distinguishing left and right in terms of the speaker’s body as center, to specify a search domain for a figure with respect to a ground” (2006, 148). I assert that these binary relations are at the heart of animist ecologies. Shamanic tending ecologies of participation are into topographical intercourse, intermingling and other such sensuous entanglements. It is at this point that the naturalist (choose from any one of our great mystic leaning ecologies, especially those who descend from Indo-European ancestory) might point out that such parts must be asserted in relation to a singular continuous Nature, which brings us to another crucial difference that arises between the intrinsic frame of reference engaged by the Mopan (animism)

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and the relative frame assumed by the naturalist. The Mopan speaker finds the assertion of a whole separate from the parts nonsensical. Nature-Substance, God-Eye-View, Absolute-Cosmic-Polarity, mereological sum, or final cause, each of these univocal assertions appears ridiculous to the Mopan Mayan. When the Mopan speaker references parts (boat, river, picture, house), she does so by referencing a binary relationship between the possessor (river, house) and the possessed (boat, picture). The Mopan language is about carrying and belonging (animism) rather than being (naturalism) (see Prechtel 1998, 211). The Mopan might refer to an object as being at the dog’s side, but in doing so only the binary relationship between the dog and the object is clarified. This is something like the use of the definite article in English, where “the” is used in reference to an assumed context. When a Mopan speaker references the boat on the torso of the river he is not assuming an inclusive continuity of physicality (a continuity called Nature—the naturalist-oriented, relative frame of reference), or a continuity of interiority and physicality (divinatory-oriented absolute Nature-Culture). She is assuming some univocity of interiority (the People and/or Culture, not to be confused with naturalist attempts, not assumptions, at univocity in the face of multiple cultures such as Self and final cause), and then enacting any number of topographical diversities and discontinuities of bodies. For the animist, fascinated by intrinsic spatial relations, there is no whole that can be extrapolated from the assertions of the possessor-possessed (whole-part) context. The semantic whole is mutually constituted, not assumed or given. Any reference to a univocity of nature beyond particular physicalities is meaningless. In a further point of clarification between intrinsic (animist) and relative (naturalist) frames of reference, Danziger looks at the way Mopanspeaking persons enact relationships. The term enaction is appropriate here, for relationships are not thought to exist externally to the actual speech act that brings the relationship into existence. Danziger offers the example of a newlywed couple and the relationship of what English speakers would understand as a brother-in-law to his new in-laws. The Mopan, remember, do not assume a larger continuity or transitive whole. They do not refer to a biological/physical hierarchy such as bloodline or shared DNA (naturalism), nor to a hierarchy of correlations, totems, or arbitrary polarities that might exist externally to a speech act (talismanic). What English speakers might assume to be an uncle is not related to the man who has married into the family unless that uncle refers to that man in a familial way in an actual interaction. If no performative act is shared, then no relationship exists. Danziger tells us that though a person might be seen as the blood relative of a man newly married into the family by English speakers, if this relationship has not been performed/enacted (for example, if that person was not at the

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wedding), then he is not considered to be related to the new brother-in-law. The relationship literally does not exist unless it has been spoken, and there is no guarantee of what relationship will be spoken into existence if these two people meet. It is within reason to assume that the two could meet on several occasions, and for various reasons greet each other in a host of ways that make no reference to the marriage. After meeting on numerous occasions, if one of them does not actually greet the other as an in-law, then they are not related (Danziger 1996, 76). Following Danziger and Levinson, we can understand Mopan speakers as exemplars of an intrinsic (animist) frame of reference—a frame of reference wherein nature is not a continuity, but a series of topographical differences. In this animist ontology, there is no third variant (viewer-naturalist-mysticparticipation or absolute correlation-talismanic-divinatory-participation), and hierarchies of relationship are not based on an assumption of nature (naturalism, continuity of physicality-cum-Nature) or correlation (talismanic, motile wholes performed from a play of interiority-physicality, Nature-Culture). In a mostly animist language like this, attempts at self-determination assume interiority (Culture), and are subsequently fascinated by the intricacies and perspectives available via multiple physicalities. We must ask ourselves at this point just how deep these distinctions go. The neo-Whorfian linguistic relativity that follows from linguists such as Levinson, Wilkins, and Danziger, says Lloyd, goes a long way toward overthrowing many traditional assumptions regarding spatial cognition. As one example, Lloyd refers to Tzeltal children growing up in what Levinson would call an absolute framework (my talismanic ontology). In a clear divergence from Piaget’s traditional developmental model, writes Lloyd, such children are found to be competent “Euclidean thinkers” by age two and a half, capable of a complex mastery of geometrical forms by three and a half (see Lloyd 2007, 26–28; see also Brown and Levinson 2000). Furthermore, argues Lloyd, “Levinson’s explanatory hypothesis [neo-Whorfian linguistic relativity] offers the sharpest challenge to the psychic unity position” (2007, 29). As should be clear by this statement, Lloyd is in favor of Levinson’s work, but what about Descola and Viveiros de Castro’s ontological relativism (see Descola 2010; Taylor 2013)? Do animists really enact multiple worlds-cum-natures? Lloyd (2007, 113, 147; 2012, 26, 107–12) considers these authors’ work in some detail, but ultimately finds their ontological position too strong. He critiques their ontologically relativist position by referring to the necessity and possibility of translation, effectively arguing that there is a degree of linguistic relativity (as opposed to psychic unity), but that the idea that this relativity belongs to the ontological level is too much (see Lloyd 2012, 36). Lloyd follows Isabelle Delpla (2001) in referencing the important but distinct

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contributions by Donald Davidson and William V. Quine to what he calls the principle of charity in interpretation. The defense of diverse, ontologically distinct realities would seem to undermine the possibility of communication across such radical differences. Lloyd writes, “Clearly the vocabularies [e.g., analogism, animism, naturalism] in question do not readily map onto one another. Yet given that ethnographers provided us with the makings of a translation manual, that should give us pause before we conclude that we are faced with irresoluble incommensurabilities” (2012, 109). Many critiques have been levied at Descola during a recent symposium on his work. Too extreme and too relativist, writes Gérard Lenclud. There must be some reality shared by all humans (2014, 365). Too ontological and too rigid, writes Stephan Feuchtwang. Descola has, in his own way, admitted to being a naturalist (Feuchtwang 2014, 384). The comparisons come up lacking—mostly, it seems, because of the rigid logic of Descola’s multi-cell grid (Feuchtwang 2014, 386–87). In response to Lloyd’s critique and in anticipation of Lenclud and Feuchtwang, Descola argued that, “barring a few eccentrics or plain morons, no one seriously questions the unity of mankind in terms of cognitive processes” (2010, 335). So, what is Descola up to? His wife, and fellow anthropologist, has an answer for his critics. Is there a problem? “Not really,” she responds, “[not] if the point is to celebrate the mind-stretching and purgative effect of taking unfamiliar ontologies seriously, and to devise the best means for engaging with the philosophical issues they involve and profiting from what they have to offer” (Taylor 2013, 203). But wait, says Stefan Helmreich. Descola’s motivations are probably sound, but he is still involved in theory. And theory, as Helmreich reminds us, à la Catherine Lutz (1995, 253), tends toward not only abstraction but gendered, universalist types of speculation as well (Helmreich 2014, 375–76). But are Descola and company simply attempting to climb some novel naturalist mountain of abstraction, forgetting the dangers of such discursive cognicentrisms? Descola writes (2014a, 436), If there is at least one common purpose in the various approaches that have been subsumed under the label of the “ontological turn,” it is precisely our attempt to do away with those Eurocentric categories [e.g., race, class, gender] and with the colonial project of sucking into our own cosmology peoples who, having lost their land, their dignity, and the control of their work, for they face the added ignominy of having to translate their ways of life into our own way of life and of being grateful to us for providing them the [critical, post/modern, self-reflexive] tools to do so.

Even if it is foolish to do so, I follow Descola’s lead as he argues for a particular sort of way out of our present post/modern myopia (naturalist empiricism and critique). He asks us to experiment with utopia and to see what we

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find (Descola 2014a, 436). But I am also aware of Lloyd’s critique, and so I finally defend the assertion of multiple ecologies rather than ontologies in my work. ECOLOGIES AND ONTOLOGIES AFTER NATURE AND CULTURE It is high time that I unpack my reasons for adopting the term ecologies. The short answer is twofold: First, the term ontology has very strong connotations, bringing to mind ideations of essence, absolutes, and Being. It is powerful for this reason, and as such I continue to use it throughout this work, especially as I refer to my speculative project as an example of a multiple-ontology approach to philosophia. Secondly, this term ontology is strong and carries with it distinct assumptions and boundaries that cannot be crossed. How does one translate, communicate, or, for that matter, propagate across ontologies? What does that even mean? One easy answer would be to drop the use of this word altogether, but that would detract from the thrust of the book’s argument. Our anthropologists from MIT are not sure that they agree. Helmreich gets the basic motivation behind a work like this. He understands the post/modern constitution, the fact that critical theorists, antiracists, feminists, queer scholars, and critical theorists of every stripe can and often do tend toward naturalist assumptions (Helmreich 2014, 375). But he is more than a little wary of Descola’s “big-time thinking.” Michael M. J. Fischer takes this ball and runs, so much so that the full title of his essay on the topic should be shared in its entirety: “The lightness of existence and the origami of ‘French’ anthropology: Latour, Descola, Viveiros de Castro, Meillassoux, and their so-called ontological turn.” We must dispense, he argues, with the words metaphysics and ontology (Fischer 2014, 333). Fischer brings to his aid the work of Jenny Boulboullé (2012), who finds Rene Descartes working as a “hands-on-practitioner.” She marks his work as illustrative of a turn toward experimentation, or, as Fischer has it, “conjectures and refutations (not ontologies)” (2014, 333). In a less than original interpretation, Descartes offers no systematic reflections on the nature of Being. He does not even use the word ontology. Jean-Luc Marion has written at length regarding Descartes’s non-ontology. “Obviously,” writes Jean Grondin, “Descartes’ new foundation for philosophy sought to oppose Scholasticism and its project of the science of Being as Being” (2012, 107). But then, is it true that Descartes escaped ontology and metaphysics with his radical doubt and his first philosophy? Is Fischer correct in thinking that there is a way out of our philosophical past?

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It is crucial here to understand what Descartes did. Did his doubt lead him to God, or Being as Being? Was he assured of existence and the continuity of nature through his skepticism? No. Descartes brought all of this into doubt, leaving only the author, the ego, the post/modern radically individualized self. Not unlike Petrarch before him, his realization paved the way for a flourishing diversity of insides. But unlike Petrarch’s humanism, which feared the nominalist-materialist turn, he also easily accepted a diversity of outsides. Using Gebser’s terminology, Descartes enacted a deficient mystic/ mental ecology of participation if ever there was one—which also paved the way for creative ecologies of participation, with their emphasis on individual freedom, diversity, and relationality through the creative aspects of symbolic functions. He is an important piece to our puzzle, as he sets the stage for a new emphasis on the individual. Without him the book that you hold in your hands could hardly have been written. For example, when Wouter J. Hanegraaff (2008) complains of Jeffrey J. Kripal’s (2010) postmodern and psychoanalytic hubris, he is reminding us of Descartes. When Kripal’s (2010) authors of the impossible find themselves alienated, they are reminding us of Descartes. What else could Superman be here to remind us of? Is it as simple as Nietzsche’s Übermensch? Is this Overman so transparent? Is there some superhuman, supernormal gnostic someone hiding behind our Clark Kent? What of the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo? “Well aware of Nietzsche’s earlier expression . . . he [named it Supermind and] meant a humanity that has taken full possession of its spiritual nature, a supernature that includes all sorts of psychical powers” (Kripal 2011, 73–75). Ferrer (2002, 29) tells us that the transpersonal movement with which Hanegraaff has aligned Kripal’s work has always been anti- or post-Cartesian as it searched for some alternative to Descartes’s dualism. I find it more an extension of Descartes’s mystic-oriented ecology of participation. With what else, really, does the contemporary scholar, scientist, psychologist, neurobiologist, Catholic priest, fundamentalist, or even my grandmother continue to struggle? The post/modern discontinuities of insides, the Cartesian subject, the egoic self, and its relation to the Cartesian object; the post/ modern discontinuities of outsides. This is the ontological assumption that bothers Descola. This is our dualism, the one we all want to overcome. Points of view nourished through assumptions of outsides. Our is a world of relative cultures. And so, we want to hold on to the naturalist continuity of nature. But it has been atomized, individualized, and broken. “Thus, they have to be reenacted” wrote Irigaray above. Neither substances nor selves are givens, they are becomings. You are living, literally living, within an ecology that was born out of Descartes’s cogito. This deficient mental (post/modern) ecology is troubling. But it is also the soil from which a more creative form of

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participation has grown. In considering this situation, Jean Grondin (2012, 119) laments that “we are faced with a veritable excess of metaphysics.” Yes, that is true. But it should not be troubling, at least to the extent that you are not still enamored with naturalist musings. Who created whom? Did the ego create God? Did God create substance? Did substances create scientific points of view? Yes. All of the above. And more. Descartes’s doubt offers us a critical post/modern metaphysics. He opens the door for Kant, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche. Is God really dead? Did we create him? Is Descartes’s dualism the beginning of the end of a simple naturalist ecology? Yes. And, and it is one important point of departure for a creative ecology of participation. We have assumed for so long that nature simply was, and that there must have been a final cause (e.g., God)—thank you Aristotle. But Descartes, the almost animist, focused not only on diversity of natures but also cultures. He helped reimagine the diversity of cultures as a more individualized, atomized, emphasis on egoic selves. In a profound turn of events, Cartesian dualism opened the door for enaction. Cartesian dualism and Newtonian physics point us toward a discontinuity of both insides and outsides: atomism all around. And while these trends in contemporary thought are important, they do not get down to the real mystery of Creativity that starts to deconstruct the ground beneath our feet. Descartes brought about the possibility of diverse insides, egos, the selves we all assume. But Newton and the nominalists shattered the ground itself with his atoms, creating a diversity of distinct substances isolated and unrelated with each other. But his calculus opened a new linguistic door, a pathway toward new kinds of relations. Taken together, this is as troubling as it is enlivening. Nietzsche (2007, 87), for example, drives us away from the assumed ground (Nature) of naturalism. He sees through the “lewd ascetic conflicts” of our mystics who nurture their idiosyncratic points of view (cultures) that are always already relative to an assumed ground. In reading Levinson’s three-fold schema in parallel to Descola’s work we can see naturalism beholden to Levinson and Wilkins’s relative framework. “Relative systems involve the speaker’s coordinates (his or her own front/back/left/right), but in addition a secondary coordinate system mapped from the speaker’s coordinate system onto the ground object. This is the source of considerable complexity” (2006, 543). Levinson and Wilkins mark this frame as relative because the subjective viewpoint is always part of a complex special relationship between the speaker and the assumed object. Relativism becomes a very serious problem for this spatial and linguistic schema. How do I know that my point of view is closest to the truth of the object? How can I trust my objectivity? Naturalist mystics require methods, whereby they can check their truths, their facts, their science, and assumptions. But the Enlightenment brought an end to objectivity just as it seemed to be within our grasp.

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Following in this wake, Nietzsche goes on to write, “There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’” (2007, 87). Nietzsche speaks our fears in the open. Cartesian skepticism has finally fully flowered. An important early author within the ontological turn in anthropology, Roy Wagner writes that “anthropology is the study of man ‘as if’ there were culture[s]” (1975, 10). I would add to this that science is a method that proceeds as if there were Nature. Wagner locates a study beyond nature and culture by placing an emphasis on convention and invention (1975, 45). Convention is the process of maintaining the prior commitments of those around us, where invention is practiced by allowing for what has not been but just might be. Convention points to the communal, the shared, where invention points to the particular. For naturalism, what is shared is Nature, a continuity of outside. So, convention here speaks to the practice of maintaining right relationships with Nature. Invention, here, is cultures, whereby what is particular is subjective. Naturalism and its mystics assume a shared Nature, and then begin to invent diverse insides, subjectivities, and cultures. The practice of invention, for Wagner, is akin to objectification (1975, 43). Note that objectification for the naturalist mystic has more to do with subjectivities and cultures. Nature is assumed to be objective, given, solid, whole. The history of naturalism as told here is a history of the ongoing realization regarding a plethora of distinct insides. A discontinuity of interiorities, that if taken all the way to the final end leads to solipsism and relativism. “Whatever the ‘cause’ of Nietzsche’s insanity. . .,” writes Wagner, “his intellectual reaction to it is singularly appropriate” (1975, 86). Through the invention of cultures, we also invented the self and society. Petrarch’s humanism begins to find its form. The invention of cultures teaches us this—behind every event lurks the possibility of human, anthropomorphic, or sociomorphic invention (1975, 87). Nietzsche faced our powers of invention head on. But how far does it go? If we follow naturalism, then we assume Nature is given, and cultures are created. This is the post/modern constitution, and its commitment to constructivist theories. But is this what Nietzsche meant by will? What Wagner means by reference to invention? Wagner asks us to look for a “reverse anthropology” (1975, 31). He finds in within the context of Melanesian cargo cults. Where we utilize culture as a tool of examination, they use kago. These words are mirror images of each other (1975, 31). We see our cargo as a kind of material wealth, and we examine Melanesian practices through the lens of cultures. Cargo is simple materiality (Nature), relativized through cultures. Cultures point to the importance of human thought in this case. But the Melanesians experience something else.

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Wagner examines the reactions of a particular Melanesian cult leader named Yali. Yali examines Melanesian artifacts in a museum, and this teaches him about Western people and their emphasis on cultures. We preserve the past by reenacting history—we have to work at creating a continuity of insides—through collecting artifacts, objects, reminders of a shared Nature. We invent cultures and insides, and this is scary, so we try to alleviate our fears by locating material reminders of our internal continuity. “Cargo cult can be thought of as a pragmatic sort of anthropology that invents in anticipation of the future . . . rather than reconstructing the past or present out of shards of evidence” (1975, 34). Anthropologists, faced with the complexities of diverse cultures—discontinuous insides—resort to maintaining coherence by reference to an assumed continuity of physicality or outside—nature. Shards of evidence, or evidence in general, is the way that mystics make sure their inventions—that is, cultures/self/inside—is in right relationship with what is given, that is, Nature. Melanesians are more akin to what I call diviners. They assume a continuity of both outsides and insides. They practice what Levinson calls an absolute frame of references. They invent talismans, and thereby relationships. Yali’s cargo cult extends “human relation and mutual production to manufactured artifacts” (1975, 32). Relationships are invented, and the only way to maintain these relations is by extending them through the production of talismans. Wagner’s work marks a crucial turn in post/modern discourse, where naturalist assertions—Nature and cultures—are inverted through dialogue with divinatory forms of meaning-making through the production of talismans (the cosmos available through assuming Nature-Culture). If we read this reversal closely we begin to see that Yali and his Melanesian counterparts do not assume a continuity of Nature. For them, there is no solid physical ground. If we read the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro in parallel to Wagner, the point gets driven home even more. Viveiros de Castro writes, “Given the universality of nature, the status of the human and social world is unstable and, as the history of Western thought shows, it perpetually oscillates between a naturalistic monism (‘sociobiology’ being one of its current avatars) and an ontological dualism of nature/culture (‘culturalism’ being its contemporary expression)” (1998, 473). Viveiros de Castro is one of the most important arbiters of the new animism. He locates animist shamanic ontologies as beholden to an inverse dualism as the one assumed by naturalism and mystics. By way of distinguishing between naturalism and animism, Viveiros de Castro finds animists as performing a multinaturalism (in contrast to naturalism’s multiculturalism). There is a diversity of physicalities and outsides (natures) that must be faced. Levinson tells us that intrinsic animist languages are “closely linked to topology, where the geometry of the ground

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object is also relevant—knowing the parts of an object is a precondition to using intrinsic systems” (2006, 542). Animist language detail in great depth diverse physical distinctions. They are concerned with the diversity of bodies or outsides they experience, and so work to enact coherence by assuming a shared interiority (Culture, the People) in relation diverse natures. Nature is not given; culture is. Where naturalist worry if their subjective point of view is in proximity to Nature, animists worry if their objective experiences-cumpoints-of-view are in proximity to the People, that is, Culture. Diviners produce or invent talismans, in relation to some assumed though arbitrary set of arbitrary points. Using Wagner’s terminology, their cosmos is their convention, while relationships are their inventions. Shamans enact bodies, in relation to some assumed inside. The People is their convention, while bodies (natures) are their inventions. Mystics enact insides, in relation to some assumed outside. Nature is their convention, while selves, Self, and cultures are their inventions. Wagner and Viveiros de Castro point us away from the post/modern constitution, with its too easy assumptions regarding the givenness of Nature and a diversity of cultures. They show, respectively, how diviners and shamans enact distinct worlds through different ontologies. And of course, these get all mixed up. There are few if any pure ontologies, and so I argue for ecologies. But participation? What comes first? Language or the world? Remember my answer. Language. Function. Symbol. There is a mystery of Creativity, whereby distinct ontologies enact diverse entanglements I call ecologies. Nature is not sitting there, waiting to be discovered. It is co-created. If the post/modern considers this claim in any detail, they cannot help but be perturbed. Nietzsche wrote, “To eliminate the will completely and turn off all the emotions without exception, assuming we could: well? would that not mean to castrate the intellect?” (2007, 87). Nietzsche offers a new ascetic ideal, a will to power. There are those who have realized their weakness. They have realized that the ascetics of old did not own the truth, had not found the ground. These folks are the ones that are willing to face the absurdity that will and nature are inextricably comingled. Theirs is a dynamic play, through which we come to realize in the end that “it is the wound itself that forces him to live.” (Nietzsche 2007, 87). Through the negations, the deconstructions, and the post/modern sickness whereby discontinuity begins to reign, this is where the “negating one, —he actually belongs to the really great conserving and forces of life” (2007, 88). This is Nietzsche’s new ascetic ideal. A healing impulse that originates out the chaos created by through the realization that we are making it up. That through the power of inventing cultures, we have created our reality (mysticism). But is this relativism or enactivism?

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Are we left to the fears of mystics—scientists, theologians, and critical theorists alike—or are these acts of participation? It seems like a valid question, a real concern, but it is only interesting to the point that you are committed to naturalism and its solid ground. If Nature is given, then there should be a perfect point of view. This was Parmenides’s dream, or at least the version of it that woke the ancient Greeks to search for both the Good while assuming Nature. But Descartes’s diverse subjectivities and Newton’s atomic objectivities taken together have freed us from naturalism. Hume’s skepticism, against Locke’s mechanism, regarding our ability to know for sure the nature of causality introduced uncertainty into our scientific endeavor. This famously woke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, and eventually brought Kant to delimit all speculative knowledge. We cannot know what we know—that is, content—but we can come to know how we know. But Berkeley (Cassirer 1953a, 135–39) and Hegel (Lucas 1989, 97–102), reading these same authors, introduced a path toward the notion of enactment upon the scene. Reading these authors in light of the anthropological data available, opens the door toward a multi-ontology approach to scholarship. We cannot come to know the truth or content of particular assertions, but we can investigate the functions and ontological starting points whereby they came to be. God, self, Nature—all made up. But what does “made up” really mean? Some people, says Jean Grondin, will take the old road of naturalist mysticism, continuing to maintain God and/or some other inside as creator (Grondin 2012, 120–21). Yet others will take the enactive thrust of my argument more seriously. Ego is not just relative, it is prone to Creativity. Grondin offers a short list of early adopters who radicalized the agency of this new ego: Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty are all included here. What have these authors realized? God as projection, maybe fiction, or maybe something altogether other. Jess Byron Hollenback (1996, 502–5) locates Saint Teresa of Avila participating in the practice of recollection; by dint of human will, the early stages of contemplation are manifest. But as Saint Teresa continues down this path, a shift occurs, a dependence upon divine grace in order that one might continue the journey toward God. Hollenback finds Robert Monroe in his Journeys Out of the Body (1971), and Sylvan Muldoon in his The Projection of the Astral Body (1929) practicing a similar sort of recollection, but to very different ends. They are able to create matter not only in the realm of dreams but in the physical as well (Hollenback 1996, 157). Saint Theresa as mystic, Monroe and Muldoon as shamans—each enacting rather than discovering God and matter respectively. This is Wagner’s invention read through multiple ontologies. But this is too much for the post/modern author.

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ECOLOGICAL OVERLAP? Remember Fischer from above? He wants us to give up all pretense to ontology. He wants us to go the way of Descartes, with his doubt and his experimental methods. “Ontology,” he says, “is probably not a useful term for the task it is being asked to do, and in any case, at issue for both Latour and Descola, are ontologies in the plural. Pluralization . . . seems to empty the meaning of the term(s), making it just what Humpty Dumpty decides it should be” (2014, 348). What words should we adopt? Fischer likes language games. They have more weight, more force, more scholarly traction (Fischer 2014, 348). He locates himself within the Wittgensteinian lineage. So why not adopt this language? Surely it would be more palatable, but would this terminology do the data available through various ethnographies, linguistic theories, and philosophies justice? Descola’s comparativism is needed, says Fischer, but it needs to be able to accommodate a greater breadth of cases. And here we are again, between Lenclud who sees Descola as too much of a relativist and Feuchtwang who see in Descola’s schema as overly rigid abstractions. My own answer is to follow Descola, and in doing so to add my own terminology, that of ecologies of participation, while maintaining that this is a multiple-ontology approach to comparison. Every time we make ontology plural, we cannot help but shake up the old philosophical guard. Our own naturalist assumptions are too easily hidden, a point that even Helmreich conceded, and to the extent that this is true, ontology and metaphysics are words that continue to be useful to the extent that they can unsettle. They keep aligned with Nietzsche’s insanity-cum-bravery in the face of our increasing fractured worlds. Inspired by Descola’s research, I assume that there are several ontological starting points available to us. Not unlike Descola, I see these as starting points, styles or modes of identification. I do not think there is such a thing as a purely animist, naturalist, or talismanic world/s waiting out there to be discovered. Ontology doesn’t speak so much to what is, but to what it is becoming. But this is not the end of the story. Descola does not only write of modes of identification (the sort of spatial frames of reference Levinson has emphasized). He also speaks of modes of relation. Fischer is sure that he has caught Descola being too rigid. He takes up the example of the “topological ballet” of the Jivaro headhunting. Viveiros de Castro places a great emphasis on predation, and Fischer seems concerned that by adopting this language Descola is unduly limiting what the ethnography might discover. This is a point driven home forcefully by Alcida Rita Ramos when she writes, “Each new publication takes [Viveiros de Castro, and other authors like Descola] further away from the nitty-gritty

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of indigenous real life” (2012, 482). The work of Viveiros de Castro and Descola appears to approach the “interethnic friction” meant to be captured by ethnography, but in the hands of their descendants all distinctions are lost. These multi-ontology approaches take us away from important differences she says. Following this same line of thought, Fischer writes that “accepting ‘predation’ as the ontological mode of animists . . . has had, many anthropologists argue, serious negative effects on their legal rights, health services, and lives” (2014, 345). In adopting these theoretical tools, the argument goes, we confuse lived experiences with ontological modes of identification, the macro with the micro. Similarly, we hold too tightly to a rigid sense of each ontology, and so miss even more detail in our ethnography. But Descola never conflates predation with an ontological mode. Within any community, no matter what mode of identification it prefers, there will be different modes of relating. For his part, Descola offers six modes, broken up into two groups: one based on reversible relations, that is, exchange, predation, and gift, and another based on univocal relations, that is, production, protection, and transmission (Descola 2013, 309–35; alternatively see Descola 2012b). This distinction between modes of identification (ontologies) and modes of relations allows Descola to make an important point. There are two kinds of interactions between ontologies that these modes of relations allow. It is best to allow Descola (2013, 336) to speak for himself on this point: Either the plasticity of a relational schema makes it possible for it to structure interactions in a variety of ontologies, which will then present a family likeness despite the heterogeneity of the essential principles; or, alternatively, one of the modes of identification is able to accommodate several distinct relational schemas and this introduces into an ontological configuration widely distributed in space (a cultural region, for example) the kind of concrete diversity of customs and norms from which ethnologists and historians love to draw their material.

This is what Descola calls the traffic of souls (2013, 336–64; see also Descola 2012a). Adding yet another layer of complexity, Descola introduces so-called histories of structures and details instances in which various communities seemed to reach the end of the efficacy of one ontology or another. In such cases, these communities adopted another. The new layers, forms of attachment/relations, the traffic of souls, and the histories of structures start to give you a sense of what I mean by the term ecology. I continue to maintain a multiple-ontology approach, mostly because of its ability to unsettle naturalist, animist, and analogist norms. But I do not assume that we ever find these ontologies in some pure and unequivocal form. In utilizing the term ecology, I point toward the complexities that Descola has outlined in the later parts of Beyond Nature and Culture. I am far more interested in the possibility of strange and radical border-crossing

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between ontologies than I am in finding pure ontologies isolated from each other and/or awkwardly cohabitating in one place. And this is where I differ from Fischer and Ramos. A multi-ontology approach can go a long way toward setting us free. Not to find hegemonic or homogenous patterns wherever we go, but rather, as Descola himself argues, “actual ontologies can be very close to the model . . . but perhaps the most common situation is one of hybridity, where one mode of identification will slightly dominate over another one, resulting in a variety of complex combinations” (Descola 2014b, 277). Following Cassirer, we are in search of functions rather than contents. This is philosophia’s job. And what I find is something akin to what I term ecologies of participation. This is the sort of thing that Levinson’s own work helps us to see. Just in case there is any doubt, it is helpful to see how Levinson (2003, 94; 2006, 543) locates several instances of overlap, whereby two or more frames of reference can be found within the context of one language (see table 4.3). As a general rule he also finds that it is possible to have an absolute framework (talismanic productions of diviners) with little or no reference to intrinsic frames (animist enactions of shamans) and vice-versa (Levinson 2003, 94; Levinson and Wilkins 2006, 621), and that wherever one finds relative frames of reference (naturalist claims of mystics), intrinsic frames are necessarily present (Levinson and Wilkins 2006, 551). To put this another way, where one finds talismans and divinatory ecologies of participation, one need not find animists and shamanic ecologies. But wherever one finds naturalists and mystic ecologies, animists are going to be present as well. Lloyd makes a parallel point in a somewhat different fashion by distinguishing similar and divergent ontological assumptions within both Greek and Chinese traditions. In fact, the entirety of Lloyd’s work can be seen in this light, as an attempt to critically engage theories of psychic unity through variations of linguistic relativity, while steering clear of stronger ontological claims like those offered by Viveiros de Castro and Descola. For his part, Descola follows the basic argument of Levinson and Lloyd throughout his own writings, clarifying time and again that each of his Table 4.3  Levinson’s Frames of Reference Compared across Sample Languages Absolute, relative, and intrinsic Absolute and intrinsic Relative and intrinsic Absolute only Intrinsic only

Tamil, Yukateca, Tiriyó, Ewe, Kgalagadi Warrwa, Arrernte, Jaminjung, Yélî Dnye, Tzeltal Japanese and Dutch Guugu Yimithirr and Warrwa, both Australian Aboriginal languages Mopan

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ontologies can and do overlap within different linguistic groups and traditions, while also asserting that one ontology tends to take precedence over the others. Offering one example, he tells us that modern persons beholden to naturalist ontologies might occasionally slip into animist or talismanic reveries, but that rarely do these “slippages” become ontologically primary (Descola 2013, 233–34). To the extent that this is true, the problem of translatability does not seem to bother Descola, and yet he insists that each of his relational sensibilities refers to a distinct ontology. A NOTE ON WHITEHEAD AND ECOLOGIES I have also made the choice to use the term ecologies following the work of Isabella Stengers and Vikki Bell. The use of the term by Stengers and Bell works to move the human agent and/or the scientific object out of center stage. Following Whitehead’s philosophy these authors throw the human agent or subject into the chaosmos of subjectivities that is available to the Achuar and other animist ontologies. Bell writes, “Human subjectivity is joined by many other subjectivities, as Whitehead would not flinch from calling them, and vitality is no longer the preserve of the human or the animal” (2012, 112). Whatever term we adopt, it will have to be up to the challenge of bridging the strong antimonies held between animist and naturalist dualisms, as well as including the paradoxical and oracular truths offered by talismanic leaning ecologies. Inspired by her reading of Stengers, Bell draws up a defense of the term ecology based on three criteria. First, the use of this term maintains a rudimentary openness to complexity and overabundance. It allows us to envision a multiplicity of entities that come into being via a diversity of causalities. We find here discernable qualities of a shared physicality (naturalism), similarly shared qualities of a basic interiority (animism), concrescing out of some basic tension or polarity that comes from identifying with both the interiority and physicality of the other (talismanic). Emphasizing the term ecology as opposed to ontology allows us to steer clear of simple reductionisms that may arise out of the naturalist assumptions that often undergird much of Western thought regarding ontology. Continuing to use ontology helps to keep the naturalist awake, reminding her that we are up to something shocking. Secondly, there is an inherent uncertainty that is fundamental to an ecological understanding. This points to the multiplicity that plagues animist, analogist, and naturalist enactions. In facing a radical chaosmos of physicalities, bodies, and skins, what worries the animist most is cannibalism, that is, the consumption of an other that turns out to be entirely too similar (shared interiority/people) to one’s self. In facing the disorienting diversity of interiorities,

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subjectivities, and teleological ultimates, what concerns the naturalist more than anything is a vulgar form of relativism, that is, the possibility that with so many others it will be impossible to know which one is truly aligned with one’s sense of truth (shared physicality/nature). Bell’s second defense of ecology warns that we cannot know in advance the outcome of our actions, for our movements are not beholden to one set of logical abstractions, nor one clearly defined absolute ontological ground. In her own way, she is seeking to problematize, maybe even multiply, ontology. The term ecology can include these important aspects of our experience, while inviting in the dynamism of the concrete polarities of totemic ontologies and the cannibal tendencies and issues of concern that arise out of animist ontologies. Put simply, the term ecology includes the relational, complex, and dynamic aspects of our lived experience that are often lost within naturalist assumptions about truth, shared physicality (nature), and ontology, as in One. Bell defends this multiple-ontology and/or ecologies of participation approach “in more Whiteheadian language,” when she writes, “One might argue that an actual entity concerns itself and is a matter of concern for other aspects of its environment or ecology, such that the emergence or sustenance of each actual entity depends upon its sustenance by other entities, and that emergence is both dependent and qualified in the process” (2012, 110). An actual entity here assumes intimacy and nurtures reverence for the other. It is most certainly, following Whitehead, a product of its own abstractions and decisions; nothing more than its own peculiar self-enjoyment. But, following Leibniz as well as Whitehead, Bell’s use of the term ecology points to the relational-erotic dynamism of naturalist, animist, and talismanic ontological beginnings; that which is always more complex than any single abstraction could attempt to contextualize. On Whitehead’s account, the point of philosophical speculation is not to get the right answer—some atomic, discontinuous, and abstract peculiarities—but rather to approximate beauty. Metaphysics lies somewhere within the strange intimacy of animist, naturalist, and talismanic erotic impulses toward self-determination. Speculative philosophy should not lend itself to the defense of particularities of one set of ontological assumptions. It is perfectly fine for Aristotle to nurture his naturalist tendencies by articulating his categorical logic. But this becomes problematic to the extent that we forget his Socratic roots and the limits of naturalism. Socrates never articulated the Truth, as in the ultimate first principles of his metaphysical practice. Rather he facilitated a journey always toward, never actually arriving at, stable ground. This does not mean that stable ground cannot be enacted, but rather that we cannot assume to have found it via any single set of ontological assumptions. Our reliance on an Aristotelian emphasis on substances and the subsequent naturalism that has dominated Western philosophy is only

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problematic to the extent that we forget its limited applicability. By using the term ecology, we invite the others in: the incredible diversity of subjectivities available to animist ontologies, the foundational correlations of analogical ontologies, and the diversity of Truths, Goods, Gods, enlightenments, patterns, abstractions, and hierarchies of naturalist ontologies. Bell’s third reason for adopting the term ecology follows directly from an acknowledgement of such complexity. To articulate her point, she looks to the term symbiosis (following both Stengers and contemporary biological sciences). There is a basic uncertainty that arises out of our ecologies of participation. Whatever we are, if we take all Descola’s ontologies seriously, we must be constituted by a variety of physical becomings (animism), causes (naturalism), and correlations (analogism). We must be open to a hybridity enacted by the traffic of souls. The majority of the Western academic tradition is predicated on naturalist thought, which assumes that there is one world, one truth, and one basic uni-linear line of progression. There are those who equivocate, but following Latour, they can be located as part and parcel of one post/modern constitution. Though the journey is never fully articulated in a satisfactory way, the naturalist’s search for unity offers a kind of fleeting respite from the entangled ecologies discussed here. There is a certainty or univocity that can be held when operating in a modern naturalist ontology that assumes nature, one that is not available to those who are aware of the ontologies and ecologies of others. All this leads Bell to proffer the idea of symbiosis, whereby one cannot assume superiority by consensus, conformation, coherency, or necessity. These factors are at play in such a way that “symbiotic agreements” must be made that nurture the needs, concerns, and so forth of others. Whitehead writes, “[Such] ‘concern’ at once places the object as a component in the experience of the subject, with an affective tone drawn from this object and directed towards it” (1933, 176). The use of the term ecology points us toward participation and just this sort of concern.

Chapter 5

Agential Bricolage A Neostructuralist Hunch

Imagine what Judith Butler or Jacques Derrida would say about Descola’s four-fold schema of binaries! We must overturn them, they would write. We must catch these binaries at their inherent hierarchies, and in the process we must be keenly aware of any “new concepts” that are released (Derrida 1981, 41–43). We might then be successful in “disorganizing the entire inherited order and invading the entire field” (Derrida 1981, 42). The critical deconstructive field is born out of post-structuralism. As a neostructuralist, Descola sits within the same poststructuralist tradition that gave rise to Derrida’s deconstruction. In order for this decolonial participatory philosophia to settle into a more comfortable relationship with Descola’s neostructuralism, a consideration of structuralism of Lévi-Strauss and the poststructuralism that came after must be considered in some detail. It is to this task that I turn in this chapter. DESCOLA’S NEOSTRUCTURALISM AND LÉVI-STRAUSSIAN BRICOLAGE In one of the more insightful critiques of Descola’s work in the last few years, Bruce Kapferer asks a very important question: Should we move toward Descola and his neostructuralist emphasis on ontologies or toward Louis Dumont (see Dumont 1986, 1994) and his poststructuralist emphasis on ideologies? For those of you who are not familiar with the conversation, both Descola and Dumont are in many ways responding to the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Reading Kapferer’s use of the term neostructuralism the way he wants you to leads to the speculation that Descola has simply doubled down on the structuralism that poststructuralists like Dumont have 121

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replaced. But I read Descola’s neostructuralism differently, through the helpful lens of Jean-Michel Rabaté (2003). In his new forward to the reprinting of John Sturrock’s (2003) classic introduction to structuralism, Rabaté offers a history of the structuralist versus poststructuralist debate that is helpful if we consider Descola’s work straightforwardly. Like most others before him, Rabaté begins his description of structuralism by pointing toward the work of the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1983). In slight contrast to how many others tell the story, Rabaté follows Sturrock’s lead and adds the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl to this story. He finds in Husserl the beginnings of what is commonly understood as structuralism. Where Saussure tends to emphasize a diversity of relations (more akin to animism, see below), Husserl tends to emphasize transcendental structures (a complex play of epoché that I would locate as alternating between animist and naturalist). Rabaté then turns to Heidegger, who he sees as a sort of prototypical post-structuralist. There is an important point that Rabaté wants to illustrate here regarding the term neostructuralism. He translates destruktion in Heidegger’s “The Task of Destruktion” not as destruction, but rather as “destructuration” (Rabaté 2003, 6–7). Notice how this translation moves from what we might call an emphasis on poststructuralism (deconstruction) toward an emphasis on neostructuralism (destructuration). I maintain this emphasis and argue that Descola’s neostructuralism is more aligned with Rabaté’s use of the term (where neo is in keeping with the desire of Derrida, Deleuze, and others to emphasize the post) than Kapferer’s (where neo suggests a rejection or willful ignorance of the emphasis of Derrida, Deleuze, and others on the post). As Rabaté continues his story, he finds Derrida reading Husserl’s idealist structuralism in parallel to what he sees as Saussure’s relational structuralism. A distinction is made: Saussure places his emphasis not on an ontology of Being or an idealist assumption of shared interiority but rather on a field made up of multiple relations and pure difference (Rabaté 2003, 8). Rabaté then turns to Lévi-Strauss, who he sees as defending a more rigid structuralism, one that Derrida is particularly keen to locate in light of positivism and/ or scientism. Too rigid, too ontological, says the critic. Derrida’s critical attention has been caught by the assertion that these “structures” are simply there, waiting to be discovered. Derrida’s warning is clear: “I have said that empiricism is the matrix of all faults menacing a discourse which continues, as with Lévi-Strauss in particular, to consider itself scientific” (qtd. in Rabaté 2003, 8). The problems that Derrida imagines from this structuralism-cum-empiricism are numerous and damning. Levi-Strauss is caught utilizing his structure of kinship in order to subsume the chaotic diversity of ethnographic datum under the auspices of his own totalizing

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category—a very similar critique to the one offered by Alcida Rita Ramos (2012) regarding Descola’s work in later chapters. Rabaté characterizes Lévi-Straussian structuralism as asserting “foundational constituents of the human mind reaching even into unconscious thought, and finally stabilizing themselves precariously between nature and culture, as the name of the very divide between nature and culture” (2003, 9). It is at this juncture that Rabaté reminds us of an essay written by Derrida (1978) in which he juxtaposes structures over and against events. The turn toward events, writes Derrida, offers a way out of Western philosophy and science with its emphasis on epistēmē. Fully understanding this argument, as well as my appreciation and critique of it, is crucial to the argument that runs through this book. Structures, Derrida continues, are the tools utilized by the West to stabilize and neutralize difference; they are invoked to limit the occurrence of events. To know is suggestive of an inside-epistēmē. To lean on epistēmē is to lean on representations and discoveries, and this is the sort of logic that is inherent to the Western mind, with its assumption that there is a shared and continuous reality: Nature (Derrida 1978, 351–52). This is the empiricism that poststructuralists like Derrida wish to deride. Structures like these, the ones that are used to center and stabilize our knowledge, also close off all play. “The substitute [the event that has ruptured the structural-all-too-rigid-center],” says Derrida, “does not substitute itself for anything which has somehow existed before it” (1978, 353). The realization of events, ruptures, and their ilk calls into question all talk of centers, structures, and “present-being.” This is the point at which language invades the old guard, what Saussure was after, and what the poststructuralists have finally begun to realize. “The absences of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely” (Derrida 1978, 354). Derrida is pointing us toward “thinking the structurality of structure,” which many have tried and failed to understand; herein lies Nietzsche’s critique of Being and truth, Freud’s critique of selfpresence, and Heidegger’s critique of the onto-theo-logic of Western philosophy. But, and this is important, all these folks are still trapped. At least according to Derrida. We cannot destroy metaphysics by sidestepping the concepts of metaphysics. It is the signifier not the signified, the inside not the outside, that must be left to the side. “When Lévi-Strauss says in the preface to The Raw and the Cooked that he has “sought to transcend the opposition between the sensible and the intelligible by operating from the outset at the level of signs,” then we are assured that he has made a misstep (Derrida 1978, 353). We cannot reduce the signified to the sign. If we want to try on something other than naturalism, we should not see words as labels. This is the old way of doing things, the reduction of events (discontinuity of insides) to the stability of sign

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(naturalist, mystic attempts to unify this discontinuity by asserting a shared inside structure). Where do we go from here? Ethnography and anthropology, says Derrida. We must shake up our ethnocentrism by considering the lived experiences of others. Is this not what Lévi-Strauss attempted to do? Derrida points us toward the opposition between nature and culture that is critiqued in Descola’s own work. He finds Lévi-Strauss making a distinction in The Elementary Structures of Kinship between that which is universal/continuous (nature) and that which is relative/discontinuous (culture) then later calling this opposition into question (which sounds promising), by reference to the dual roles (natural and cultural) that incest prohibitions play (Lévi-Strauss 1983b, 14). Derrida honors Lévi-Strauss’s motivations but disagrees with his strategy. He sees Lévi-Strauss attempting to upend this classic opposition (which he sees as a good) but finds him doing so by first conserving the old binary and then showing its limits. This is a circular trap that caught the likes of Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger—again, at least according to Derrida. In his early work, then, Lévi-Strauss, at least on Derrida’s read, has preserved the sign. But as we move from Elementary Structures to The Savage Mind, we encounter something else finding its way into the discussion. Derrida describes Lévi-Strauss turning toward the practice of bricolage. In The Savage Mind (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 21) he plays with the idea of structures, distinguishing between a scientific (read naturalist) account and a mythological account of structures. While the scientific is more representational, the sign (discontinuous inside, naturalism) more or less represents the objective (shared continuous nature, naturalism), while in the mythological there is a sort of analogical structuring that looks more like bricolage. This is the same distinction made by Levinson, between relative and absolute frames of references. Where Derrida and company are critical of the tendencies to label and thereby control available through naturalist ecologies of participation, LéviStrauss is turning toward something more akin to talismanic participation. “Mythical thought,” he tells us, “that ‘bricoleur,’ builds up structures by fitting together events” (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 22). The painter’s genius, one of Lévi-Strauss’s stand-ins for our mythopoetic bricoleur, “is always midway in between . . . uniting internal and external knowledge, a ‘being’ and ‘becoming’” (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 25). For Lévi-Strauss, this image conjures the act of synthesis, rather than thesis (assertion) or antithesis (critique)—an important transition in his thought and a turning from what I have termed naturalism toward the act of divinations and oracular truths. But this is not how Derrida wants to read his work. Derrida continues to follow Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism as he moves from The Savage Mind to his later works, the Mythologiques (1981, 1983a, 1990). He is especially interested in the last of these books, The Raw and the

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Cooked, in which he finds the possibility of a new and heretofore unknown decentering. Can you feel a deconstruction coming on? Lévi-Strauss writes that, in his latest mythopoetic bricolage, “there is no real end to methodological analysis, no hidden unity to be grasped once the breaking-down process has been completed. Themes can be split up ad infinitum” (1983b, 5–6). He goes on to tell us that the unity of myth is never more than “tendential”—that is, a performance of interpretation and synthesis in the face of the confusing multiplicity of opposites. This again is talismanic and divinatory participation. Derrida does not see this talismanic trend in Lévi-Strauss, while all the while he defends something similar. Derrida (1978, 362) puts it this way: There is no unity or absolute source of the myth. The focus or the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities [you can hear Deleuze waking up at that one] which are elusive, unactualizable, and nonexistent in the first place. Everything begins with structure . . . [but] the acentric structure that myth itself is, cannot itself have an absolute subject or an absolute center. It must avoid the violence that consists in centering a language which describes an acentric structure if it is not to shortchange the form and movement of myth. Therefore, it is necessary to forego scientific or philosophical discourse, to renounce the epistēmē which absolutely requires, which is the absolute requirement that we go back to the source, to the center, to the founding basis, to the principle, and so on. In opposition to epistemic discourse, structural discourse on myths— mythological discourse—must itself be mythomorphic. It must have the form of that of which it speaks.

Did you catch what just happened? This is where the post gets inserted in structuralism, the point around which so many philosophers (so often called continental) and anthropologists (critical) unite. “We could say then,” writes Viveiros de Castro, “that if the challenge Descola confronted and overcame was that of rewriting The Savage Mind after having profoundly assimilated The Order of Things, mine was to know how to rewrite the Mythologiques on the basis of everything that A Thousand Plateaus disabused me of in anthropology” (2014, 84). What do Derrida and the Deleuzian Viveiros de Castro think they have seen? These conversations always seem to end with an either/or. The poststructuralists, Deleuzians, and new materialists all think that they have somehow escaped. Even Viveiros de Castro (1998), who so many years ago had already recognized that animism is simply the opposite form of ethnocentrism—the antithetical dualism in contrast to the naturalism that has so dominated what we have come to call the West (see table 5.1)—endorses this Derridean reading. So much is lost in this analysis. Kapferer himself discovered, in his critique of Descola, the problems in Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture similar to those in Viveiros de Castro’s statement above.

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Table 5.1  Four Ontologies as Opposite Relations Animist dualism: bodies-People Participatory performance: Agency Shared interior, discontinuous physicalities Diconstinuous interiors and physicalities Divinatory performance: Talismans Shared interiors and physicalities

Naturalist dualism: Nature-cultures Dicontinuous interiors, shared physicality

Kapferer defends a poststructuralism, and in doing so he names Descola’s work as an expression of neostructuralism in poststructuralist guise. I read the term neostructuralism through Rabaté’s helpful lens, however, not Kapferer’s. “It is important to note,” Rabaté writes, “that the term ‘neostructuralism’ never became current in English. What was preferred was ‘post-Structuralism.’ . . . [L]et us imagine what might have happened if the British and the Americans had been using ‘neo-structuralism’ [instead]” (2003, 1–2). Rabaté continues to offer his history of structuralism, wherein Deleuze takes it to Foucault, who, he says, offers nothing but “a cold and concerted destruction of the subject . . . a dismantling of unifying pseudo-syntheses of consciousness” (qtd. in Rabaté 2003, 10). As evidenced, once again, by Viveiros de Castro’s own distinction between his work and that of Descola, there is something profoundly different between reading Lévi-Strauss (The Savage Mind) through Foucault (The Order of Things), and reading Lévi-Strauss (Mythologiques) through Deleuze (A Thousand Plateaus). Here Rabaté (2003, 11) wonders what is so wrong with Foucault. He tells us that Foucault remains a structuralist, aware of the so-called poststructuralists and the importance of their deconstructive task. But what of teleology or some other project that might hold this all together? What is the order of things? Have the poststructuralists really escaped the use of Saussure’s binaries? Saussure’s work leads us toward the symbolic functions of creative participation. They are not meant to be overcome. Rabaté finds Barthes, Deleuze, Derrida, Hyppolite, Lacan, and Rosolato all playing with some form of “quasi-transcendentals.” Poststructuralism, it seems, is not so post. It is really quite neo, but not in the way Kapferer wants us to take it. He wants to follow Marshall Sahlins and Viveiros de Castro in making animism universal. You can see it in how Derrida reads Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques. What Lévi-Strauss speaks of, and what I think in many ways Descola follows, is a motile, oracular, analogical truth. LeviStrauss writes of performative syntheses, forever in between, uniting the internal and external, and all the while fleeting. Kapferer, Sahlins, Viveiros de Castro, and company argue for animism, where Lévi-Strauss leans toward talismans. Descola has taken this all in. In my reading he also leans heavily on divinations. He speaks arbitrary motil truths. But he also invites animism to the table. His is an almost multi-ontology approach.

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In reading Descola, Kapferer conflates identification and interiority. This is crucial. For Descola, there are four modes of identification. An identification with a shared physicality and a discontinuous interiority he sees as naturalism (Nature-cultures), and the opposite identification, a shared interiority and a discontinuous physicality, as animism (Culture-natures). In this schema, a naturalist would assume a shared physicality (Nature) and then spend more time worrying about their “identity,” which in this case amounts to interiority (cultures). But the other case is just as possible. An animist would assume a shared interiority (Culture), and then spend his or her time worrying about “identity,” which in this case is the same as physicality (natures). Talismanic communities do it another way entirely, assuming a shared continuity of both insides and outsides (Nature-Culture-cum-Cosmos, like Lévi-Strauss’s mytho-poetic-bricolage), and in these cases identity has to do with a certain balance or correlation that is struck between opposites. We need to push Levi-Strauss’s bricolage further. We need to begin to see it as a precursor to Descola’s neostructuralist multi-ontology approach. As an early defense of what I am calling agential participation. Kapferer, like Derrida and Deleuze and other poststructuralist thinkers, wants to turn his back on both the naturalist and the talismanic. He argues for a nondualism, which is really just another way of saying animism, where there is a shared interiority and diversity of bodies. When the deconstructionists and the poststructuralists and the new materialists and the Deleuzians unite, they are calling out for a new animism, an ethnocentric newly materialist dualism, meant to replace the ethnocentrism and dualism they all love to hate: namely, naturalism. This is more of the same old thing. Rather than taking a float in our participatory raft, Kapferer wants to turn his back on a multi-ontology approach. Rather than turn toward animism, we can introduce an agential realism. But this does not work for these animist thinkers. Kapferer claims that his nondualism (this could as easily be Marshall Sahlins or Viveiros de Castro talking—or, for that matter, Jane Bennett, Mel Y. Chen, or Deleuze) offers a way out of Eurocentric duality. But in fact, he simply inverts a naturalist dualism, by replacing it with its opposite animist cousin. It is worth returning to Stephen C. Levinson and his important work to evaluate this claim. The most universal of all of Levinson’s frames of reference, what he calls intrinsic and what I call animistic and/or shamanic participation, assumes a basic binary. In her important work with the Mopan, Eve Danziger writes, “[The] Mopan speakers . . . refer to spatial location in ways that presuppose information . . . in an original dyadic configuration” (1996, 73). Binary dyadic presuppositions—not nondual—but as Viveiros de Castro (1998) himself has pointed out, differently dual. Does this mean that Descola is off the hook, or that these authors do not have a critique that should be considered? Not at all. What is the great

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contribution of folks like Derrida, Deleuze, and Viveiros de Castro? Each has defended, in his own way, the importance of animism. They call out for a diversity of bodies, of events that have form—a different sort of diversity from the naturalism from whence they came. But this then leads to a new hegemony, a new dualism that places form-outside (signified) over and above aim-inside (signifier). This leads to a Spinozian monism, a deterministic nature, within which all diversity is illusory. I think Kapferer is right to call out Descola for his abstractions. We do not need another meta and essential ontological. This is not what either Descola or Lévi-Strauss is after, but they can too easily be read this way. I turn now to another continental philosopher who might help us understand what is possible if we take Lévi-Straussian bricolage to heart. WILLIAM DESMOND’S METAXOLOGICAL GROUND Michael M. J. Fischer (2014), Stefan Helmreich (2014), and Bruce Kapferer (2014) have all, in their own ways, critiqued Descola for using the words metaphysics and ontology. Each of them tends to want to turn toward something more akin to a poststructuralist stance. Over and again, I find this critique and these tendencies to be largely beholden to animist leaning ecologies of participation. A defense of multiplicity among bodies that tends to forget that this is also a dualism built by erasing any and all diversity with regard to cultures, insides, and interiorities. Animism is the antithesis of naturalism. Derrida’s critique of Lévi-Strauss clearly indicates when and how this critique first came to be propagated. But a careful reading of Lévi-Strauss reveals an emphasis on an ontology of talismans, not animism. He is dwelling in more of a divinatory than a shamanic ecology. That is not to say that talismanic participation is more or less important than animism. Rather, in considering divinatory and talismanic correlations, we are gifted with the sort of motile truth that we need if we are going to invite both the animists and their antithesis, the naturalists, to the table. We need divinatory logics if we are going to get our shamanic and mystic to engage in crossings betwixt each other. In this short section I do two things. First, I continue to underline the importance of arbitrary but concrete talismanic truths, but I push them toward their natural opposite, that is, agential participation and Lévi-Strauss’s bricolage, by looking to the defense of contemporary philosophy offered by William Desmond. Second, while I have examined the largely animist critique (too rigid, too ontological) of Descola’s work, I have yet to consider in any real detail the naturalist critique (too relativist, too little ground). For this I turn to G. E. R. Lloyd as well as the critiques of Descola’s work offered by Webb Keane and Gérard Lenclud.

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Desmond tells us that in considering how appropriate it is to use words like ontology and metaphysics, “it helps here to remember a double sense to the word ‘meta’—meta can mean both ‘in the midst’ but also ‘over and above,’ ‘beyond’” (2012b, 197). Desmond relates this double meaning to an assumption regarding the nature of humanity—namely that we experience an inside and an outside (interiority and physicality), a distinction Desmond utilizes to clarify the difference between the “meta” of ontology (immanence/physicality) and that of metaphysics (transcendence/interiority). Ontology, for Desmond, speaks to the exploration of what is given (immanence/Nature in the case of post/modern thought, and naturalism in general), while metaphysics speaks to the exploration of that which surpasses or is more than what is given. It is easy to see that ontology is the preferred practice of the naturalist mystic inclined ecologies. We can easily discern in this definition, and in assumptions regarding ontology in general, very clear naturalist assumptions. The dogma of the analytic-linguistic traditions that gave rise to the word ontology is that there exists a given continuity of physicality/immanence (Descola uses the term physicality in a similar way to Desmond’s immanence). Determining the correct use of the term ontology has kept any number of philosophers up at night. For example, one might fall on the side of Heidegger and the continental tradition or Carnap and the analytic tradition (see Friedman 2000), but either way, when we talk about ontology you can be sure we are well within a naturalist mode of identification. That is why the word is so important. Most of academia emphasizes post/modern naturalism, and so utilizing a word that makes these easy assumptions hard to swallow is well worth the effort. “The idea of a reality,” warns Lenclud, “that is not identical for all humans needs to be seriously modulated if it is to avoid supposing a self-refuting relativist theory of truth” (2014, 365). I am always amazed at how often this (naturalist) notion is brought up in relation to my own inquiry. This is also where Descola’s work becomes so important. He tells us that there are multiple ontological starting points and different modes of identification. He answers Lenclud directly: “People do not ‘see the same differently,’ they actually see different things” (Descola 2014a, 433). How could this be? Descola goes on to explain that this is “because the qualities they detect in the same object are dissimilar due to a personal or cultural variability in their attention to perceptual affordances” (Descola 2014a, 433). I follow Deleuze, to some extent, for he pushes the idea of novelty almost exclusively within an animist ontology. I follow Whitehead all the way, with his emphasis on a process of concrescence that includes the enactions of shamanic ecologies (via physical prehensions and propositional feelings), mystic ecologies (via conceptual prehensions and rational knowing), and divinatory ecologies (through an emphasis on conceptual prehensions and intellectual feelings).

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Each ecology, in its own way, enacts a different form of what Whitehead would call a nexus, for example, bodies, selves, and cosmoses respectively. In a broad sense, ontology speaks to our naturalist assumptions about the given. The use of this term in the multiple is bound to upset. At the same time, Desmond’s metaphysics, among others, challenges these assumptions by inviting something more. Lenclud assures us that translation is possible and that communication exists. Descola, according to Lenclud (2014, 366), is asking us to adopt an idea of reality that rejects the idea of contradiction between truth conditions. Lenclud (2014, 368) is right to point out the naturalist need for categorical logic: “There can be no species without specimens and no specimens without species!” But subjecting all people to Western logic seems hardly in keeping with the data available to us (e.g., Levinson and Brown 1994; Levinson and Evans 2010; Lloyd 2007; Verran 2001). But the problem can be put another way. It is not a question of whether truth equals naturalist assumptions about proper representations (labels) or else ends in vulgar relativism! This is too rigid and extreme. Descola and other authors are not so simple as to assert this brand of relativism, and yet this is what continues to be brought to the table. What do Lenclud’s paradoxical truths sound like? Like the motile truths of Cuban Ifá (Holbraad 2012), or maybe the bricolage defended by Lévi-Strauss above? Either way, we seem to be headed toward Desmond and his metaxological ground. If we assume that there is a discoverable ontological ground, once again following Desmond, we must invite metaphysical practice. Utilizing Desmond’s own terminology, we find assertions of univocity leading us toward self-determination, while assertions of equivocity lead us toward intimacy. Shamanic forms of dwelling and self-determination is toward the unification of bodies, while mystic forms move toward unification of insides/subjectivities and divinatory participation unifies by performing paradoxical absolutes (e.g., yin-yang, hot-cold, uphilldownhill) between seeming opposites (inside-outsides). Shamanic ecologies (animists) see diversity and seek intimacy as they assume a shared interiority (Culture), and then attempt to face an incredible diversity of bodies and natures. Mystic ecologies (naturalists) seek intimacy through the diversity of cultures or insides that they experience, while divinatory ecologies (analogists) seek intimacy in the face of a diversity of possible correlations within a singular arbitrary Cosmos. Metaphysics, on Desmond’s account, is at play in the between of sameness (the intimacy of coming together) and diversity (itinerant meetings acroos ecologies). For Desmond, this practice does not lead to ontological givens. Rather, it leads toward his own form of participatory metaphysics that he calls metaxological. Metaxu, for Desmond, is a participatory intermingling of multiple metaphysical dialects between univocity (ontological assumptions, modes of identification) and equivocity (the diversity or discontinuity

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that we assume). Descola’s ethnographically based ontologies point toward distinct dialectics based on identification (self-determination) in the face of the complexity of our lived experience. Each of Descola’s diverse ontologies can be enacted by recourse to the plasticity of our attempts at dwelling and self-determination (Descola’s identification). This is interesting, and shows a strong corollary with Desmond’s own metaxological metaphysical practice. This parallel might become even more obvious if we asked Descola to describe what goes through this process of erotic self-determination. The problem, however, is that Descola has not asked himself this question. He has asserted multiple ontologies whereby multiple expressions of self-determination regarding different givennesssystems-ontologies can be understood. But he has not asked what holds it all together. Or at least he has not written down an answer to this question as far as I can tell. What is it that allows translation across his ontologies? Critics like those mentioned in this section are right to push Descola for an answer to this question. Descola does offer a version of an answer in a recent essay titled “Modes of Being and Forms of Predication.” In this essay he introduces the idea of worlding (intimate participatory enactions), explaining, “I see worlding . . . as the process of stabilization of certain features of what happens to us, a covert, and perhaps faithful, homage to Wittgenstein’s famous proposition that ‘the world is everything that is the case’” (2014c, 272). There are three points that need to be addressed here. First, Descola specifically distinguishes this use of the term from more common post/modern uses wherein worlding suggests a kind of cultural constructivism that falls well within the bounds of his ontology of naturalism (e.g., Roy and Ong 2011; Simone 2001). Second, worlding happens largely based on the mode of ontological identification that a community emphasizes—that is, the intimate dwellings it prefers. And third, worlding does not assume a given reality, whether material-nature (naturalism), immaterial-people (animism), or quasi-physical-cosmos (analogism). This third point indicates that the key aspect of worlding is that it speaks to some sort of process whereby, in Whitehead’s words, “there is a becoming of continuity” (1978, 36). This is easy to say, but how does it work? Descola asserts that there are clusters of qualities, some of which we detect, some of which we ignore. He calls this a “rustic Humean” epistemology (2014c, 273). By invoking Hume, Descola suggests that this assertion is good enough for a nonphilosopher and that it is in keeping with the Deleuzian reading of Hume in Empirisme et subjectivité. Descola (2014c, 273) goes on to translate a sentence from this text that he finds particularly useful: “The given is no more given to a subject, the subject constitutes itself in the given. Hume’s merit is to have isolated this empirical problem in its pure state, by maintaining it far away from the transcendental, but also from the

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psychological (1953: 92, my translation).” Whitehead, in his own way, picks up this line of thought from Hume. He writes, “[I am] extending and rigidly applying Hume’s principle, that ideas of reflection are derived from actual facts” (Whitehead 1978, 40). If we read these authors together we get a sense that it is through the act of identification (ontologies for both Descola and Desmond) that a “subject” constitutes itself. Descola (2014c, 274) does tell us that one of the major tasks of an anthropologist is to account for how worlds are composed. For Whitehead (1978, 40) every occasion is an act of feeling, enjoyment, purpose; all based on relative interests and values. An occasion arises out of an act of feeling certain data, but what data? Out of a cacophony of potential meaning, each occasion feels particular pasts, futures, and a relative present. Out of these peculiarities each occasion decides to ingress a fleeting enjoyment. A singular moment of meaning. This seems to be what Descola is getting at with his “clusters of qualities.” But how exactly does this process work? “It is a process of ‘feeling’ the many data, so as to absorb them into the unity of one individual ‘satisfaction.’ Here ‘feeling’ is the term used for the basic generic operation of passing from the objectivity of the data to the subjectivity of the actual entity in question” (Whitehead 1978, 40). What is being felt, what holds this all together? Desmond’s answer is the strange intimacy (hyperbolic overabundance) of being. But we must be careful here, for being bears a strong resemblance to a naturalist ontology, and could be mistaken for mystic ecologies and their distinct forms of union that Descola and Viveiros de Castro, among others, are trying to contextualize and turn away from respectively. But this is not the meaning that Desmond intends. He tells us that “meta” is meant to point us toward “a porous boundary between” (2012b, 197) and that “this is not a matter of designating being as ‘substance,’ nor simply of juxtaposing ‘becoming’ and ‘being.’ This is similar to what Gebser termed diaphaneity in previous chapters. We not only enact intimate dwellings; we also participate in a chaosmos of crossings. We find ourselves in a dynamic world and must acknowledge the tumultuous happening of ‘becoming.’ But there is also a ‘coming to be’ which is not just a ‘becoming’ of this or that, but a coming to be at all” (2012b, 195). It is important to clarify the import of Desmond’s metaxological ground for Descola’s work, and vice versa. I turn briefly to a recent essay by Webb Keane, who follows G. E. R. Lloyd through his recent readings of Descola’s and Viveiros de Castro’s considerations of ontology. In this ontological stance Keane (2013, 187) finds a helpful paradox, writing, The symptom of the paradox is that it turns out to be hard to speak ethnographically about a strong ontology, some fully inhabited reality distinct from other equally fully inhabited ones, without falling back on [linguistic relativity], that

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is on indigenous theories and representations. Thus in places Lloyd (2012: 20) reads Descola as giving us “a concept, a theory,” which focuses on whether beings differ in terms of either physicality or interiority, or neither, or both. This seems to presuppose that there is some pre-theoretical physical experience that is construed in the theory, or [linguistic relativity with regard to a shared reality].

Keane of course has observed the same problem I have pointed out, but being something of a naturalist himself, he assumes that the shared givenness is a single ontological ground (i.e., Nature). Notice that this is exactly the opposite of what, for example, Kapferer defends (his animist nondualism, which is a lot like Bennett, Deleuze, and Viveiros de Castro’s Spinozian monism). This again is the naturalist dogma: There must be a continuity-givenness-immanence-nature, or ontology does not make sense. But Desmond’s metaxological point is subtle, and is able to accommodate Keane’s critique without falling too far on the side of ontology, as in naturalist/animist singular, or into the relativism and cannibalism that these two forms of participation fear. Desmond approaches something like participatory agency whereby multiple ontological givens become relevant without falling into post/modern (naturalist) positions of social constructionism. Keane attributes just such a constructionist position to Viveiros de Castro and Descola (even though, as evidenced by the quotations above, Descola has clearly distanced himself from post/modern constructivism) through his critical and parallel reading of Lloyd. More than anything, this helps to clarify the naturalist assumptions of both Keane and Lloyd, a position that Viveiros de Castro and Descola have transcended. Keane’s naturalist assumptions come to the foreground when he critically engages Lloyd’s constructionist reading of Viveiros de Castro and Descola. Lloyd (2012, 21) writes with regard to Viveiros de Castro and Descola’s multiple ontologies, What is suggested here is that within this—single-universe, different beings, different animals, and also different members of the human race have such different experiences, perceptions, and ways of interacting with their environment that we should think of them as living in different worlds. Somewhat stronger, but still close to conventional views of culture is this: “conscious beings construct their world as they interact with it.

“The verb ‘construct,’ however,” writes Keane, “tends to smuggle in a host of unstated arguments, and plays so central a role in the taken-for-granted of contemporary anthropology that it can be hard to reflect on” (2013, 187). ­Steven Engler (2004) underlines this point in his thoroughgoing consideration of constructionism (which he prefers to constructivism). After my own

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careful reading, I do not find Viveiros de Castro and Descola making the constructionist point that Lloyd references. It is not exactly obvious, however, whether Lloyd is attributing this constructionist stance to Viveiros de Castro and Descola, or simply adopting it himself. Either way, it is a clear articulation of his linguistically relativist position, and as such is not parallel to the assertion of multiple ontologies offered by Descola and Viveiros de Castro. Keane’s naturalist critique of Lloyd holds, to the extent that Lloyd is also making a naturalist assertion. But it is far less relevant to Descola and Viveiros de Castro’s position. The clue is not in Lloyd’s use of construct, or in Keane and Engler’s warnings about the different uses of this word, but in the opening line of Lloyd’s quotation that includes the phrase “a single-universe.” Engler tells us that when speaking of social constructionism, the social is redundant. Following Ian Hacking he sees constructionism as not at all antithetical to realism, as commonly assumed. His point is that the scientist and the theorist share the same basic reality and that the former focuses on looking at atoms while the latter focuses on the (social) historical and cultural constructionism that led to the discovery of the atom. Remember the title of Descola’s book: Beyond Nature and Culture. Hacking, Engler, Keane, and Lloyd are all debating the details of constructionism (cultures), while assuming a single-universe or shared reality (Nature). They are clearly post/ modern naturalists. Rather than making this assumption, Descola asserts a much stronger point: a multiple-ontology approach that can be helped by my own emphasis on participatory knowing (see also Ferrer 2008). The former assumes a shared (singular/given) reality, while the latter makes no such assumption. This is a point on which both Deleuze and Whitehead would agree, as evidenced, I think, by the quotations offered above. Shamans enact natures and bodies, mystics enact cultures and insides, and diviners, as they are not at all concerned with essential essences and the specter of relativism, enact one Nature-Culture Cosmos or another. But none of these fully address the problems of diversity and freedom. For that we need a fourth ontology of agency and becoming. I find that the solution to this problem is not so much in what Descola has asserted, but rather in what he has left unsaid. It is for this reason that Desmond’s work becomes so useful if Descola’s project is to continue to be viable. Descola outlines four different expressions of what could easily be identified, using Desmond’s terminology, as erotic attempts at self-determination. Descola’s modes of identification (ontologies for both) also go a long way toward buttressing Desmond’s own metaxological ground. Desmond assumes a hyperbolic overabundance as his metaphysical starting point. This can be seen in parallel to Whitehead’s Creativity. To the extent that this position remains ontologically agnostic and metaphysically realist, it serves as

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philosophical ground for Descola’s ontological relativity. Desmond’s speculative philosophy also mirrors my own. By practicing metaphysics, where the meta does not always mean beyond and where we are always seeking some sort of play (remember Derrida’s call for such a thing) beyond a single ontology, multiple beings, bodies, and oracular truths might be enacted. If we follow too closely Levinson’s linguistic frames of reference, we find our fourth frame of reference missing. Where Levinson and his peers focus on the spoken human languages available to us, they did not consider the possibility of a modal mathematical logic. Mathematics lays the ground for a fourth linguistic assumption. The agential functions that undergird this new frame of reference can be compared to what Desmond is pointing toward as some underlying agapeic relationality. Such an agapeic participation would be hard to find in Levinson’s linguistic frames of references, because it requires a wholly new set of assumptions than those made by each of our other ontological starting points (again, see table 5.1). There must be a process of participation, some form of concrescence or participatory knowing; this is what Descola is beginning to point toward with his emphasis on worlding. On my read, he is arguing for participatory knowing and/or enaction. It is also more than Levinson would care to consider, as he is concerned primarily with ethnographic materials. For myself, I turn toward authors like Cassirer and Whitehead more often than not throughout the pages of this book. We can look to the agapeic participation, or the process of becoming (concrescence) of Whitehead (or something else altogether), as each of these would answer Lloyd’s criticism of incommensurability without the need to assert some ontological (Descola) or erotic (Desmond) impulse over another. Descola, for his part, offers a multiple-ontology approach. BRANDENSTEIN’S EMPHASIS ON POLARITY As I continue to consider Descola’s work, you might remember that there is a disagreement lurking here between his fourfold schema (animism, naturalism, analogism, totemism), Levinson’s three frames of reference (intrinsic, relative, absolute), and my four forms of participation (animism/shamanic, naturalism/mystic, talismanic/divinatory, and creative/agential ecologies). Levinson’s work revealed this disagreement to me, and Carl Georg von Brandenstein’s writing crystallized these ideas. In turning my attention to Brandenstein’s research I have been able to better unpack Descola’s term totemism, which has a history beyond Descola’s work. This point is evidenced by Descola himself, who finds it necessary to distinguish his own use of the word from that of his mentor, Lévi-Strauss.

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Lévi-Strauss (1963) attempted to explain away totemic distinctions using algebraic categories of relationship. In so doing, he reduced totemism to mere illusion, a kind of archetypal projection of meaning where there is none. If you consider this in parallel to my own reading of his emphasis on bricolage above, this point becomes even more interesting. It seems that there was an ongoing maturation of Lévi-Strauss’s thought on these topics. And it is my assertion that while his bricolage leans toward talismanic forms of participation, it is more in keeping with what I am calling agential participation in these pages. For his part, Brandenstein (1972, 586) has written extensively on the subject of totemic thought, clearly defending totemism against Lévi-Strauss’s very particular algebraic reading. Brandenstein’s (1978, 135) own words on this topic are especially helpful: It has been shown by the author (1966, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974) and in the meantime been acknowledged by Claude Lévi-Strauss in written communication (1971) and by Rodney Needham (1974:30–37) that the long sought essence of Australian totemism as an early classification system embracing the whole universe, is condensed in the polarity of the four basic qualities of temperature and energy display: “dry” opposing “moist,” and “warm” opposing “cold”: of these “dry” corresponds also to the “active/male” and “moist” to “passive/ female.”

Over the course of his research into totemic systems, Brandenstein found it of utmost importance to defend the basic emphasis on analogy and polarity that he asserts is at the heart of these linguistic traditions (you may already be able to guess at my critique of Descola’s analogism). For his part, LéviStrauss could only imagine a system whereby a kangaroo stands as the ideal archetype of the kangaroo totem. He could not see such archetypes as anything other than algebraic placeholders. But this is not what Brandenstein is explaining. Kangaroo as used here is not an archetypal symbol, with the interiorities of a person as the archetypal kangaroo. In a totemic ecology a particular kangaroo is seen as being more or less warm or cold and more or less quick or slow. The kangaroo is not the archetype/symbolic reference of the totemic clan; rather, the kangaroo is understood as a particularly good example of an absolute bipolar set of coordinates or analogies that are fundamental to the cosmos. A kangaroo is just one possible expression of a shared interiority and physicality that might include my brother, my daughter, and the reptile at my feet, but not myself, the reptile on the wall, or the other kinds of kangaroos sitting nearby. Kangaroos are all understood to be warm-blooded, but some are quick and some are slow. Reptiles are all understood to be cold-blooded, but again, some are thought of as quick and some as slow. It follows that you

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can have a warm-quick totem in which I am included alongside a particular kangaroo. At the same time, my dad could be more like a warm-slow kangaroo, and my sister more like a cold-quick reptile (Brandenstein 1982, 12–13). Such distinctions are literal. In this scenario I am more like the particular kangaroo than I am like my sister. The kangaroo and I are different expressions of the same absolute polarity. In Descola’s account, totemic ecologies do not emphasize a single shared physicality (naturalism) or a single shared interiority (animism). Totemic ecologies emphasize a limited number (e.g., hot/cold, dry/wet, slow/quick) of shared physicalities and interiorities. Totemism assumes a basic coherence—what Brandenstein (1977) has referred to as Aboriginal Ecological Order—regarding a basic cosmic polarity that allows for a complex system of classifications based on a multiplicity of properties. You can begin to see how Levinson and Brandenstein’s work might help us come to understand an ecology of talismanic divinations (absolute frame of reference, Levinson; totemism, Brandenstein). ANALOGIES AND TOTEMISM Think about the obvious similarities with regard to Levinson’s absolute frame of reference, Brandenstein’s totemism, and my own talismanic participation. There is a clear emphasis within each of these on various motile mythopoetic correlations. Descola writes, “It is remarkable that there is no trace of a general hot/cold polarity in totemic Australia, nor in Siberia, subarctic America, or indigenous Amazonia, which are animist regions par excellence” (2013, 21, italics mine). He goes on: Another way of imparting order and meaning to a world full of singularities is to distribute these into great inclusive structures that stretch between two poles. . . . Two such nomenclatures are very common: That which opposes the hot and the cold and, sometimes combined with this, that which opposes the dry and the wet. In fact, these perhaps constitute the most obvious indications of an analogical ontology. (2013, 218, italics mine)

Descola tells us that the use of analogy is not an aspect of totemic ecologies, yet it follows from the consideration of Brandenstein and Levinson’s work above that totemic thinkers in Australia actually ground the entirety of their ontological assumptions by recourse to what Descola calls hot/cold and dry/wet polarities. There is a certain dissonance between these two positions that must be thought through. Descola begins his consideration of totemic thought with a reference to the early work of Adolphus P. Elkin (1933b, 1933c, 1933a, 1934). He finds Elkin classifying several different forms of totemism, including but not limited to

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individual-sorcerer, sexual, clan, conceptual, and dream/religious. Descola quotes Elkin who writes, “[A totem] is more than a name or emblem; something of the life of man is in the life of the totemic species, and vice-versa” (1933b, 121). Elkin tells us that there are shared properties and/or essences that mark these totems. Descola (2013, 154) reads Elkin as offering two distinct forms of hybridization between humans and nonhumans. The first is a process whereby flesh, skin, and substances like blood are shared. The second occurs when a soul is marked by a particular totemic site. Both occur in humans and non-humans alike. The former speaks to a shared physicality and is associated with matrilineal and clan totemic systems, as well as those religious totemisms linked to particular local sites of religious import. The latter, with its emphasis on shared interiority, is most manifest in patrilineal, conceptual, and religious totemic systems. While sorcery (individual totemism) seems to be the only totemism within which both shared physicality and shared interiority are mixed, any given Aboriginal tribe can and does make use of multiple forms of totemism at the same time (Descola 2013, 151–52). This leads to Descola’s own assertions regarding totemism. He writes that though Elkin was convinced of some unity or pattern underlying all totemic ecologies, he does not quite discern that pattern. Elkin tells us, “We have still to wait for some thorough studies of increase rites and the beliefs expressed in them, by students versed in the tribal tongue” (1933b, 130). For these studies Descola turns to Brandenstein, basing the vast majority of the rest of his consideration of totemism on Brandenstein’s book Names and Substances of the Australian Subsection System. In this very technical account I have found numerous mentions of the basic polarity of warm/cold and dry/moist (see Brandenstein 1982, 11–12, 19–20, 61–63, 93, 97–98, 148–49). Brandenstein (1978) also tells us that polarity is at the very heart of totemism. Descola writes, “Brandenstein argues that the whole Australian totemic system is governed by a single immanent logic whose most complete expression, in societies with subsections, is based on eight combinations of three pairs of primary properties” (2013). What are these three pairs, and why are they assumed to be properties rather than polarities? Descola lists them as quick-slow, hot-cold, and round-flat. And what is the single immanent logic that holds them all together? Descola tells us that Brandenstein’s work helps to confirm Elkin’s earlier study, in effect showing that totemism is predicated on an “interspecies continuity of both physicalities and interiorities” (Descola 2013, 160). Yet Descola seems to shy away from Brandenstein’s own characterization of this pattern. For his part, Brandenstein makes reference to the double polarity of warm/ cold and quick/slow throughout the text cited by Descola. He writes, “One can abstract the information of Aboriginal conceptions of classification . . .

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in a theoretical way as the Aboriginal recognition of balanced polarity in the physical and temperamental characteristics shared alike by all phenomena in the universe” (1982, 85–86). Yet Descola is clear in the quotations cited above. Polarities like those Brandenstein finds crucial to totemism do not belong to totemic ecologies. Descola himself is not consistent on this point. He agrees that polarities are important to totemic ecologies, and then asserts that wherever we find such polarities (underlined by analogy) we can be sure we have found his ontology of analogism. This does not follow. Totemic ecologies are based on polarities like quick-slow, hot-cold, and round-flat (as pointed out by Descola), and these are sure signs that we are not dealing with totemic ontologies. What is going on here? The problem is not in Descola’s consideration of totemism, for he seems to agree with Brandenstein with regard to the importance of some basic polarity for a totemic ecology throughout his writings on the topic. The problem arises with Descola’s consideration of analogism. In the short introduction to Descola’s work in the last chapter, I alluded to Descola’s discomfort with his analogist mode of participation. He characterizes analogical ontologies as desperate attempts to bring coherence born out of an ontological starting point of radical discontinuity or nihilism (no shared interiority, no shared physicality; cultures-natures). While Descola equates analogism with a desperate assumption of discontinuity, I argue two things. First, this ground of seeming discontinuity offers the soil for a new ontology of agential functions. There is the beginnings of a robust neostructuralist position here, where functions are highlighted as a means whereby seemingly disparate physicalities and interiorities are unified via an experience of self/enjoyment. And second, I defend the use of analogy, which is often a sign of healthy and balanced abstractions found especially in talismanic ecologies. Neither of these denote desperate attempts to make meaning in a nihilist world. Analogies are simply the basic practice found within talismanic ecologies of participation. Looking again to the quotation offered by Descola at the beginning of this section, we find that he sees a complete lack of such polarities and analogies within the animist traditions he is most familiar with (the bulk of Descola’s fieldwork has been done within Amerindian communities). Wherever we find such polarities, Descola writes, we can be certain that we have found an ontology of analogism and its hopeless grasping for coherence in relation to a meaningless void. Analogy, on Descola’s account, is a desperate attempt to assuage the anxiety of truly radical discontinuity. To the extent that they are categorized as beholden to analogism by Descola (2013, 202–26), West African, Chinese, Central American, and European Renaissance traditions of thought and divination are marked by their immersion in a desperate struggle with radical abstractions. Reading Descola’s argument through the lens of my

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own experience with West African divinatory practices, I found it to be more than a little problematic. The issue is Descola’s association of analogy with the anxiety of radical discontinuity, and his subsequent assertion that totemic ecologies do not engage in analogy. I argue instead that while analogical thinking is especially pivotal for divinatory ecologies, they are prevalent and useful forms of abstraction that can be found throughout linguistic traditions that Descola alternatively associates with analogism, totemism, and naturalism. In the section that follows, I look to a variety of authors in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive science, and linguistics to more fully flesh out the importance of analogy. ANALOGY (ALMOST) EVERYWHERE Descola writes, “Analogy is a hermeneutic dream of plenitude that arises out of a sense of dissatisfaction” (2013, 202). Throughout his consideration of the category of analogism he focuses on this sense of dissatisfaction, alternatively characterizing it as nihilism and profound fragmentation. Forever lurking behind the use of analogy, then, is an originary assumption of radical discontinuity. Is the use of analogy really so desperate? An early, anonymous reviewer of this book wondered if I might be glossing over an important distinction at this point. Have I unintentionally conflated analogies, as in basic cognitive operations, with analogism as in ontology? There may be some merit to this critique, but I am not alone in my discomfort with Descola’s use of analogy. In asserting his ontology of analogism, Descola has conflated what I see as decadent naturalism—post/modern flatland—with all of naturalism. Scholar of ancient Greek and Chinese thought, Lloyd (2007, 131–40) finds the use of analogy in both the Greek tradition’s naturalism (with its theory of causes, and an assumption of things) and the Chinese tradition’s talismanic participation (with its theory of correlations, and assumption of phases). This leads one to suspect that the use of strong analogies cannot be conflated with nihilistic abstractions. Post/modern flatland points both to an ontology that has been seeded, as well as one that is in decay. Following a similar line of thought, Lloyd is also puzzled by Descola’s conflation of all of naturalism with the post/modern trends toward discontinuities that begin to emerge within seventeenth-century thought. Feuchtwang (2014, 385) agrees with Lloyd that the ontology of naturalism should be fleshed out in more depth. Rather than conflate all of naturalism with what Gebser would call its more decadent forms, this ontology should be allowed to include the early Greeks and their assumptions regarding a continuity

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of nature. Naturalism is more aligned with Aristotle, than with his later ­Protestant critics. It follows from Lloyd’s clarifications that Descola’s naturalist and analogical ecologies need to be rethought. Lloyd (2007, 137–38) contrasts the Greek theory of nature (and its subsequent atomism) with what he sees as a Chinese theory of correlations and processes. Lloyd writes, “It may be a statement of the obvious to remark that, faced with the obscure or the mysterious, humans everywhere will use their imaginations to try to get to grips with what happens and why, exploiting some real or supposed analogy” (2007, 130). The difference here is about what those people think is concrete. The naturalist assumes a concrete physicality (Nature); the diviner assumes that correlations are concrete (Nature-Culture-cum-Cosmos, i.e., Talismans). As I have already argued at some length, Descola conflates analogisms with extreme abstractions and an emphasis on discontinuity. Chinese analogists are diviners who assume a kind of fluid solidity in the play of yin-yang. Descola pushes his schema of analogism on both these communities, characterizing both Chinese and Greek traditions as beholden to these extreme forms of radical discontinuities. For his part, Lloyd agrees that the ancient and Chinese and Greek thinkers were fond of analogical thought. They were diviners prone to talismanic thought. But he goes on to wonder if this means that they necessarily engage in the strange and radical assertions of complete discontinuities that Descola’s analogistic ontology entails. Please refer once again to table 5.1 (p. 126). Talismanic and agential performances are similar, but also opposite one another in important ways. Descola is conflating these, and so problematizing the use of analogies as primary forms of world-making where ever he sees them being used. The linguist Esa Itkonen (Itkonen 2005, 6), “in the spirit of Humboldt’s 1812 and Whitney’s 1875 dictum,” contributes to this defense of analogy by claiming that it is the most fundamental aspect of human language. Itkonen develops his argument by postulating a continuum from mechanical to creative forms of analogy, speculating in the end that analogy is our primary means of ordering the chaos of concrete experience (Itkonen 2005, 202). He makes a distinction between concrete-horizontal analogies that are largely binary and linguistically internal, and abstract-vertical analogies that are ontologically motivated to reference some external marker (genus versus species or universal versus particular) (Itkonen 2005, 166–76). This seems to me to be a clear distinction between analogical and naturalist uses of analogy. The former assumes that these correlations are the fluid solidity that makes up the quasi-physical world/s. These internal binaries can also be associated with Descola’s totemism with its emphasis on here/there, dry/moist, warm/cold analogies. Descola wants to disassociate his totemic ontology from binary analogies and internal logics, choosing instead to

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associate both of these characteristics with his category of analogism. There is no reason to follow Descola down this particular theoretical road. Analogies are found in totemic/talismanic and naturalist ontologies, and internal logics can be seen as a hallmark of analogical thought. Itkonen traces the history of the latter “ontological” analogies, which I associate with naturalism, through the Western tradition, from Pythagoras to Plato and Aristotle, and on to Galileo, Newton, Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, Lyell, and Darwin. Itkonen (2005, 177–86) also takes time to draw parallels between Hegel’s use of (meta)-analogy with the use of the same by analytic philosophy. His work, at this point, seems to bolster Descola’s assertions that when we look to the Western tradition, we see analogy everywhere. Yet, contrary to Descola, Itkonen effectively locates a different sort of analogies as well. Itkonen singles out the Nyoro of East Africa, the ancient Chinese system of yin-yang, and the Greek Pythagorean cosmology as exemplars of concretehorizontal analogies. Brandenstein (1978), Descola’s most important theorist regarding totemic ecologies, clearly follows this same line of thought in aligning early Greek thought with the totemism of Australian Aborigines. If we follow Itkonen and Brandenstein, there seems to be a strong parallel between totemism and many of the ontological assertions Descola has termed analogical. Analogism is not the opposite of totemism, it seems, but rather a fundamental component of totemic thought. There is a clear argument to be made that talismanic (totemic) thought in ancient Greece gave way to naturalism. Iamblichus’s defense of talismanic divinations is a case in point. In effect, the analogy shifted from referencing polarity to referencing nature. Brandenstein writes, “The oldest Greek reference to ‘hot’: ‘cold,’ ‘dry’:‘wet’ is in Heraklitus Fr. 126 according to Lloyd (1966:44)” (1978, 137). Brandenstein then traces this line of thought from Anaxagoras to Anaximander and then Empedocles in the Greek tradition, developing his comparison between “identical Australian and Greek elementary system[s]” based on six and eight subsections (Brandenstein 1978, 138–43). It follows that what Descola frames as analogism is not tied to a desperate nihilism, but rather foundational to most of human thought. So what is really going on with these slightly jumbled naturalist, totemic, and analogical modes of identification? TURNING TOWARD LÉVI-STRAUSS: DESCOLA’S INVENTION OF ANALOGISM Descola is at pains to distinguish analogic ontologies from totemic ontologies. In order to make this distinction, he considers the kalpul system

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established by the Tzotzil and Tzeltal speaking people of Chiapas: the same Mayan speakers that Levinson and his peers locate primarily through absolute frames of reference (which include both Australian Aboriginal languages that Descola marks as totemic and Central American languages like Tzeltal that Descola terms analogical). Descola writes that kalpul segments could hardly be considered moieties (totemic). “The kalpul are social and cosmic segments mixing humans and non-humans,” he tells us, “as well as corporate units exerting a control on land tenure and on the individuals incorporated under their jurisdiction” (Descola 2006, 12). The cosmic segments referenced by the Tzeltal are uphill (south) and downhill (north), which Brown and Levinson (1993; see also Levinson and Wilkins 2006) have both clearly delineated with regard to an absolute frame of reference. As for the social units, Descola offers the example of “elder” and “younger” to make his point and writes, “The analogic collective is unique, divided into hierarchized segments and in almost exclusive relation with itself, by contrast with the egalitarian and monospecific collectives of animism, and the egalitarian and heterogeneous collectives of totemism that are all bound to enter into relation with each other” (2006, 12). What bothers Descola is that ontologies of analogism make reference to hierarchies (elder-younger) that are almost exclusively internal. His animism and totemism are said to be egalitarian, while the Tzeltal cosmology (his analogism) is said to be beholden to rigid internal hierarchies. But, I wonder aloud, does this egalitarian assertion hold? Brandenstein (1982, 11) locates a younger/elder distinction in Aboriginal totemism similar to the one found in the Tzeltal language. He also finds the Aboriginal speakers inclined toward using the colloquialisms of clever and fool to stand in for the polar distinctions between quick and slow mentioned earlier in reference to totemic ecologies. Brandenstein writes, “Apparently the Aborigines applied what we could call moral judgment [hierarchy] to the (tempera)mental qualities of their representative head totems in both areas” (1982, 10). To the extent that both Aboriginal languages and Tzeltal Mayan languages are found to prefer absolute frames of reference while also making use of some modicum of hierarchy, Descola’s distinction between totemism and analogism once again frays. Yes, Australian Aboriginal languages assume an absolute frame of reference, but so do Tzeltal Mayans. Both of these groups make reference to internal hierarchies that may not translate from one to the other. Levinson (with Wilkins 2006, 21) is clear on this point. Absolute frames of reference are relatively arbitrary and internal. But the somewhat arbitrary nature of these choices does not necessarily point toward nihilism or rampant abstraction. It is actually the hallmark of the ontology Descola calls totemism. We are in need of further clarification as to what Descola means when he uses the term analogism.

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Descola (2013, 235) underlines the basic anxiety that looms over an ontology of analogism when he writes, A world saturated with singularities is almost inconceivable and is in any case extremely inhospitable; so among its premises analogism must include the possibility of modifying that infinitely teeming mass of ontological differences by means of a reassuring continuity that is ceaselessly woven together by correspondences and analogies between disparate elements.

He argues that such an ontology begins with a radical discontinuity. Such extreme dissonance is said to be a logically necessary non-ground whereby analogical attempts to order this radical discontinuity are articulated by referring to an ultimate unity (e.g., polarities like those found in Central American and Australian Aboriginal languages). Notice Descola’s use of analogical here to denote a response to an assumption of extreme discontinuity. This is a very particular understanding of analogy that does not hold up against the literature. “In short,” says Descola (2013, 202), “analogy is a hermeneutic dream of plenitude that arises out of a sense of dissatisfaction.” Is this all that analogy is? It hardly seems so. Descola sees the “great chain of being” most clearly articulated within medieval and Renaissance thought as the primary example in the West of such a hermeneutical dream. The nihilistic anxiety on which an ontology of analogism is founded is first located by Descola in Plato (following Arthur Lovejoy) and his emphasis on a multiplicity of Ideas (discontinuity of interiorities) and the synoptic unity of physicality as evidenced by reference to the Good (the beginnings of a discontinuity of physicalities). Descola (2013, 202–7) traces this basic anxiety through Aristotle, Plotinus (and the neo-Platonists), St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and on to Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Buffon, and Kant. I would agree that all of these authors are crucial to this fourth ontological schema, as evidenced by my consideration of these thinkers in the first chapters of this book. But are we to believe that all these thinkers began with the assumption of radical discontinuity, and then proceeded to outline their various philosophies as various attempts to grasp meaning in the face of such a void (i.e., analogical ontology)? Sort of. As I detailed in earlier chapters, there is a parallel awareness of diverse insides (e.g., humanism) and outsides (e.g., nominalism), but there is also a unique solution to this problem that begins to arise. Numbers become sets, as more emphasis is placed on atomic units. Individuality, radical discontinuity, gives rise to the symbolic logic which inspired so much of the thought in the last centuries. Within these authors we find the beginnings of creative agential ecologies of participation. Focus moves toward functions, rather than contents. But Descola’s read, on the other hand, does not seem probable. In order

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to continue to understand how Descola embraced this assumption, we must turn to a dialogue that occurred between him and Viveiros de Castro. Viveiros de Castro makes two important points in reference to Descola. First, he writes, Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture “can be said to be as much analogist and totemist” (2014, 83). This is a crucial point to consider, and one that I return to shortly. Beyond Nature and Culture’s contribution “to classic structuralism,” continues Viveiros de Castro, “consists of splitting Lévi-Straussian totemism into the two subtypes of totemism sensu Descola and analogism” (2014, 83). On this point I both agree and disagree. There is an important contribution that Descola has made with his multiple-ontology approach that continues to be missed. I argued at the beginning of this chapter that poststructuralists such as Deleuze and Derrida have misunderstood the contributions of Lévi-Strauss. It follows from this that Viveiros de Castro, as well as Kapferer, has followed suit. Marshal Sahlins brings the hope of these animists to paper in the form of another critique, along these same lines, of Descola. Totemism and analogism can be reduced to their underlying ground. “Rather than radically distinct ontologies,” writes Sahlins, “here are so many different organizations of the same anemic principles” (2014, 281–82). Sahlins rehashes the algebraic characterization of totemism that was part and parcel of Lévi-Strauss’s earlier work, and then argues that this allows him to reduce totemic moieties to animist multinaturalism. Both Descola and Brandenstein addressed this point above. Descola proceeds to flesh out the point in more detail in his response to Sahlins’s critique, the gist of which is that “there are no ‘human collectives’ in totemism” (Descola 2014b, 296). Next, Sahlins attempts to read Valerio Valeri’s Kingship and Sacrifice (1985), a Polynesian ethnography, through an animist lens. After reading his careful consideration I am still baffled. He quotes Valeri at some length, who writes, “Deities are characterized by two kinds of ‘bodies.’ . . . This opposition, then, is also the opposition of the many and the one: it signifies that the human species is the common element underlying all natural manifestations of the divine. . . . The relationship . . . is a sign relationship. The natural objects signify these predicates because of metaphorical or metonymic connections with them” (1985, 31). Valeri tells us that the human species is the common element underlying all natural manifestations. This sentence alone certainly sounds like animism. But Valeri qualifies it, claiming that this relationship is made up of “two kinds” and that it is a metaphorical connection. The concrete, in this situation, seems to be the paradoxical relationship, a motile truth (as in talismanic divinations), not an assumed shared interior (as in animism). Descola applauds Valeri’s monograph and argues, as I have, that “it appears to me a perfect example of that ontological regime [analogism for Descola, talismanic for me] and I fail to see any trace of animism in it”

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(2014b, 298). Why the drive to reduce these multiple modes of identification, forms of participatory knowing, and/or ontologies to one? My animism is better than your naturalism, totemism, analogism, or whatever. Descola invented the ontology of analogism to suit his theoretical needs. He writes that the framework of analogism is one of complex hierarchies, castes, and sub-castes. He tells us that analogism “is predicated on the idea that all the entities in the world are fragmented into a multiplicity of essences, forms and substances separated by minute intervals, often ordered along a graded scale, such as in the Great Chain of Being that served as the main cosmological model during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” (2006, 7). The basic assumption underlying agential ontologies is a functional process whereby seemingly radical discontinuities are unified, though only for a moment. Descola is confusing this neostructuralist ontology with naturalist and talismanic attempts at meaning making. The only ground assumed in a participatory ontology is the enactive Creativity of agential events. While this might be disturbing, at first blush, to Descola and others, it is only to the extent that the agential ground is misunderstood. It is crucial at this juncture to clarify that what Descola means by analogism, because it must be distinguished from what I call talismanic and agential forms of participation throughout the rest of this book. Radical discontinuities are the fertile ground from which creative agential participations are born. Descola conflates analogism with desperate attempts at meaning making. This is based on an assumption that radical discontinuity and diversity can only give rise to nihilism and/or arbitrary and rigid hierarchies. The latter are part of talismanic ontologies, as evidenced by a careful reading of Brandenstain and Levinson above. But the former is something different. Following Gebser, I locate the radical discontinuities wrought by nominalism and humanism as exemplars of decadent mental thought. But the story does not end here; after decay comes new flowers. As one ontology reaches full flower, another will likely be born. We can locate the decadence of naturalist mystics by looking to Latour. He helps us elucidate the desperate attempts of post/modern to hide their factishes. These post/moderns are living at the end of days, as well as at the beginning of something all together new. In contrast to Descola, I argue two things. First, that human recourse to analogisms tend to point toward healthy response to life carried out within talismanic ontologies. Second, that the ground of radical discontinuity that Descola locates as his fourth ontology is actually the soil from which agency and our participatory raft is born. As such, I assert a fourfold, multiple-ontology approach. But unlike Descola’s animism, naturalism, totemism (my talismanic participation), and analogism, I find the latter beholden to a sort of neostructuralist ontology of functions and becoming. An agentially realist position, whereby different forms of

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enaction and participatory events can occur. Where he highlights analogism, I focus my attention on the symbolic turn toward functions that undergirds agential participation. So here is the punch line. Descola did split Lévi-Strauss’s totemism into two—in my opinion, unnecessarily. Descola has clearly critiqued LéviStrauss’s early characterization of totemism, and means to distance himself from it. But he has also adopted Lévi-Strauss’s practice of bricolage. When Viveiros de Castro says that Descola’s work is one of analogism, it is both a pointed critique and a dismissal. But following the likes of Derrida and Deleuze, Viveiros de Castro has misread Lévi-Strauss’s later work through an over emphasis on animism. I argue, however, that in offering his mythopoetic attempts at motile bricolage, Lévi-Strauss began to practice something more like agential realism. He was operating on a structuralist hunch—somewhere in between divinatory logics of performative truths and the agential moments of meaning making underlying my participatory raft. Agential logic is far more fluid than the unifications offered by naturalists and animists alike. It is more divinatory in this way. But agency should not be conflated with talismanic divinations no more than animism should be conflated with naturalism. Where animism and naturalism invoke opposite dualisms, agency and divination are predicated on different performative truths. When Kapferer or Sahlins or Viveiros de Castro attempt to turn us toward the bubbling diversities of bodies and physicalities of animism, they have missed a crucial point (or, in Viveiros de Castro’s case, have dismissed it as unimportant). They have conflated multiple-ontologies to their personal favorite, their special One. If you adopt animism as fervently as these authors, then you dismiss naturalism, which is their intent. But you also dismiss talismanic and agential modes of participation as well. This is why I we must be careful with Deleuzian novelty. The new materialists, new animists, various continental thinkers, and many affect theorists tend to assume an animist ethnocentrism. One way that I see to move forward is through something akin to Descola’s analogical hunch. But we need to see his fourth ontology as the neostructuralist position that it is. It is a defense of functions (Cassirer), actual occaions (Whitehead), and agential cuts (Barad). In order to make sense of Descola’s work, we need to see his fourth ontology grounded in participatory events. In order to move forward, we need to enact a multi-ontology approach to our comparative studies—we need ecologies of participation. And so in the end, I want to defend not only Descola’s neostructuralism, but the post-structuralisms of Viveiros de Castro and his kin. As we find in later chapters, they have a lot to teach us about the limits of agency and participation, among other things.

Chapter 6

Agential Participation Toward Freedom and Concern

In many ways, I have talked more around my assertion of a creative form of participation rather than addressing it head on. To more fully comprehend what I mean by this terminology, I turn toward the end of this chapter to the work of Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead’s driving motivation is to find a way to include freedom and agency within his process-oriented philosophy. He defends novelty—real moments of choice—and cannot rest until these have been included in his speculative philosophy. Novelty, freedom, choice, and anything resembling what we tend to think of as diversity cannot be located within archaic, shamanic, divinatory, or mystic ecologies of participation. If we are honest, we see that animism, for example, enacts a diversity of natures, but only via an assumption of a Cultural monism. If the togetherness of bodies depends upon being internally related to some monolithic Culture, then diversity is illusory. If, like naturalists, we enact a diversity of cultures, while assuming a Natural monism, then in similar fashion all diversity is subsumed within a deterministic natural universe (e.g., Spinozian monism or neo-Darwinian materialism). Within theories of correlations like those enacted by talismanic forms of participation, there is literally nothing new available. All seeming novelty can be explained through variegated mixtures of whatever analogical elements have been assumed within their NatureCulture-cum-Cosmos performances. Talismans are admixtures of assumed cosmological elements. There can be nothing novel or new within these divinatory ecologies. Again, différance is illusory. In relation to Whitehead’s defense of freedom, I am always interested and somewhat unsettled by contemporary authors like Jane Bennett (2010), Mel Y. Chen (2012), Donovan Schaefer (2015), Manuel Vásquez (2011), and Viveiros de Castro (2014). Each of these authors means to defend the 149

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importance of diversity in our planetary setting, but not of people, insides, or subjectivities. They either take these for granted and/or assume a shared interior (Culture), and then defend diverse bodies (natures). This is interesting, in that it aligns with my ecology of animism, but it is also disturbing. They have clearly subsumed diverse cultures within the context of a singular Culture. At the same time, if you follow the problem of interrelatedness through their various works, you find the diversities that they hold dear become illusory. While the problem of saying away diversity is important to note, we should also underline the fact that we tend to live in ecologies, rather than pure ontologies. We tend to confuse and conflate these different ontologies throughout our days. We tend toward living entangled lives. As such, we also need language to account for this sort of mestizaje and/or mixing. For this reason, I turn toward a brief introduction to religious studies scholar Thomas Tweed’s notions of crossing and dwelling before moving on to a more thorough account of new materialist authors mentioned above. TWEED’S CROSSING AND DWELLING: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ALTERITY AND INTIMACY I want to think about the ideas of alterity and intimacy, and I look to the theoretical work of Tweed to help in doing so. Tweed (2006) has articulated a concise theory of religion that rests on the twin notions of crossing and dwelling. We can use the notion of dwelling to come to understand how each form of participation enacts a sense of belonging or intimacy. Each ecology co-creates an experience of intimacy through dwelling, in the sense that each participates in a kind of homemaking (to use another of Tweed’s terms) that is aligned with the form of participation that is emphasized. Dwelling, then, can be used to describe how we co-create communal participation-as-intimacy through similar bodies (shamanic dwelling), assumed cosmoses (divinatory dwelling), and/or shared beliefs (mystic dwelling). The comparison with Tweed’s notion of dwelling is further solidified to the extent that he considers the same linguist-spatial distinctions outlined by Levinson and his neo-Whorfian peers in the last chapter. “Most languages have a root meaning ‘where?,’ and most linguists agree that cross-cultural patterns are evident. They point to autocentric and allocentric reference frames, although some rename them relative and absolute. And linguists add a third type of spatial representation, intrinsic, sic, which subdivides the ground and locates the figure by relating it to one part of the ground” (Tweed 2006, 94). Tweed’s theory of dwelling is split along similar lines as my own ecologies of participation, where dwelling could be relative and autocentric (mystic ecologies), absolute and allocentric (divinatory ecologies), and/or

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intrinsic (shamanic ecologies). Just as I continued to clarify throughout previous chapters, Tweed is careful to point out that most communities are not solely aligned with one of these forms of dwelling. They live in ecologies, rather than ontologies. Most groups make use of at least two of these forms, and in fact, Tweed discerns for himself a series of distinctions that depend on varying degrees of emphasis on autocentric and allocentric forms of dwelling in particular. Taking all of this into account, it is worth stating again that I in no way mean to suggest there are anything like pure expressions of shamanic, divinatory, and/or mystic forms of participation. Rather there are ecologies of participation, where ecologies points to the complex and intertwining natures of these basic forms of participation within most communities. That being said, it is clear that ecologies like these are always in flux. There is a need to account for the intermingling that goes on, and as such we must account for those that tend toward the alterity of crossing as opposed to the intimacy of dwelling. This is where the idea of crossing becomes important for Tweed. Where dwelling looks a lot like the intimacy created through homemaking, crossing is more akin to the alterity experienced through ­itinerancy. The itinerant forms of participation-as-crossings—diverse bodies (shamanic), cosmoses (divinatory), choices (agential), and/or beliefs (mystic)—of others can be necessary to maintenance of vitality, beauty, freedom, and objectivity within these diverse ecologies. But dwelling and crossing can also be problematic. Susan Harding, for example, warns us away from idealized assumptions about mystic ecologies of participation. Throughout Western modernity there has been a fascination with methods, methods that seem to take every opportunity to disassociate from bodies and cosmic correlations all together. She writes (2008, 1), Scientific rationality and technical expertise are presented in these philosophies as the one-way time machines that supposedly enable elite Westerners and men around the globe to escape the bonds of tradition, leaving behind for others the responsibility for the flourishing of women, children and other kin, households, and communities, and for the environments upon which their flourishing depends.

And while I agree with Harding, I want to bring a layer of complexity here. Can we say modern Western ecologies are simply flights from, for example, the bodied, sensuous, vital dwellings of shamanic ecologies? While our continued critical inquiry into modernity, patriarchy, colonialism, and Eurocentric triumphalism is crucial, there must be more to the story. Taking into account Tweed’s distinctions between dwelling and crossing, we can better understand Harding’s constructive critique of Eurocentric philosophies. She writes, “This question [what are proper objective subjectivities]

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becomes significant because we can no longer get away with assuming the researchers [theologians, philosophers, scientists] can or should try to provide the ‘view from nowhere.’ Knowledge is socially situated . . . yet we can still aim for objectivity in research. . . . But what does the agent, the subject, of [value-free] knowledge projects look like after the demise of ‘Mr. Nowhere?’” (Harding 2015, 150). Harding goes on to layout a series of methodological points that can help us to both maintain objectivity and diversity. She defends, among other things, the need for “multiple and conflicted subjectivities” (2015, 161). Objectivity, following Tweed’s terminology, points us toward the dwellings enacted via mystic ecologies of participation. Each of these ecologies has its own methods and criteria for deciding who is most intimate with its particular point of view. Objectivity points us toward a certain mystic dwelling, a particular subjectivity or belief. Alterity, on the other hand, comes in the form of crossings among and between other mystic ecologies that have enacted alternate objective truths based on their own sense of dwelling. Objectivity suggest intimacy and dwelling within mystic ecologies, while alterity is found through crossings among multiple and conflicted subjectivities. Understanding this can help us to deal with structural racism, sexism, classism, and any number of other oppressive tendencies within our communities. Objectivity is not antithetical to diversity and various forms of alterity. Rather objectivity points us toward distinct dwellings and/or subjectivities within mystic ecologies, while diverse alterities are found when crossing occurs between these dwellings. What is potentially even more important is that objectivity points only to intimacy found within mystic dwellings. Beauty and/or cool-ness point us toward intimacy within divinatory dwellings, vitality is an indicator of intimacy within shamanic dwellings, while something like concern acts is indicative of intimacy in agential dwellings. These must all be taken into account, at a minimum, and in doing so we find our way out of emphasizing one of these kinds of intimacy over and above another. While some of us will naturally maintain important markers of intimacy within particular ecologies, others will seek alterity through crossings, not only between mystic subjectivities, but also shamanic bodies and divinatory cosmoses. To put this in a slightly different way, we could say that Harding’s Mr. Nowhere is suggestive of an idealized dwelling (a subjectivity) co-created within the context of a mostly mystic ecology of participation. The enlightened philosopher, yogi, scientist, and saint, each in their own way, has an angle on truth and/or the perfect objective eye-view. To the extent that they are attached to their particular form of dwelling and intimacy, some of these folks will be inclined to stay home. They will not encourage or seek out diversity of opinions, selves, and subjectivities.

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These are the wise homebodies of a mystic ecology. Harding is telling us that we must complicate these dwellings by actively seeking out multiple and conflicting subjectivities, that is, mystic crossings. If we include shamanic and divinatory dwellings and crossings, we are able to further complicate these dwellings by taking seriously multiple and conflicting bodies and cosmoses as well. This point should be remembered further on in this chapter, where we find both new materialist and affect theorists attempting to dismiss all naturalist leaning ecologies. Because they have honed in on the problems created by individuals defending their subjectivities, they seek to ignore that these are, none the less, viable ecologies of participation. At this point it is also useful to come back to Harding’s original critique of modernity, namely that moderns tend to assume views from nowhere. She is concerned that these moderns have left behind their traditional homes, including but not limited to the lives of women, children, and kin. There are three important points to be made through my emphasis on multiple ecologies of participation. First, mystic, divinatory, and shamanic ecologies of participation tend to emphasize communal intimacy by co-creating different sorts of dwellings (namely cultures/beliefs, Nature-Culture/Cosmoses, natures/ bodies). So yes, moderns have left certain sorts of dwellings, but they have also inhabited new kinds of dwellings. Modern scientists, with their intensive forms of isolation in labs, schools, papers, and the like, may seem cold and obscure. Modern legal systems with the complex theories of justice may seem byzantine and harsh. Band they also provide certain intimacies (dwellings) and alterities (crossings) that other ecologies cannot provide. Who do you go to when you find out you have cancer? Where can you be at least minimally assured that relational hierarchies will not be taken into account when you find yourself in trouble with a more financially well off neighbor? Modern dwellings require scientific evidence and legal statute. This does not make them wrong, or necessarily mean, or particularly cold. As a young person who moved around a lot, I can assure you there are other ways to be shunned. When moving to a small town, bodily and emotional intimacies create an incredibly difficult barrier to crossing. In certain ways, animist dwellings are not welcoming to strangers and their crossings. In fact, they can be down right violent, just like any other ontology. This is part of how they maintain their vitality. Within almost all communities people enact shamanic and divinatory ecologies all the time. They wear similar sorts of clothing, foods, and enjoy particular smells. They have shared bodies (shamanic intimacies) that cannot easily be crossed. They also have shared stories, myths, and aesthetic assumptions; songs, forms of speech, and intimacy with place. Again, none of these (divinatory) intimacies can be easily crossed. Truth or justice (read intimacy) within a mystic ecologies is different to be sure. Western metaphysics,

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theology, and science have displaced certain shamanic and divinatory dwellings, and at the same time offered new avenues toward intimacy. It is a mistake to paint with black and white strokes here. By clarifying the differences between these ecologies of participation we are better able to not only critically engage, but also include, diverse ecologies within our increasingly planetary dialogue. It would be hard to argue for social justice without the help of the Enlightenment. And without the Enlightenment, there may not have been the incredibly destructive forms of colonialism and imperialism that still haunt us in the form of globalization today. These are complex issues to be sure. But when we too easily disregard naturalist forms of intimate dwellings and dismiss unique forms of mystic crossings, we do ourselves a great disservice. And we also forget to look at ourselves in the mirror—considering our fourth ontology can also go a long way toward complexifying these matters. Where we see stark individualisms when looking to post/modern flatlands, we can recognize ecologies of freedom, diversity, and concern when looking toward creative agential participation. This leads me to my second point—which I unpacked in some detail in the introduction—namely that both postmodern and modern trends in contemporary thought are beholden to a particularly flatland version of a mystic ecology, that is, post/modernity, one that places the reality of factishes over above anything else. Only factishes are really real. These things are the ultimate arbiters of truth in these reductionist materialist communities. We should not glance over this point. Many of our best critical, feminist, postcolonial, postorientalist, postmodern theories are still thoroughly mystic with regard to their favored crossings and dwellings. In their bids to reject modernity, they enact post/modernity. Now the third point is maybe most important. If we are going to enact a planetary and/or participatory philosophia, then we will need to at least take seriously shamanic, mystic, agential, and divinatory crossings and dwellings. This is especially important in academia where post/modernity still reigns. As I consider the work of various scholars throughout the following chapters this point will become clear. Put briefly, post/modern scholars hold to a very particular stance when it comes to crossings and dwellings. They have tests. Is it objective, is it aligned with Nature? If I speak to openly about ancestors, Jaguar people, or the reality of my dreams, they will find me circumspect. Post/moderns hold a slightly different, though related stance. They ask if a body of work is reflexive. Does it take into account diverse cultures? Does it allow for constructivist relativity? These are two sides of the same mystic-naturalist ecology. Post/moderns reject and or subsume all other forms of participation. In order to maintain their unexamined folk traditions, they have to.

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Immediately following this section you will be introduced to both new materialist and affect theorists who mean to push back against this post/ modernity. But notice that in doing so, they reject a major part of this historicity, their selves, their beliefs, their egos, and their insides. Each of the theorists engaged later in the chapter has in some way or another rejected all forms of subjectivity. This is disingenuous to say the least. A participatory philosophia requires a greater diversity of dwellings and crossings. Both intimacies and crossings. Coming to understand the forms of participation (agential, mystic, shamanic, divinatory) helps us to do that. Within any ecology, any combination of shamanic, divinatory, and mystic forms of participation may be at play. Also, within any ecology, there will almost invariably be those who seek to maintain the ecology by dwelling, and those that seek to complicate the ecology by crossing. And again, this crossing and dwelling can at minimum be accomplished in any combination of shamanic, divinatory, or mystic (or intrinsic, absolute, relative to use Levinson’s linguistic-spatial terminology) forms of participation. To more fully articulate a multi-ontology approach—ecologies of participation—we must take seriously a fourth ontology of agency and freedom, that is, creative participation. Before diving into Whitehead’s understanding of agential realism, I first turn to a consideration of new materialist and affect theories in relation to their rejection of mystic ecologies of participation. To better clarify what is at stake, I turn to a brief consideration of Manuel Vásquez’s “materialist theory of religion.” MANUEL VÁSQUEZ AND THE NEW MATERIALISM An exemplar of the new materialism in academia, reading Vásquez’s More Than Belief is like reading a primer on the history of how we come to the recent so-called new materialism in scholarship. So many of the key players are present. Vásquez begins by recognizing the role of Descartes in formalizing our post/modern dilemma. The most succinct way to point to the shared problem we face is by recognizing our struggles with Cartesian mind-body dualism. Vásquez sets out to accomplish three different though interrelated tasks. He wants to maintain a sense of holism, while including some space for dynamic movement, and most of all, he wants to return to the body. If we are going to accomplish this task, says Vásquez (2011, 43), we should be especially wary of authors like Nicolas Malebranche, that seventeenthcentury philosopher who tried to accommodate Augustine and Descartes by highlighting the role of God and soul in absolutely everything. Malebranche’s subjectivity is completely separated from bodies, while also dominate with regard to their motion. You just blinked your eye? God did that. The car

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started on the first try? God did that. Of course Malebranche’s ideas here are overly simplistic and really quite ridiculous. That being said, he offers an honest account of the how a post/modern universe works with its crossed out God. Leaving off these strange nominalist-cum-post/modern tales, there are other more complex attempts to account for subjective experience in relation to bodies. To this end, Vásquez offers a straightforward reading of the history of phenomenology. Vásquez begins with Edmund Husserl’s fears of relativism that came out of his work within mathematics at the turn of the twentieth century. He finds Husserl wanting to overcome this relativism, and as such, tempted by thoughts of transcendence. This is an important point in our story, one that continues to come up over and again. Husserl was a mathematician, just like Whitehead, Cassirer, and so many other found within these pages. He was well aware of the radical discontinuities that have increasingly taken root ever since the nominalist-cum-humanist traditions of imagining radical discontinuities as the base of our lived experience. As a way to overcome these discontinuities, Husserl approached his experience through thick rich description. To this point, Vásquez quotes ­Husserl, “When I, the meditating I, reduce myself to myself to my absolute transcendental ego by phenomenological epoché do I not become solus ipse. . . . Should not a phenomenology that proposed to solve the problems of Objective being, and to present itself actually as philosophy, be branded therefore as transcendental solipsism? (Husserl 1999: 135)” (2011, 64). Husserl feared the dawning relativism instigated by mathematics and so developed his practice of epoché. Vásquez finds him working to include bodily experiences and he approves. Remember David Abram and his participatory events from the introduction? Husserl introduces the idea of life-worlds, focuses on the importance of orienting toward bodily experience, and places important emphasis on the role of empathy and feelings. “Still,” writes Vásquez, “has Husserl really overcome the contradictions of Cartesian subjectivism? Despite the centrality of the life-world for Husserl, he fails to specify its rich and ever changing structures” (2011, 66). For Vásquez, Husserl’s work cannot overcome its search for foundational knowledge. Though I need not argue the point too forcefully here, I would agree. Husserl opened the door for a new animism, and for some a differently transcendental mysticism as well. Neither of these goes far enough toward solving our need for a participatory philosophia. Vásquez looks to Heidegger next. Heidegger’s work is crucial, as he sets out to destroy ontology all together. We could say that Heidegger radicalizes finitude with his assertion of Dasein, which Jean Grondin translates as “Being-towards-death” (2012, 207). I find Grondin’s terminology more evocative than the more common “Being-there” that Vásquez uses. Either way, we see Heidegger (1969) attacking the possibility of metaphysics and

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calling into question any future attempts at ontology. He parallels the process of metaphysics with onto-theo-logical attempts to locate philosophy on some form of foundational ground (onto), supreme being (theo), in relation to mathematical perfection stasis (logical). Dasein takes another route. It flees Being, temporalizing what has wrongly been assumed to be static and given. In “Being-towards-death,” Dasein flees Being, by recognizing itself as permanent presence. This is an important turn toward temporality in philosophical thought. It also offers Vásquez a solid step toward the dynamic materialism he wants to flesh out. Rather than seeking abstractions and/or a sacred that transcends the dayto-day, Heidegger’s work forces us into the moment-to-moment interactions with hammers and shovels. “The consequences of this turn to everyday practices for the study of religion are momentous” (Vásquez 2011, 71). The history of the term religion closely parallels the history of an increasing subjectivism in Western thought. Where the category simply did not exist for ancient peoples, the history of Christianity presents a different picture (see Nongbri 2013). Early Christians started to utilize the word religion to distinguish themselves from others. Religion, in this early usage, was equivalent to true religion (Stroumsa 2010, 25). As in, we have it, and you don’t. This was especially helpful in distinguishing themselves from Jews, Muslims, and Greek and Hellenic Pagans. Later, as Europeans “discovered” the new world, they began to understand religion alternatively in romantic or progressive ways. They are not like us, and they seem not to be corrupted, therefore they must be closer to nature—they have natural religion (Stroumsa 2010, 36). Or, as various missionaries and travelers continued to interact with the people native to the Americas that had been discovered, they began to conceive another new idea. They are not like us, and they are not wrong, they are simply less evolved than us. They must be more primitive than us, and so they just need to be educated and parented like any child so that they can come to know our mature non-idolatrous religion (Stroumsa 2010, 22–23). There is certainly a positive way to see this history, as Guy Stroumsa offers in his A New Science, which is referenced above. Serious people started to take a more self-reflexive stance toward their own traditions, allowing them to approach the traditions of others with more open minds. While this more generous reading lies at the heart of later trends toward cultural relativism, it was certainly not always the case. The category of religion was more often used to colonize entire groups of less-evolved people. The idea that they needed a Western parent to help them grow up was utilized for no end of personal gain and allowed for incredible instances of violence on other peoples (see Chidester 2014). The history of religion is also a history of the Protestant rejection of Catholic ritual, in favor of a more individualized personal relationship to the presence of God. This

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created a new emphasis on subjective experience. Taking this point even further, the recent work by Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, locates the Reformation as the very soil from which what he sees as the current failure of modernity begins to take root. “The literally endless, back-and-forth non-dialogue of theological controversialists in the Reformation era was the springboard for the secularization of public discourse” (2012, 376). As opportunities for dialogue devolved into literal shouting matches, the ground was laid for recent attempts by different communities to shout each other down rather than listen to one another. Imagine strongly identified liberals and conservatives throughout the post/modern world today screaming at and demeaning one another. Meaning has been shamed into submission, as religion and truth have been secularized, and our lived experiences denigrated by the efficacy of scientific progress. If it works, it is true. My car turns on, so your soul does not exist. If I am louder, I will be heard. This is what the reformation left us. “What remains in the absence of shared answers to the Life Questions is a hyperpluralism of divergent secular and religious truth claims . . . and of individuals pursuing their desires whatever they happen to be” (Gregory 2012, 377). For Gregory this creates a debilitating combination of hegemonic and hyperpluralistic realties that all post/modern folks are left to navigate. Hegemony comes from our techno-capitalism, as our communities are held together through our shared commitments to capitalist consumption. We shout at each other through our shiny phones. We are justified morally by our shopping habits. Without a shared sense of common good, we are left with no way to contest this onslaught. And so we shop and consume. At the same time, to the extent that we do not allow common answers to big questions, we open the door for a more diverse mob of shouting angry self-righteous groups. We have stopped listening to one another, just like the diverse Euro-American Protestant communities that started these shouting matches in the first place. My point is not to argue for Gregory’s thesis, but rather to direct us toward the ways in which we limit ourselves from saying anything constructive. ­Derrida utilized Heidegger’s deconstructive Being-towards-death to destroy all binaries. Through his critical history of modernity, Foucault sought to undermine power structures through his archaeology of knowledge. Butler clarified for us all the ways in which gender is socially constructed. All of these are important and necessary contributions, but at the same time Vásquez wants to say something. And he is critical of Heidegger—and those who came after him—just as we should be. Vásquez finds Heidegger enamored with presence. This is a critique that has been leveled at numerous pioneers within the field of religious studies. There is a subjectivism here, and so as Heidegger and others continue to emphasize presence, they give away their crypto-Protestant leanings. But Vásquez also

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applauds Heidegger for opening up the possibility of seeing the enactive qualities of spaces, locations, objects, and other similar interactions between Dasein and alterity. There is a give and take that Heidegger creates space for that creates the opening for later theorists like those mentioned above. And yet, Heidegger’s Dasein is also a kind of fleeing. It is a Being-present, where the present points toward an entanglement with inauthentic others that are not Dasein. We can take pleasure in the other, but in relationship to “them,” Dasein can never become. “Submerged safely in ‘the they,’” writes Vásquez, “Dasein ‘disburdens’ itself, fails to answer its call to become” (2011, 75). In becoming enmeshed with the other, the they, Dasein forgets itself, its finitude, its Being-towards-death. And so Heidegger’s philosophy opens the door for what has become a hermeneutics of suspicion, whereby hegemonic structures are seen for the constructions they are. But Heidegger’s philosophy does not go all the way. It does not open the door all the way for full reciprocation. Even in Heidegger, there is still too much Being, too much experience and/or presence, to be found. So how are we to address what Gregory calls the big Life Questions without falling into the trap of our crypto-Protestant assumptions about presence, experience, and subjectivism? How can we talk about meaning without talking about beliefs, cultures, and religions? Vásquez has three intertwining answers. First, just as we rejected the subjectivism of Descartes and Malebranche, we must also reject the atomism of Newton, Hobbes, and Leibniz. Second, we should look to the holism of Spinoza’s Nature, while making it more dynamic and flexible by reading it in parallel to Nietszche’s perspectivism. Third, we should move from Heidegger’s Dasein to the Flesh of Merleau-Ponty. It is finally in Merleau-Ponty’s later work that Vásquez finds a way forward. In order to consider these assertions, we should remember Vásquez’s three commitments: we must maintain some sort of holism, while including some space for dynamic movement, and most of all, there must be a return to the body. I address each of these points in detail, especially as they relate to Vásquez’s self-proclaimed allegiance to the new materialist—and subsequently the new animist—turns in academia. I accomplish this critique in distinct sections below, beginning with Vásquez’s emphasis on the work of Merleau-Ponty. TOWARD AN AGENTIAL THEORY: AFTER EFFECT, AFFECT, AND TELEOLOGY In order to further consider Vásquez’s materialist turn, it is helpful to read his work in parallel to recent affect theories taking root in academia. To this

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end, it is useful to look to Donovan Schaefer (2015), who walks along similar ground to Vásquez. On one side they are both attracted to what Schaefer terms the animality of Spinozian-Deleuzian nature. On the other they offer an emotional understanding of phenomenological affect theory, which following both Vasquez and Schaefer we can see coming out of Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining chiasm of flesh. To this end, Schaeffer locates affects as molecular (i.e., animality) forces, on the other affects become something more akin to “sustained attachments” (Schaefer 2015, 40). The latter are parallel MerleauPonty’s flesh. Schaefer sees affect theory as a rejection of linguistic turn. He quotes Karen Barad, who tells us that “language has been granted too much power” (2003, 802). I agree, to a point. If we follow an Aristotelian label-oriented ideology and try to reduce all meaning to Chomskian-style universals, then all is lost. If we focus too intently on language games—think Wittgenstein, analytic philosophy, Derrida, and deconstruction—then we will just continue to chase our naturalisms ad infinitum. We could move more toward the talismanic camp of Plato, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Like Lévi-Strauss, and to some extent Descola, we could try to enact divinatory ecologies of participation. I go a step further in that I follow Cassirer, Whitehead, and so many others in noting that language is talismanic, naturalist, and animist in nature. As such, it must also be something more, something different. It is creative, enactive, and as such maintains what Robert Orsi has termed the “tradition of the more” (Orsi). Not exactly the Holy, as in Otto, but the Holy as in Holy Sh!#, that is, freedom and novelty, creativity that is mysterious, that which cannot be explained or framed, that which is truly is mysterium tremendum et fascinans. In a telling move, Schaefer quickly moves away from the realms of naturalist mystics. He assures us that his writing is in service of animality, not angels. Like so many contemporary authors, he too easily rejects all mysticism, naturalism, insides, and selves. There are no egos here, only bodies. But why? Why go to such extremes? Why continue this back-and-forth where my theory is better than yours? Why not look for some way to come together, sharing in dialogue? I see the distinctions Schaefer makes between different affect theories to be rather easily solved. Animality is akin to the effective turns taken by shamans. Angels points us toward the teleologies of angels and mystics. And there is at least something else in between. Vásquez places a certain level of faith in Merleau-Ponty’s flesh, and names it new materialism. As I read the Visible and the Invisible in full, I find myself more than a little confused. Sometimes there is something like bodily becomings in these pages, but it is never entirely clear. In fact, what we find is the flesh that is not matter or idea, an intertwining that is sometimes visible sometimes tangible, always both, an in between. Merleau-Ponty writes of

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flesh as a chiasm, and as I try to discover exactly what he means, I come away with three certainties. He does not take flesh to be matter, as flesh does not seem to be available to effect. And, on my reading, he seems to assure us that indeed there are no angels—no telos, no final future things, no insides, cultures, or souls. Having said this, I would be hard pressed to argue either point too forcefully, as Merleau-Ponty does his best to confound. But at one point I find him clear: “We must not think of flesh starting from substances, from body [animalities/effect] and spirit [angels/telos]—for it would be a union of contradictories—but we must think it, as we said, as an element, as the concrete emblem of a general manner of being” (1968, 147). Here is a clue to the chiasm, not a union of animality and angels, but rather a talismanic ecology of participation. He goes on to make my point when he writes (1968, 141), The flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it, we should need the old term “element,” in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual [animal forces/effects] and the idea [angelic forces/ telos], a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. The flesh is in this sense an “element” of Being.

Here is an almost perfect description of talismanic oracular truth. All that is missing is an emphasis on it arbitrary concreteness, its mobility. MerleauPonty writes that his fleshy becomings are “not a fact or a sum of facts, and yet [they are] adherent to location and to the now” (1968, 140–41). As he speaks of the visible and the depths of the invisible, intermingling touch and sight, perception becomes some altogether different from what is assumed in the Cartesian dualism between knower and known. “Perception is not first a perception of things, but a perception of elements (water, air . . .) of rays of the world, of things which are dimensions” (1968, 218). After Husserl and Heidegger, phenomenology locates itself as an affective theory of divination in the person of Merleau-Ponty and his flesh. In essence Merleau-Ponty has enacted a cosmos of feelings, not unlike those defended by Empedocles and Iamblichus so long ago. This is different from what Spinoza had in mind. In the preface to Part III of his Ethics, Spinoza (1985, E III Preface) writes, “The laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same.” Where Aristotle considered at least four forms of causality, Spinoza assumes one—efficient cause. He reduces all of life to a God-cum-Nature monism, one substance, no longer under but as God. This is not Merleau-Ponty’s elemental theory. “It would be absurd to conceive the touch as a colony of assembled tactile experiences. We are not proposing any empiricist genesis of thought” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 145). Merleau-Ponty is not a new materialist in the Spinozian sense of the word.

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“The flesh we are speaking of is not matter . . . when the body sees itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things, such that, simultaneously, as tangible it descends among them, as touching it dominates them all and draws this relationship and even this double relationship from itself” (MerleauPonty 1968, 146). I find it necessary to distinguish between the animist/shamanism of contemporary new materialists, and the talismanic divinations of contemporary affect theorists. When we read Spinoza we find him arguing for efficient causation, while often leaning toward affect. I understand affect as being more akin to emotion, while effect seems more like the movements of materiality. In arguing forcefully for the latter, Spinoza sometimes confuses us by mentioning the former. Is it because he felt he had to maintain some sense of humanity? Or maybe he was he afraid of sensor? Either way, we need to clean this up. Schaefer’s work is helpful here, as he clearly distinguishes between two distinct schools of affect theory. “For some affect theorists, such as Brian Masumi, Patricia Clough, and Erin Manning, term affect rigidly excludes what are called emotions. . . . But others such as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Sara Ahmed, Teresa Breenan, and Ann Cvetkovich, suggest that the consideration of emotions falls under the purview of affect theory” (2015, 24). On one side he locates the Spinozian, Deleuzian trend toward animist ontology, and on the other a Phenomenological trend toward intransigence and emotional bodies of talismanic ontologies. “Phenomenological affect theory raises the analytic level of affect from the ontological to the biological. This shift enables a focus on feeling bodies, rather than on the play of substances on the plane of immanence among Deleuzians” (Schaefer 2015, 102). This is important. Spinozian effects cannot fully account for our emotional and relational selves—that is, our talismanic ecologies of participation. At the same time, we cannot forget the effects that make up our bodies. “On the other hand, there is a sense in which Bennett’s insistence on the vitality of nonliving affects is productive. . . . It suggests the ways that embodied affects are not only instransigent, but recalcitrant: the ways that affects kick back” (Schaefer 2015, 102). This point is important. What about metal, and rocks, and the effects of so-called non-living things? This point is what drove Spinoza toward his effect theory. Humans are not special, especially not their thoughts and emotions. The same dynamic force that moves rocks and boulders is the same force that for Spinoza appears to be a human mind. He writes, “Between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of the appetite. So desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite” (1985, E III P9). The only way for Spinoza to make sense of emotion, thought, and desires is to see them as effects that are causing us— we are literally the outcomes of efficient material striving.

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For Spinoza, we do not desire. To say this is backward. “It is thus plain from what has been said, that in no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it” (1985, E III P9). Spinoza has actually done away with affect, with emotions and relations. His is not a divinatory ecology. It is some strange amalgamation of naturalist and animist ecologies, where by the assumed continuity of Nature lays the ground for a new animism, and renewed focus on the diversity of effects and bodies. “We,” says Spinoza, are an amalgamation of effects, a monism, or as Vásquez says, a holism. There is not self, no God, no teleological future calling us forward. Spinoza (1985, E IV Preface) could not be more clear: What is called a final cause is nothing but a human appetite insofar as it is considered as a principle, or primary cause, of some thing. For example, when we say that habitation was the final cause of this or that house, surely we understand nothing but that a man, because he imagined the conveniences of domestic life, had an appetite to build a house. So habitation, insofar as it is considered as a final cause, is nothing more than this singular appetite. It is really an efficient cause, which is considered as a first cause, because men are commonly ignorant of the causes of their appetites.

This is fascinating, for as we saw in the last chapter naturalist leaning mystics assume a shared continuity of Nature, and then seek out diversities of insides, teleologies, individual selves, and cultures. Animist leaning shamans do the opposite. They assume an inside, and shared Culture, and worry about effects, bodies, and diverse skins. Spinoza has simply turned toward the unexamined naturalist assumption—shared physicality, Nature. In doing so, he set the stage for a renewed turn toward diverse effects and bodies. Schaefer speaks of wresting power away from the liberal self, and at the same time he assures us that power is not found in angels but in animality. He too wants to move away from diverse teleologies, individual selves, souls, and angels. “Beliefs themselves are affectively driven” (2015, 209). My egoic self, my sense of individuality, God, the Good, the One, Brahman, Allah, all of these are reduced to a “heterogeneous multiplicity of animal bodies, interlocking affective economies emerging out of a bricolage of embodied histories” (2015, 209). Schaefer’s point is well taken. Rather than see racism or Islamophobia as ideologies, he understands them as economies of intransigent feelings. Religion becomes embodied, not through effects, but as affects—as systems of relations. Affect theory opens new doors toward approaching the conflicts that we find ourselves embroiled in today. But it does so by choosing one ontology over another. Affect theory, on Schaefer’s phenomenological read, must in the end reject

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our obvious diversity of insides. There is no God, no One, no ego. Rather, there are emotional fields. He wants to move us away from modernity’s free man—Harding’s Mr. Nowhere—as the center of our lived experience. This makes sense. Please do not conflate the enactive individualism of creative participation, with the man from nowhere emphasized within post/modern thought. I agree that we should work to overcome such heroic abstractions. But Schaefer falls like so many other authors into a post-liberal argument for diversity of emotional bodies over-and-against a diversity of selves. In order for Schaefer’s diversity to exist, he feels he must wrest power from those that have come before. It is disheartening, and wrongheaded, and absurd. This critical assessment is not for Schaefer alone. “Affects, then, are forces that exceed the classical liberal thematics of self-sovereingty . . . [a] modernity that places the liber—the free man, the singular, rational, autonomous, speaking agent . . . the node . . . of systems of power” (2015, 23). In order to be free of Islamophobia we must overcome Allah. Schaefer tells us that religions without belief, without diversity of insides, that is what we need. He seeks to complicate our current state of affairs. A move I always applaud. He wants to give voice to the others, the ones that lost their sovereignty both throughout the development of the West, and especially after the Enlightenment liberalized the overly individual modern self. Again, we all need to step toward this challenge. His goal is laudable, and his starting point is both telling and hopeful. Again, Schaefer cites Barad’s important essay, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Barad offers the following question: “How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter? Why are language and culture granted their own agency [i.e., contructivism] and historicity while matter is figured as passive” (2003, 801). How is it that matter doesn’t matter? You can feel this basic confusion throughout both affect theory and the new materialist turn. Matter does matter! Right? “Affects are no passive receptors of inconsequential feeling that serve as window dressing on the linguistic architecture of power. . . . [T]he linguistic I is a figurehead monarch in a field of recalcitrant attachments” (Schaefer 2015, 94)—again, the linguistic turn, Aristotle’s naturalist tendency to label. This is what Barad and Schaefer seek to overthrow. But they do so in a very interesting way. Modernity rejects the complexity of Aristotelian naturalism, and assumes that Nature is simply there. It is unified, and can be represented. This, in its most extreme form, is a positivist flatland scientism. Post/modernity rejects modernity and its individualism, and so continues the work of naturalist mystics everywhere by positing even more cultures. In its most extreme form, this becomes constructivism. Both are exaggerated forms of Aristotle’s sense of language as a series of labels on a given world. Barad rejects this

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by turning toward Neils Bohr and quantum theory. She offers an agentially realist response to the problem of Cartesian and Newtonian “thingification” and dualism (2003, 814). And what is this agential realism? It points us toward what she calls a performative metaphysics whereby objects and subjects are understood through the lens of “ontologically inseparability of agentially intra-acting ‘components’” (2003, 815). Such intra-actions require an agential cut, a kind of localized “resolution” in the context of “ontological indeterminacy” (2003, 815). As I argue below, this is not Spinozian-Deleuzian effect theory—that is, animist leaning shamanic ecologies defended by the new materialism and animism; nor is it anything quite like the phenomenologically oriented elemental-emotive theories of affect theory—that is, talismanic leaning divinatory ecologies defended by Merleau-Ponty, Tomkins, Sedgwick, and others. Barad tells us that these intra-actions “constitute a reworking the traditional notion of causality” (2003, 815). In this I think she is completely right, but before moving toward what I term a creative form of participation, with its emphasis on agential realism, we must remember something. Both Vásquez and Schaefer vacillate between all three of these possibilities, though neither recognizes the latter for what it is. It is helpful to remember Vásquez’s three goals: engender holism, return to the body, that which matters, and finally, maintain some form of dynamic force. Vásquez finds Barad defending something along these lines when he writes, “It [Barad’s] is a realism because matter does matter, but it is agential in the sense that matter is never passive. . . . [T]his encounter [he refrains from mentioning between ‘subject’ and ‘object’] is always open ended, complex, often paradoxical” (2011, 156). Yes, matter matters—animism, effect, shamanic ecologies of participation. Rocks really do participate in our becoming, as I know all too well (see chapter 7). But how do we find our way through the paradoxical? Following Merleau-Ponty really does not help. On my read, he returns to an elemental—that is, talismanic leaning divinatory—ecology of participation. He becomes a relatively contemporary defender of affect. So we have effects (animism) and affects (talismanic participation), but what of formal and final cause? Vásquez—along with Schaefer, Barad, and most the authors in these pages—reject teleology. Whether or not they are honest with themselves on this point, they cannot abide by insides, beliefs, and individual selves. And in arguing in this fashion two things happen. First, we keep arguing. “Affect! No effect! No, some paradoxical in between. Ok, just as long as we get away from final causes, insides, and teleologies. Great! Islam without angels!?” By arguing for one of these ontological starting points over another, the same old game remains. My ontology, my metaphysical assumptions—I win. Second, in denying any viability at all to naturalist mystics and their insides, these authors miss an opportunity for dialogue and communication. In order to

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clarify this point, I turn toward Whitehead’s process-oriented metaphysics— that is, creative leaning agentially realist ecology of participation. TOWARD AGENTIAL REALISM: BETWEEN IDEALISM AND MATERIALISM The solution to our problem of participatory philosophia lies somewhere in between effect/shamanism, affect/divination, telos/mysticism, and agency/ creative participation. In arguing for his materialist turn—which turns out to be more like an affective turn—in religious studies, Vásquez steers clear of two possibilities. He sees Malebranche as an exemplar of what is wrong with subjectivism, and so seems to dismiss all naturalist-leaning mysticism that came before and after. This is interesting, and well worth noting, but it is the second group of folks that I want to touch on here. This group is the atomists. Barad (2003, 806) gives a nod to “Democritean dream of atoms and the void” that she sees as so important to Newtonian physics. While she focuses on this Presocratic defender of diverse—though inanimate—bodies, Vásquez considers both the brute atomism-cum-materialism of Hobbes as well as the dynamic monadic atomism of Leibniz. He dismisses both rather quickly. Hobbes does not live up to Vásquez’s requirement of dynamic force within his atoms, a concern that Barad certainly would share. His rejection of Hobbes is not surprising, nor terribly interesting for my purposes here. It is the rejection of Leibniz that requires some attention. Vásquez wants some dynamic force. He wants his materiality with either effect or affect. But he also wants holism, and that is where his argument begins to fall down. Both naturalism and animism are built upon unexamined and opposite monisms. Mystics assume a monist ground like Nature, but then worry themselves about diverse subjectivities, selves, and interiors. Spinoza’s unified substance is, if anything, a recognition of various mystics unexamined assumption. But as we shall see, neither a Nature monism like that of Spinoza or a more traditionally idealist monism like that of Plotinus or F. H. Bradley offers any avenue toward movement. Both fail the test of freedom in relation to interrelatedness. Aware of these twin problems, Whitehead’s great concern is with freedom and agency. And his great breakthrough comes as he faces the hard challenge that atomism presents, especially as it is expressed in what Barad calls an agential cut. Hegel’s Chemism True novelty, Whitehead tells us, cannot be found through either efficient or final causation. Go too far in either way, and you end in a unity that allows

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no difference, no diversity at all. This point is absolutely crucial to the intuition that undergirds this project. We must see our way out of the flatland (materialist Nature) metaphysics that has become our de facto post/modern ontology. The new materialism does not offer a way out. Rather it tries to find dynamism in univocity that cannot allow for change—that is, Nature. A move toward idealism—say for example Plotinus’s One or Sankara’s Self—will not save us either. If there really is something like Aristotle’s final cause, then we are stuck with an unmoved mover, which makes all movement nothing but illusion. Both German Idealists like Schelling and Hegel as well as “critical realists” like Santayana and Bertrand Russell take this point to heart. In a very important work on the development of Whitehead’s thought, George R. Lucas Jr. writes at length with regard to important similarities between Whitehead’s early “organic mechanism” and Hegel’s “organic teleology.” Lucas portrays Hegel’s “Absolute Idea” as sharing strong similarities to Whitehead’s own early work on teleology. Because of the context he was writing in (the early nineteenth century), Hegel was saddled with Newtonian physics. Lucas writes, “Hegel was struggling to interpret adequately the Newtonian conception of inert, corpuscular ‘matter’—the same concept Whitehead would dismiss a century later” (97–98). This is the same problem that both Barad and Vásquez have set out to address. All three want to overcome flatland scientism that disallows any kind of dynamism—what Barad call thingification. Hegel speaks only in the pejorative with regard to such inert “things,” and must come up with some way of distancing his own thought from this mechanistic account of life. To this end, he proposes a three-fold accounting of causality made up of mechanism, chemism, and teleology. As you can guess, Hegel wants to downplay Newtonian mechanism at every turn. But how can he account for the dynamic movement of static things? Based largely on his understanding of various explorations with regard to nineteenth-century chemistry and its inability to make a mechanistic account of oxidation-reduction reactions, he proposes his idea of chemism. Lucas writes, “[Chemism is used to establish] a uniform principle of organization governing the process of change and activity in which these entities are involved. These associations of entities, however, entail a pattern or structure [Begriff] that is still ‘external’ to them” (1989, 99). Compare this to Barad, when she writes, “Discursive practices and material phenomena do not stand in a relationship of externality to one antoher; rather, the material and the discursive are mutually implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity” (2003, 822). Both of these authors, Hegel and Barad, are after something like Barad’s intra-activity, but Hegel is limited by Newtonian physics whereas Barad is inspired by quantum theory. For Hegel, this middle classification assumes a very limited degree of selfdirection, while most of the causal force is exuded from the outside through a

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field of influence. Unlike Barad, Hegel argues for a third category of causality, which is that of teleology proper. This is his Begriff, his Absolute Idea. Again, we must remember that his goal is, like Barad and company, to escape the limits of flatland scientism. But, like Barad, he does not reject science. His thought regarding the play of idea and “self” is seen through the prism of magnetism. This is a popular scientific theory during his time, wherein the dialectic of opposites is held responsible for the dynamism of an organic teleological unity or self. At this point we should note that in his early work Whitehead posits his organic mechanism as a similar kind of teleology, an early and more monistic version of what would later become his epochal theory of prehensions and actual occasions. Relative to Barad, Schaefer, Vásquez, and company, we must note that neither Hegel or Whitehead has rejected teleology all together. And, of course, these authors would critique both Hegel and Whitehead on exactly this point. There can be no doubt that there is an ascensionist thrust to Hegel’s work, and his theory of interrelatedness or intra-activity—based on a kind of “give-and-take” mutuality wherein everything is interrelated to everything else—easily lends itself to F. H. Bradley’s later complete ontological monism. But to simply dismiss these authors is to miss a crucial point. In their work we see a drive toward a new kind of participation, that of agential creativity. In order to better understand why this is important, I continue to follow Lucas as he introduces early attempts at ontological pluralism. Critical Realism and Ontological Pluralism Lucas introduces us to another school of process thought, the realists, locating them as a reaction against the perceived monism of Hegel, the ontological dualism of Descartes, and the epistemological dualism of Kant. Lucas portrays this school as sharing four over-arching commitments: (a) “The realist manifesto,” a commitment to ontological pluralism—this is a rejection of Bradley’s “mystical monism,” or any ontological monism that reduces all of reality to some ideal Absolute, Self, or Spirit; (b) no internal relations—this is a further clarification with regard to ontological monism, a kind of “objectivism” that asserts that there is something external to the knower (the known is not wholly dependent on the knower); (c) epistemological monism in contrast to Kant’s epistemological dualism—the knower and the known are part of the same context (basically leading to some form of panpsychism); (d) a commitment to Platonic forms to account for endurance and repetition. Here we see the realists stressing the independent logical status of the external world, the importance of time and temporal passage, and of genuine difference between discrete entities. Again, it is important to note the interesting overlap between new materialists, affect theorists, and these critical

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realists. These are all reactions to the right-wing idealism of Bradley in particular, but could be construed as a revolt against extreme subjectivisms of any stripe. The authors are pluralists through and through. I take this to be the beginnings of a third great revolution in process thought. The first was the scientific revolution, an emphasis on atomism, the inner-outer distinction, the first shifts in logic, and the awareness of simple sense datum, as well as the philosophical reaction to this revolution. While so many contemporary authors, including the new materialist and affect theorists cited in these pages—want to dismiss this turn, I see it is an important turning point, a necessary precursor to Barad’s agential realism. This emphasis on atomism and dualism provides the necessary ground for what she calls agential cuts—that is, intra-activity. There is a second turn that I have yet to highlight in any great detail, which was the explosive entrance of temporal change and flux that opened the imaginations of natural scientists, philosophers, and the public alike though made most obvious through Darwin’s theory of evolution. This third revolution is formulated on different grounds—it revolves around the issue of interrelatedness. A point that is wholly missed by both new materialists and affect theorists. The first revolution turned us back toward animist atomicities, diversities of bodies; though it also attempted to strip them of all movement. It was not really animist, as it held on to a naturalist assumption regarding God. Descartes, Newton, and company still assumed there was some perfect final cause. This flatland materialism is exactly what both Spinoza and Hegel’s distinct works try to overcome. Hegel’s idealism and Spinoza’s monism are both attempts to reintroduce dynamism into the world. The realist school I am highlighting here rejected both of these schools of thought, seeing them as opposite monisms. They see holisms like these overemphasizing interrelatedness to the point of reducing all differance and diversity to illusion. In order to account for diversity, these early realists attempt to take all notions of interrelatedness off the table. They assert ontological pluralism— which is actually atomism—over and above ontological monism. Lucas calls this group the neo-realists, and finds them quickly ending in failure. If they follow their commitments through, and hold that there are no internal relations what so ever, they maintain they are either left with an epistemological dualism akin to Kant’s or with some form of radical atomism whereby no relations exist. The “critical realists,” a next iteration of this realist school, maintain their commitments to ontological pluralism and epistemological monism, but try to side step the problem of internal relations by positing intermediary entities. George Santayana introduces essences, while the British realists (most notably Russell and Moore) introduce sensum and/or sense datum. The next obvious question, however, is “what is the ontological status of these

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intermediaries?” The answer that Russell and friends come up with is to assume an infinite number of datum. Of course the search for such datum is less than satisfactory, and these realists turn finally turn toward a kind of panpsychism not unlike that employed by the Naturphilosophie of Schelling and Hegel. I mention this turn toward realism as a way of highlighting a philosophical point that most new materialists and affect theorists seem to have missed. If you assert a materialism holism or monism, then diversity becomes a moot point. If everything is ultimately related to one whole, then in reality, there is no distinct bodies or selves. It is for this reason that I continue to turn toward Whitehead’s process-oriented philosophy. Relativity and Whitehead’s Process Rationalism Niels Bohr famously said, “[A]nyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it” (cited in Barad 2007, 254). In a similar vein, Heisenberg is quoted as writing, “The solution can now I believe, be expressed pregnantly by the statement: the path only comes into existence through this, that we observe it” (cited in Gilder 2008, 105). Two recent studies have gone a long way toward driving this point home (Handsteiner et al. 2017; Shalm and al. 2015). There is something like what Einstein called spooky action at a distance; the world is not as given or continuous as we once thought. Underlining this point, C. S. Peirce writes, “While in non-relative logic negation only divides the universe into two parts, in relative logic the same operation divides the universe into 2n parts, where n is the number of objects in the system which the relative supposes” (1960, 141). The “two parts” that Peirce is referencing above is the Aristotelian idea that something is either true or it is false. This is the representational logic that Barad and company reject. Within such an orientation the universe is a given, and so discoverable. After Aristotle we begin to label dynamic events, enacting things (knowns) and selves (knowers) by way of naturalist-leaning mystic ecologies of participation. And it works. This form of naturalist manipulation has a lot to do with my ability to use this keyboard to type. It is why and how I trust that the building I am sitting in will not fall down. The assumptions of self-existent things, makes complete sense within Aristotle’s “non-relative logic.” But mathematics and logic have come a long way, creating, I continue to argue, a whole new avenue toward participation and allowing for agential creative ecologies of participation. Naturalist mystics co-created incredible things, diverse selves, and also colonized our worlds, helping to create our current planetary predicament. Our current movement toward relativizing their truths is important, but it cannot be done by wholly ignoring these naturalists with their Nature and their cultures.

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William James makes a similar point as Peirce above when he writes, “[T]he universe is not an order, but that which every type of order is only a limited aspect. . . . The world is a selection in the making, amidst a superabundance of the unselected” (cited in Weber 2011b, 62). Michel Weber, a Whiteheadian scholar, interprets James as flipping Plato’s allegory of the cave on its head. Plato sees his cave as a dark place of relative ignorance, surrounded by the incredible light of day and eternal knowing. Those in the cave have mistaken their small fire for the infinite light abounding around them. Plato’s movement from the cave is movement toward the clear light of naturalism. He begins a journey toward the Good, which becomes the One, God, and so many other ultimate things. James sees the cave as illuminated by the faint light of particular localized knowing—Barad might call this an agential cut, an intra-activity—and this is all the knowing allowed by James. In this view, moksa, nirvana, Gaia, and Christian union are all localized truths. James’s cave is surrounded not by eternal abundance of knowing, but rather the wild buzzing reality of darkness and mystery. This is his radical empiricism. This is similar to Heisenberg’s paradox of path and observer, or Bohr’s quanta. Upon first meeting Heisenberg, Bohr suggested that one must approach atoms with poetry, by way of creating connections and images, rather than clear and distinct mathematical formula (cited in Giles 1993, 28). This is a movement toward propositional logic and pluralism, away from Aristotelian logic and monism. But we must be careful. Vásquez writes, “Even a thinker of the caliber of William James, who had a materialist and pragmatist outlook . . . ultimately fell prey to subjectivism” (2011, 8). This is true, and we should not wholly disregard all subjectivism. If we do, we will be left one monism (either animist or naturalist), arbitrary absolute (talismanic), or another. The point is not to reject any of these, while also not finding ourselves stuck in any one. We have to move toward Bohr and Barad, toward agential creativity. In a nod to Deleuze, Weber (2011a, 2006, 2011b) terms this land of percolating and perishing paths the chaosmos by way of contrasting it from the idea of a single knowable cosmos. Creative process thinkers, following Weber, begin their work beholden to a radical empiricism and assert a discontinuous epochal percolating wherein true novel forms become actual and then perish away. Barad tells us that her agential realism need not subscribe to an individualist metaphysics. “Any realist account worth its salt should not endorse such idealist or magical beliefs” (2007, 56). Why single out idealist beliefs as “magical” when she clearly defends materialist matterings and doings? This is a blind spot in so many theorists highlighted in these pages. Barad is arguing for entanglement against idealism, but this argument should be just as strident against materialism. And again, we find ourselves in an I am right and

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you are wrong scenario. How does she know she is right? A better path forward is provided by first placing animist (effect), naturalist (final cause), talismanic (affect), and creative (agency) ecologies of participation all on the table. ­Second, and this is important, we must realize the limits of our own knowing. Like Cusa we must practice a learned ignorance. Like Kant and Fichte we should be skeptical. A participatory philosophia does not place entanglements and creative agency over and above shamanic, mystic, and divinatory forms of participation. Rather it notices that there are at least these four forms of participation available to humans. Maybe there are more; there certainly are other forms when we start to think more honestly about the lived worlds of mountains, plastics, and corn. But we are not there yet. We must still unpack what Whitehead means by creative participation, and compare this to the various theories found within this chapter. Quantum theorists have asked themselves, “What if we see a plethora of events, and connote to this perception the attributes of a line or path? What if there is no path outside the relationship of the knower and the known?” Following Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, what if the path does not exist outside the relationship of path and atom? What if there is only entanglement? Whitehead (1978, 25) speaks to such a process when he tells us that becoming is a clarifying process. Meaning is unified out of an incoherent plethora of possibility. But these moments of meaning do not persist. Rather they perish just as soon as they become. In writing in this way, he is speaking to James’s darkness, out of which coherence emerges ever so briefly, only to give way once again to the darkness. Whitehead writes, “[T]here is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming” (1978, 25). Gebser (1985), the evolutionary cosmologist who’s work I highlighted in earlier chapters, should be given a more careful reading within this conversation as well. He writes that continuity denotes a very superficial level of perception. Gebser is pointing us toward creative, agential, participation. Continuity—whether naturalist (Nature), animist (Culture), or talismanic (Nature-Culture-cum-Cosmos)—gets in the way. In order to clarify what is meant by creativity and agency, we must be critical of these other forms of participation. From this point of view, they are useful abstractions that are projected by those working within various ecologies of participation. Heisenberg writes that “there is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality” (cited in Piechocinska 2005, 42). He should have also said that there is a fundamental error in separating the whole from the parts. If we follow his lead, we can begin to approach the paradoxes that confuse Vásquez and Merleau-Ponty. We need a logic of unity and complementarity, a logic that makes sense of both wholes and parts without privileging one over the other. This is what a creative process philosophy must account for. As Bohr writes, there are “two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously

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absurd, and profound truths, recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth” (cited in Rozental 1967, 328). The point is that within the revolution in the physical sciences and logic, the idea of a single Cosmos (talismanic ecologies), a shared People (animist ecologies), or a foundational ground-cum-Nature (naturalist ecologies) have all been relativized and made atomic. Whitehead’s is a theory attempting to approach unity and complementarity. This leads Whitehead to the introduction of a contiguous atomism, in place of the more traditional continuous unity. Contiguity suggests a series of distinct events, that are so close in proximity that they appear to be continuous. The ultimate metaphysical “ground” is seen as an epochal contiguous atomism, rather than as a continuous trans-formation (becoming) of one real or absolute reality. In order to more fully understand the usefulness of this distinction, I move now to an inquiry into Whitehead’s focus on feelings and prehensions. WHITEHEAD’S THEORY OF PREHENSIONS AND FEELINGS My purpose within this section is to account for the introduction of non-local, other-than-efficient causality. Post/modernity is predicated on the idea that there is no dynamism—especially agency or teleology—inherent to Nature. Nature is simply there: an amalgamation of dead flatland stuff. Post/modernity is grounded on an explicit nominalist rejection of Aristotelianism. This is often portrayed as the triumphant rise of scientific rationalism in the face of religious dogma. But in reality, the works of Galileo, Bacon, Newton, and so many others parallels closely a Protestant rejection of Catholic Aristotelianism. This nominalist rejection of Pagan thought stripped matter of meaning. Where Aristotelian substances were complex mixtures of material, efficient, formal, and final causes, scientific materialism has no room for anything but efficient atoms. Matter moves, to be sure, but only through efficient means—one factish bumping into another. A brief exercise might help you to understand my meaning. Move your finger. How exactly did you do it? Electrical/chemical stuff moved from your brain (highly complex stuff) through your arm (more stuff) and then, just like a billiard ball being hit, your finger moves. What made the electrical/chemical stuff in your brain move? More stuff like it? Where does the causal chain end or begin? Ultimately, if we occupy a Newtonian universe of discrete atomic factishes sitting around in space at random intervals along a grid, how does anything move? Newton solved this problem by assuming a clockmaker God (post/modernity’s God) put it all into motion. Remember Malebranche above? But does

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that reasoning work for you? As a physicist and feminist philosopher, Barad frames the problem this way: “Representationalism [post/modern scientific naturalism] takes the notion of separation as foundational. It separates the world into the ontologically disjunct domains of words [subjects/secondary] and things [objects/primary], leaving itself with the dilemma of their linkage such that knowledge is possible” (2007, 137). If you buy the post/ modern materialist story—which argues that you are a closed system crafted through efficient means—then you need something like either a Deist God or Spinozian causa sui to start the system up. If you need yet another example, go hang out with your computer for awhile. Turn it off, and then just wait it out. How long before the computer turns itself on? While this is not a perfect metaphor, you get the idea. Closed systems are just that, closed. They certainly cannot turn themselves on. To my thinking, we are in need of some non-local causality, both substantive and agential. Whitehead terms this the subject-superject. It is tied to his epochal theory of prehensions, a point I promised to address. Part three of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality, is devoted to this theory in full. Giving away an important clue to his speculations, Whitehead alternatively these ideas as a theory of feelings as well. Please remember that the idea of agency and freedom of choice have become incredibly important to Whitehead’s thought. If real novelty is going to be ingressed into actuality, then we must assume an agential event-based ontology of discontinuous becomings. To this end, Whitehead writes, “The terminal unity of operation, here called the ‘satisfaction,’ embodies what the actual entity [agential event] is beyond itself” (1978, 219). Now Whitehead is infamously obtuse. What in the world does this sentence mean? Whitehead’s speculative thought rests on the idea that the only way forward is through some sort of epochal event-based theory. One of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, he is paying careful attention to trends within the psychological (e.g., William James) and physical sciences (e.g., relativity and quantum theories). He understands the post/modern discontinuity, atomic insides as well as outsides. He is conversant in modal logic and the way individual units (numbers) can maintain their atomicity while finding relations through sets. This leads him to an agential realism, wherein all events must be atomic. The must “terminate” and/or come to an end. There is no place for simple spatial extension in this new philosophy, as it must accommodate something more like time-space. Extension, space, is temporal, and so momentary. All substances come to an end. But how can this be? Every event is agential. Every time-space is a satisfaction—an embodiment of something beyond itself. A feeling, writes Whitehead (1978, 221) cannot be differentiated from the act of becoming. Every actual occasion is, to an extent, the subject that feels. There are no feelings floating

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around outside the act of feeling—no affect, effect, or telos outside the occasion becoming. Acts and decisions coalesce as the subject for Whitehead, yet this is not a theory of simple subjectivism. Subjects and experiences get a bad name in academia. And rightfully so. It is too easy to conflate post-Protestant tendencies to emphasize individual experience with other forms of life. Now theorists like Barad and Vásquez will quickly call Whitehead out for his subjectivism. Like Schaefer above, they want their animality without angels. But would it not be more useful to imagine a theory of feelings where feelings include, but are not limited to, bodied (animality-cum-effect), emotional (affect-as-formal-cause), and angelic forms (telos or final cause). Who are the angels in this setting? They are us. “This subjective form is determined by the subjective aim . . . so as to obtain the satisfaction of the completed subject” (Whitehead 1978, 19). We are our own final cause. Every event is agential; it has its own angelic cause. A driving telos that is finally only its own. “In other words,” writes Whitehead, “final causation and atomism are interconnected philosophical principles” (1978, 19). Every agential event is located within a relative time-space. For example consider the difference between my body, my emotions, and my dreams. “I” do not exist without a complex participation of all these events, but each has its own peculiar duration. “My” bodily events are agential, they feel the entirety of their relative past-space in relation to their contemporary time-space and their future-space. This bodily moment feels the push of another body as animality-effect-past-space. This same bodily moment feels the pull of desire as emotional-affect-future-space. This same bodily moment feels the pull of my vision of “myself” as an artful lover as thought-affect-future-space. Notice how time-space is relative for each event. Each event feels the entirety of relative time-as-past-space-effect as stubborn and solid fact, that is, extended space. Each event feels the peer pressure of relatively similar time-space events, and is tempted by habituating these patterns. Each event also feels the entirety of potential future time-as-future-space-affects. An agential event inhabits a momentary precipice between past-effects and future-affects, but it is singularly guided by its own angelic-final-subjective-aim. And, it must make a choice, create an agential-cut (to borrow Barad’s term). Every agential event has the freedom to inhabit a radically unique and atomic moment of satisfaction. The enjoyment of said satisfaction, is what is felt, that is, prehended, by all other agential events. “The term ‘subject’ has been retained because in this sense it is familiar in philosophy,” says Whitehead (1978, 222). There is a subtle distinction that must be understood if we are going to assert an agential realism. To this end, he continues, “But it is misleading. The term ‘superject’ would be better. The subject-superject is the purpose [angelic final cause] of the process originating the feelings” (1978, 222). Whitehead’s is not another

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subjective philosophy. It is not naturalism. Instead of the word subject, I use the term agent. Within a creative ecology of participation, these are the only real things. Every event has feelings, these feelings are how it relates to other events. These relations are called prehensions by Whitehead. But they cannot be abstracted from an agential event. Let’s return to that obtuse sentence that started us off. “The terminal unity of operation, here called the ‘satisfaction,’ embodies what the actual entity [agential event] is beyond itself” (1978, 219). There are no isolated spatial units in Whitehead’s thought, no substances, simply located, like our unexamined assumptions regarding atoms, rocks, and phones. Whitehead has risen to the challenge laid out by the new physics, as well as the discontinuities given to us through post/modern thought. Atomism and relativity all the way through. Prehensions are the feelings experienced by an agential event, and every such event is an atomic, read terminal, unity. Every event lasts a duration, its own peculiar time-space, but no more. Each event comes to end through the satisfaction of its final agential aim. It enjoys a unique fulfillment, which becomes an agent[subject]-superject for other events. There is literally nothing outside this process of becoming. Neither space nor time can be abstracted from agential events. Extension, physicality, is relative, as are insides. Our relative past feels physical, while our relative future feels inside. This is just part of the mystery of life. Through the section above I have attempted to flesh out some of the most impenetrable ideas ever put forward by Whitehead, a philosopher who is infamous for being impossible to understand. While I could spend a full chapter or a book on this topic, I really must move on. While Whitehead’s theory of prehensions and epochal agential events may be difficult to understand, what follows might just be too much. Within Whitehead’s Process and Reality, there is one section that stands out as irrepressibly difficult to unlock. It is to that section of his book that I now turn, toward his theory of propositions, feelings, and the higher phases of concrescence (agential becoming). WHITEHEAD’S PROPOSITIONAL FEELING, THINKING, AND KNOWING To address effectively my answer to the riddle of agency, it is vital to enter the realm of the speculative, inquiring into ecologies of participation by looking to Whitehead’s rendering of what he calls propositional feeling, propositional thinking, and rational knowing. As I relate each of these to the forms of participation enacted from shamanic, divinatory, and mystic ecologies of participation, some of the more important differences between these three modes of participation come to light.

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Whitehead defines propositions as stories that lure actual occasions into novel futures. We must note from the very outset that this has very little to do with the linguistic turn. At least in as far as that intellectual movement sought positive labels for discoverable given things. Whitehead’s symbolic turn is enactive and agential. Language, for Whitehead, is more akin to Iamblichus’s talismanic symbols, than Aristotle’s labels. And yet, his symbolic logic cannot be conflated with divinatory logics of arbitrary absolutes. Whitehead’s theory of propositional feelings and higher phases of concrescence is realized in parallel to the new mathematics and physics of the last centuries. Symbols, as Cassirer and Langer made clear in earlier chapters, act as a key and/or coparticipant in the mystery of becoming. So, when I create the sentence “I intend to not only understand, but directly participate in the process whereby we might grow a living house,” I am not only positing a novel future, I am participating with a novel future. My speech acts—like all vital (shamanic), beautiful (talismanic), objective (mystic), creative (agential) acts—have an enactive efficacy. The sentence above contains a proposition, and it is through such propositions that Whitehead’s foundation of becoming, Creativity, can ingress greater freedom into our lives. To put this more simply: propositions tell us what might be (e.g., “the sun will rise tomorrow”) and lead us toward such futures. They have affect. For my part, I have come to see Whitehead’s phases in relation to shamanic, divinatory, and mystic ecologies forms of participation. It is important to note that the material covered in this section emerges from some of the most difficult and speculative chapters found in one of the most notoriously difficult and speculative texts to be written by a philosopher in the twentieth century. The subsequent discussion, therefore, is a flight of metaphysical speculation. Sandra Harding (2008, 81–83), among so many others, warns us of the dangers of theory. She wants to limit our hypothesizing from racist, sexist, colonial, and generally male Eurocentric-lived experiences. And of course, she is right. We must contextualize our speculations. She tells us that we must always walk a line between objectivity and diversity (see Harding 2015). In the sections above, I argued a slightly more nuanced point. Namely that there are multiple forms of intimacy and alterity, dwellings and crossings. Objectivity and diversity are simply two possible iterations of these, and while they should be honored, they should not be placed above all others. We must maintain a certain vigilance with regard our post/modern interests. And in doing so, we simply must take speculative metaphysics seriously (see Whitehead 1978, 4–19), not lazy and abyssal Eurocentric metaphysics, but metaphysics in the context of participatory philosophia—diverse intimacies and dwellings, distinct ecologies of participation. These become that more

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available to us as we remember speculative philosophy, especially when practiced as a multiple-ontology approach, becomes one of the best tools we have to work through the subtleties of our diverse lived experiences. In considering these distinctions, Whitehead (1978, 230) writes at length regarding what he terms a nexus. Every actual occasion, for Whitehead, is fleeting. It feels, enjoys, and is gone. If this process is all there is to reality, why do we experience continuity and stable things? Each actual occasion, again for Whitehead, is connected to other occasions by virtue of a shared past, future, and purpose or aim. There will always be occasions that come directly after previous ones that share a relative positionality in the coming and going of occasions. This series of occasions, to the extent that they share a similar set of values, feelings, interests, and acts of enjoyment—they form a nexus, what we might think of as the continuity of an individual or a thing. If we stretch this idea further, we can start to see societies of individuals and things, communities of shared feelings, values, interests, and acts of enjoyment. In introducing the notion of nexus, Whitehead has opened up a way of understanding the different ecologies of shamanic (bodies), mystic (subjectivities), and divinatory (cosmoses) participation. The distinction I made between crossings (enacting diverse alterities) and dwellings (enacting diverse intimacies) above is also important here. The wise homebodies of any given community nurture prehensions that maintain a certain intimacy with the dwellings that have come before. The practice of dwelling rehearses and reenacts habituated feelings. For those in the community that place greater emphasis on continuity within an ecology, the agential aim (angelic telos) is to align with the subjectivities (mystic dwellings), bodies (shamanic dwellings), and/or cosmoses (divinatory dwellings) that have become ingrained and replicate them. This is an important point to understand. One of Whitehead’s greatest contributions is his epochal theory of prehensions. It is through this theory that he can account for the atomicity, relativity, and time-space required by twentieth-century logics and physics, radical turns that we have hardly begun to accommodate even today. Throughout this book you find authors like Vásquez who are deeply concerned with nurturing diversity, emphasizing the importance of body, as well as dynamic movement and change within their thought. Vásquez is also clear that there must be some sort of holism holding it all together. Some authors are not so overt in this, but for the most part they speak in their own ways to a need for togetherness of some kind. As I hope I made clear above, it is Whitehead’s theory of prehensions that brings our diverse life ways and ecologies together. Without, and this again is important, saying away diversity and freedom required by the atomicity and relativity of agential participation. Having said all of this, there is some interesting potentials allowed by creative ecologies to unfold. To begin, imagine that within a shamanic ecology

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of participation somebody dares to feel into a novel possibility, an animist crossing, allowing feelings that are not normally felt. She puts on a pair of bell bottoms, thus becoming a different sort of someone. She has inhabited a slightly different body. If this same woman begins to date a person from another community, she again begins to change bodies. Notice the ways in which we understand these changes more as physical than felt. Shamanic ecologies tend to be interested in more material forms of causality, that is, effect. In contrast, an agential event pursuing a mystic form of participation would do it differently. They might locate real change not in the pants or communal bodies but in attitudes and beliefs. The mystic ecology enacts and feels into the subjective experiences, what we might understand as future-space-affect while shamanic forms of participation feel into the physicality-cum-perspective of past-space-effects inhabited via the bell bottoms or communal bodies. Within shamanic ecologies, life is a series of diverse bodies—material effect. For mystic ecologies, life is more akin to a series of distinct subjectivities— idea like affects. Within divinatory ecologies, in contrast, what is of most interesting are particular relational and/or emotional habits that are at play. On a relative scale these emotional tendencies fall somewhere in between effect and affect. Past and future have no meaning within these temporally circular ecologies. Within a divinatory ecology the bodily effects of pants are far less important than the emotional or aesthetic tone that they embody. Each ecology has a singular way of engaging any giving situation. Each is literally enacting and engaging in slightly different worlds. For Whitehead (1978, 232) there is a stylistic point to be made. The way, or the mode, through which a feeling is experienced or felt offers a clue. If we examine the mode and/or intricacies of feeling, we can locate the purpose of the subjective aim, and the challenges that have been faced. As we examine the peculiar meaning that is enjoyed, we also gain some knowledge regarding what has been left out or ignored. To use a fundamental Whiteheadian term, different ecologies and ontologies prehend differently. By way of discerning some crucial differences, Whitehead differentiates prehensions into simple physical feelings and conceptual feelings. And, as he fully admits, such distinctions are relative and arbitrary. Whitehead is theorizing from the basic assumption that different agential events can be interested in different kinds of feelings. One arbitrary way of distinguishing between them is to liken them to experiences like materiality and ideas, for Whitehead, mental and physical poles. In this way, every agential event is dipolar. Located as a time-space between past (effect-materialityoutsides) and future (affect-ideas-insides). But no event is purely physical or subjective, but rather relatively so. Every event is unique in its final agential aim. Every agent is its own angel. All events are actual occasions, and so beholden to what Barad calls an agential cut.

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A rock, a cell, a dog, and a dolphin are good examples here. Each in their own way is enacting some particular ecology by way of prehending and/ or feeling what has come before (the intimacy of past dwellings) alongside what is possible (the diversity of distinct crossings). As I continue to point out throughout these pages, we really must be humble as we speculate in this way. So many theorists adopt posthuman stances too easily, without acknowledging the obvious limitations required by their ontological limitations. How does corn enact its world? Or, what is the language of corn? How these ecologies might be articulated is anyone’s guess. As we are not dolphins or rocks, we are left with human language as one of the most viable pathways for our speculations. We can never fully know how cells decide. The three basic spatial assumptions fleshed out by Levinson (intrinsic, absolute, and relative) generally parallel Whitehead’s own three-fold schema (propositional feeling, propositional thinking, and rational knowing). A more in-depth consideration of these terms can help us better understand my distinct ontological starting points and their subsequent ecologies. Propositional feelings, for Whitehead, are particular in their emphasis on difference. Think Derrida’s différance, new materialist animacies, and Massumi’s effective intensities. “A proposition,” says Whitehead, “enters into experience as the entity forming the datum of a complex feeling derived from the integration of a physical feeling with a conceptual feeling” (Whitehead 1978, 256). Though I cannot argue this point too strongly, we might see this as a first big step in human language. What Donald (1991) speculates is a mimetic speech-act-leap from the episodic gestures of our more animal and bird-like ecologies of participation. Again, these distinctions can be arbitrary, but they are also helpful to clarify. Shamanic ecologies are enacted through intrinsic binaries (Levinson) and propositional feelings (Whitehead). They are enacted through an awareness of topographical sensuous distinctions. This is a first intensive step from the “unconsciousness” (for Whitehead) physical feelings (of rocks and metals, for example), and the “conscious” propositional feelings of humans. Throughout his work, Whitehead gives special privilege to those forms of participation that are most human. He also highlights naturalist leaning ecologies as “higher.” As with all authors we must be aware of Whitehead’s blind spots and limitations. I bring attention throughout these pages to the strong emphasis on materiality that is popular among so many authors today. I call out Barad and Vásquez for their narrow focus on materiality and effect. And just as Vásquez called out James for his subjectivism, we can do the same for Whitehead. Whitehead is far too enamored with affect, futures, and adventures of ideas. We must all be careful here and help each other out. We need

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the intimacies and crossings of all ecologies if we are going to succeed. And yet, we can learn a lot from Whitehead’s work. As one example, while the definition of consciousness remains vague and illusory within many academic communities, Whitehead is relatively clear on this point. Consciousness can be found somewhere around the juncture at which propositions enter into experience. Consciousness can be defined as the awareness of difference. It is located at the point that intrinsic binary relationships enter into the linguistic picture. Consciousness, for Whitehead, begins with propositional feelings. This is great, at least to the extent that it is clear. But it is also helpful for another reason. Consciousness, when read through Whitehead’s work, is no longer about insides and outsides, subjectivity and materiality. Within Whitehead’s work, there is no post/modern, naturalist, or animist dualism. Consciousness, then, is a relative matter. My toe feels solid and physical (past-space-effect) to “me,” while it is experiences as conscious (future-space-affect) to the cells that make it up. Consciousness then is relative all the way through. So, while Whitehead places conscious solely within his “higher phases” of participation, his work clearly opens the door for more. For Whitehead, “higher phases” are different not in kind but in degree. The difference being the amount of focus or intensity that is given toward differences between what has been and what might be. Affects are more interesting to Whitehead than effects. It is not hard to see a certain cognicentrism in Whitehead on this point. He is motivated more by what seems like subjective crossings and dwellings relative to his relative time-space. He places these as higher than those forms of participation more beholden to effect and materiality. He clearly articulates his assumption that the movement toward his mental pole of concrescence is more complex than movements toward what he understands as a physical pole of concrescence. Affect is more important than effect. While we should not lose sight of his emphasis, we should also be careful not to reject his work because of this. In contrast to Whitehead, I see these propositional feelings as similar to my shamanic ecologies of participation. Levinson and Wilkins (2006) understand their intrinsic frameworks by using topological adverbials. For example, a Warra speaker might say “[T]his child stand tree look” as opposed to “This child is standing here looking at the tree” (McGregor 2006, 153). Notice how, following Whitehead’s own distinction, what jumps out in the former is the propositional differences. These are more topographical in nature, and so characterized as intrinsic rather than relative frames of reference. In contrast, the second sentence locates the viewer-ground (child is standing, here looking, at the tree) as the primary frame of reference. The former is more inclined toward topographical differences like Whitehead’s propositional feelings, while the latter seems more in keeping with Whitehead’s intensely mental (and therefore conscious) feelings.

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Levinson and Wilkins (2006, 541) clarify that intrinsic frames of reference are earlier developments, necessary precursors to later absolute and relative frames. To the extent that we locate a narrow telos to the evolution of human language in particular, and to evolution in general, then we might agree with Whitehead that shamanic ecologies are less complex when compared to his higher phases of concrescence. But of course, this point is complex. Bennett’s emphasis on vibrant matter is a perfect case in point. The publics co-created by what we discount as just matter are incredibly complex in their own ways. As Barad says, “[T]hey kick back” (2007, 215). They have effect. In the words of Timothy Morton (2013), there are hyperobjects that have massive effects and affects on our lives. What aspects of climate change are pushing us from behind? What aspects are pulling us from the future? Similarly, rather than drawing up simple linear comparisons that place shamanic, divinatory, and mystic forms of participation along a progressive developmental line, it would be more useful to talk about different kinds of power, different forms of participation and enaction, each with their own merit. Having said this, we can return to Whitehead’s demarcation of the differences between propositional feelings and his other phases of concrescence. Whitehead’s first of these phases focuses on what he terms comparative feelings. To my way of thinking, this is where the practice of divinatory participation begins. As we move toward more “mental” phases (I include propositional feelings here) of concrescence (again this is completely relative to our own peculiar time-space), there are distinct ways that difference is noticed. Whitehead sees this as a move toward greater intensity, which it is, but a particular kind of intensity. These are not, for example, Massumi’s intensities but rather movements toward subjectivity and relative (mystic) frames of reference. One could argue just as easily that shamanic participation (and subsequently intrinsic frames of reference and/or propositional feelings) are more intense to the extent that they elaborate intimate topographical spaces (e.g., Malpas 1999, 2006, 2012, 2015). While we can see the nexus that emphasize propositional feelings as shamanic ecologies, we can see the intensification along Whitehead’s mental pole of concrescence enacting novel nexuses: novel ecologies that can be inhabited and enjoyed by more future-space-affect oriented occasions. Actual occasions that emphasize propositional feelings tend toward the shamanic, and ingress a diversity of nexuses that we can term bodies. In occasions that place greater emphasis on conceptual prehensions, something more like relational affect becomes interesting. Inherent to this process is a move from propositional feelings (shamanic participation, and an emphasis on physical prehensions) toward intellectual or comparative propositions (divinatory participation, and a greater emphasis on conceptual prehensions). In this case, the proposition acting as lure enters

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into the awareness of the concrescing occasion, effectively becoming a new datum or object to be prehended, that is, felt. The proposition itself contains three basic parts. In the proposition “I will grow a living house,” there is a definite set of past actualities that are being physically prehended, a particular “I” being referenced. The “I” is made sensible by being relevant to a definite set of past actualities. This “I” becomes the logical subject of the proposition. Included within this sentence are the words living and house, which point to a definite set of possibilities that are conceptually prehended relative to the logical subject of the sentence. They are experienced more as affect than effect, again, relative to a peculiar time-space. A living house could mean a tree, if the “I” in the sentence is a bird in a child’s story that is talking about its house. If the “I” is the author of this book, “living house” takes on a very different meaning. These words make up a predicate, meaning that they consist of a definite set of possibilities that are relevant to the logical subject of the proposition. There is one more important part of the proposition above, which is the propositional feeling (also called a copulative verb). The logical subject means to integrate or actualize the predicate of the sentence. In this case, “I” means to “grow a living house.” The propositional feeling points to the degree to which the predicate corresponds to the logical subject. “I have not grown a living house” has a greater correspondence between predicate and subject than “I am growing a living house.” We see here that propositions can tend toward truth (conformal propositions) or falsity (non-conformal) propositions. Another way to understand this is through Tweed’s terminology. Conformal propositions tend toward the intimate dwellings or common assumptions of any ecology, while the non-conformal propositions point toward alterity and crossings. As Whitehead places greater emphasis on his mental pole of concrescence, he is not as interested in the sensual topological crossings of shamanic participation (i.e., propositional feelings). He places his own emphasis on the crossings and dwellings of more mental ecologies. To this end he writes, “False propositions have fared badly, thrown into the dustheap, neglected. But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true” (1978, 259). Non-conformal propositions are our vehicles of creative advance, the mechanism of itinerant transformations. Now while alterity is important, intimacy is also paramount. Whitehead’s tendency is toward the former, especially the crossings of mystics. Transformation requires a modicum of freedom wherein there are relatively few restrictions on what is possible. Dwelling is a practice of maintenance through nurturing intimacy, while crossing is a practice that highlights novelty through nurturing alterity. This means that propositions like “the car runs” provides less opportunity for transformation or the ingression of novel

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selves, bodies, or cosmoses than propositions like “the car is powered by water.” Transformation requires freedom from the intimacy of past dwellings. And freedom from the coherence of these intimate dwellings requires an increasing intensification or emphasis along the mental or physical poles. Whitehead is less interested in the latter and breaks propositions into several stages of increasing mental intensity. This is useful to the extent that it parallels the development of human language as articulated by Levinson and his peers. Whitehead is clear that his designation of stages is somewhat arbitrary in that they could be distinguished in an infinite number of ways. I am clear that this whole project of distinguishing different levels of participation is completely arbitrary. It is a thoroughly human endeavor, but an important speculative adventure all the same. Whitehead tells us that the first of these three propositional feelings indicates the feeling of a contrast between what is possible and what is actual. Once this contrast is felt, the participatory event (concrescing occasion) reacts to this felt sense in itself and proceeds to make a relatively unconscious but important decision. As an actual occasion goes through concrescence it has three phases. It feels the concrete past (intimacy with relevant dwellings, e.g., similar bodies, cosmoses, and selves), feels into the possible future (itinerant crossings toward alterity, e.g., different bodies, cosmoses, and selves), and then enjoys a decision based on what has been felt along a spectrum of intimacy and alterity relevant to its ecology. This point is Barad’s agential cut, the concrete enjoyment of Whitehead’s actual occasion. For Whitehead, there is no-thing beyond this. At this point, it would be easy to conflate our own decision-making processes with Whitehead’s use of decision here, but that would be a mistake. Agential participation is not equivalent or reducible to human speech acts or subjectivities. There are many ways in which we make “decisions.” If we largely ignore all future possibilities (diverse crossings), then we generally bring the past (dwelling) into the present (dwelling) in a conformal (intimate) manner. When we do this, we are primarily working with the “true” or intimate/conformal propositions that I locate within the context of common sense and homebodies. Propositional feelings are one (shamanic) step toward the mental pole from more physical dwellings (to use Whitehead’s spectrum between physical and mental poles). By focusing on potentially diverse crossings, the occasion is pointing to a possible future, not an actual one. Here we can say that a propositional feeling is still relatively unconscious (again, this does not need to contain a value judgment, but rather simply points toward the mental pole) because even though the contrast between actual and possible is felt, the result is an unconscious reaction. Propositional feelings are more sensuous and vital in their feeling into bodily dwellings and

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crossings. If I am walking along saying to myself, “Woman, woman, woman” and this is true, then I am working with a conformal (intimate) proposition, and no novelty (alterity) is introduced. If I am walking along saying to myself, “Human, human, not human, human” then some novelty has been introduced. Maybe as I am walking along I suddenly turn left toward my home, moved by a kind of vital agency (á la Bennett’s vibrant matter) toward a place where I know I can find some reassurance that I am indeed human. Maybe, if I am more of the diversity-seeking shamanic-crossings type, I move toward “not human” and see what that is like. Now the way that this example is written is important. I did not write, “I am human,” but rather, “human, not human.” I wish to point out with this sentence a contrast that is felt between human and not human, while a certain level of physically oriented prehensions are maintained. I have introduced a false proposition, not human, within a context where the commonsense conformal proposition should actually be “human.” A certain amount of intensity is placed on the mental pole whereby a false proposition can be felt. A movement is made toward a divinatory ecology. At the same time, the action that is taken is mostly vital or physical (more akin to Bennett’s publics). This is an important point, and it should not be glanced over. There is just enough intensity in a propositional feeling that some diversity can be invited in. But this is about bodies and shamanic ecologies, not selves or cosmoses. Vital sensuous (shamanic) dwellings and crossings are what are most interesting at this point. As we increase the emphasis of mental intensity we move to the next phase, which Whitehead (1978, 266) calls comparative or intellectual feeling. During a comparative feeling, an awareness of the contrast between what is possible and what is actual begins to take shape. This allows the formation of a judgment (a divinatory comparison-cum-oracular-truth), which opens the possibility of a conscious decision that is closer toward the mental than the physical pole of concrescence. If I am walking along saying to myself, “Human, human, human–not human, human, human, human–not human,” some diversity has entered into possibility. Notice the difference between, “Human, human, not human, human,” and, “human, human, human–not human, human.” In the first, the contrast is felt between different events or experiences, whereas in the second the contrast is felt within one experience. In order for a contrast to come to “awareness” or consciousness, it must happen within the same event rather than between events. We can see this even more clearly when we look at the words “not human” by themselves and then look at the words “human–not human” by themselves. The latter actually requires us to pause for a moment and consider the relationship that is present. This is not the case with the first set of words. By feeling into this difference, we can begin to understand what Whitehead is attempting to explain to us. He is saying that a new form of participation

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becomes interesting at the point where a contrast is felt within the duration of one event. This awareness is an awareness of the relationship between an actuality and a possibility (a dwelling and a crossing), and it requires us to slow down, to place emphasis on the mental pole for a greater duration before coming to a decision. We are being asked to make a conscious judgment: to speak a divinatory comparative performative truth. If we take even more time emphasizing an increased intensity of the mental pole, we will come to experience what I am here calling rational knowing (terminology of rational knowing adopted from Hosinski 1993, 121). Rational knowing comes into play when an occasion is able to compare contrasts over the course of several events. In this way, a concrescing occasion can assess the value or the truth of the diversities that are felt. One example of this would be to take a non-conformal proposition (crossing), “I am not human,” and compare it with a conformal proposition (dwelling), “I am human.” This can be done over the course of several moments, so while feeling human (a particular dwelling), one can compare that feeling to the possibility of not being human (a potential crossing). Notice what an incredible difference there is between the use of these propositions and what has come before. Here an occasion can be so reflective in such a way as to consider an obviously false proposition (a diverse crossing) over and against the actuality of its experience (its dwelling). We have now opened up the possibility of mystic participation. An occasion can differentiate between human and not human, and decide whether or not what it is feeling itself is human or is not. In effect, we have defined human. We can now compare human with other things that are not human. Imagine Aristotle delighting in his categorical logic. Not-human might be one example, but so is spider, or skateboard. A spider is a thing that has eight legs. We can compare experiences that have little or no obvious relation to one another because an emphasis has been placed on the mental pole to the extent that several propositions can be compared within the experience of one event or occasion. In addition to such truth statements and similar value statements, notice that the occasion has recognized itself as existing over the course of several moments, and so is also able to coherently say, “I am human.” The “I am” is at the heart of adventures in mystic ecologies of participation. To be or not to be, that is what moves mystic ecologies toward contemplation. Up until this point an “I” statement is not within the realm of actuality. There is no I (as in viewer-ground) in shamanic or divinatory ecologies. But now an I can be considered. We have moved from feeling a contrast and moving in a vital shamanic way, to becoming aware of a contrast and making a comparative or divinatory judgment, to becoming aware of a subject (an “I”) that exists over several moments (and subsequently an objective world out there, i.e.,

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Nature). This has all happened because of an increased emphasis on the mental pole of an occasion. As we have moved from propositional feeling to intellectual feeling and on to rational knowing, we have increased the intensity of emphasis placed on the mental pole. By doing so, we have opened up unique possibilities for diverse propositions to be realized. Diverse crossings betwixt bodies, cosmoses, and selves are all new possibilities. Having considered all these potentials for enacting diverse crossings, it is important that we not forget the crucial role of intimacy and dwellings. If an occasion were to maintain an emphasis on the mental pole of concrescence, then the more extraordinary propositions that may have been glimpsed would remain as potentialities only. The same, I assume, would be true the other way around. Too great an emphasis on diversity along the physical pole would also lead to frustrated attempts at crossings. The farthest reaches of the mental imagination and physical publics will remain nothing but potentia as long as emphasis is kept at the far end of either physical or mental poles. In order for extraordinary propositions and crossings to embody or enjoy themselves in actuality, emphasis must shift back to some shared intimacy with existing dwellings. We can see this in a person who tends toward flights of imagination. If this person is never compelled to test their imagination against the physical limitations of actuality, then they simply wander farther and farther off into subjective fantasies. As emphasis on the mental poles and affective futures continues in this way, the imaginations, or non-conformal propositions and crossings, begin to lose any reference to the physical pole—to bodies and effect. In effect, the predicate of the proposition has less and less relevance to the logical subject of the proposition, and so the copulative verb becomes meaningless, as the concrescing occasion cannot integrate the ever more disjunctive pieces of the proposition. Without an attempt to check the possibility of integrating the proposition into the actual, the occasion gets lost in a world of fantasy. Seeking the extreme idiocy of some mystic-oriented ecologies, it forgoes the intimacies of divinatory and shamanic ecologies. Having reached the limits of non-conformal propositions (mystic crossings) that have the possibility to become actual dwellings and/or ecologies, we must shift the emphasis back to the physical pole so as to attempt to involve or actualize these non-conformal propositions. CONCLUSION I have assumed in this chapter that true diversity is dependent neither on efficient causation nor on linear development. My purpose on one level has been

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to call into question those post/modern theories and systems that put forward a transformation of simply located “things” or factishes through a progressive linear development. My intention is to illustrate a view of transformation that honors the incredible complexity of our planetary predicament– or at least the complexity actuality as co-created via human language. I have been able to clarify how novel bodies, cosmoses, and selves could become ecologies and/ or dwellings. That being said, it must be noted that Whitehead is deeply committed to the notion of ultimate freedom. His is not a monistic and/or deterministic world of Newtonian factishes. Rather, he offers a process-oriented theory of concrescence. An agential realism, whereby participatory events enact diverse crossings and intimate dwellings. From this starting point, he begins to unfold a view of actuality that is not beholden to any sort of continuity, whether animist (Culture, the people), naturalist (Nature), or talismanic (Culture-Nature). To this end Whitehead is highly critical of what he sees as an Aristotelian tradition that emphasizes a procession of natural forms (a very important mystic ecology). He is even more critical of the scientific materialism that frames these forms as simple static things (the factishes of the flatland mystic ecology I have referenced as post/modern). By inquiring into forms of participation and process, Whitehead’s work speaks to how something truly novel or diverse can come into existence against the backdrop of Creativity. Viewed in abstraction, an object appears to be passive and static, lacking in agency. But when we take a closer look, we see that there is no such static thing. Rather, we find agency is inherent at all levels. We have not done away with formal and final cause. Our relative future affects, and our agential aim in final. What we find here, says Whitehead (1933, 179), is an active process of creation whereby what is novel comes into the world. As such, Creativity becomes a universal for Whitehead. A verb, rather than a noun, a function rather than a substance or essence. This does two things for Whitehead. First, by placing a process over substance or essence, the possibility of real novelty comes into play. There is no universal one—for example, Nature for mystics, Cosmos for diviners, Culture for shamans—that ultimately reduces all difference to illusion. In some basic way, diversity becomes a new ontological ground. Every occasion of becoming brings with it a novel iteration of togetherness. Continuity is not given, rather it becomes, and then perishes. “Thus the ‘production of novel togetherness’ is the ultimate notion embodied in the term ‘concrescence’” (1978, 21). In considering Whitehead’s words, there can be no mistaking the importance of Creativity within his thought. Based on this non-local actuality, Whitehead allows himself incredible freedom to consider multiple forms of causality. In a traditional post/modern world, we are limited by an efficient causation that requires an isolated object

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to effectively run into another such object. Factish bumpings are the only causal relationship that count. For Whitehead, these simple passive objects are dead and lifeless. “Thus for Newtonians,” he tells us, “nature yielded no reasons: it could yield no reasons. Combining Newton and Hume we obtain a barren concept. . . . [I]t is this situation that modern philosophy from Kant onwards has in its various ways sought to render intelligible. My own belief is that this situation is a reductio ad absurdum, and should not be accepted as the basis for philosophic speculation” (1938, 135). These are strong words, and he goes on to ask, “How do we add content to the notion of bare activity? Activity for what, producing what, activity involving what?” (1938, 147). His answer? “Process for its intelligibility involves the notion of a creative activity belonging to the very essence of each occasion. It is the process (concrescence of actual occasions) of eliciting into actual being factors in the universe (eternal objects) which antecedently to that process exist only in the mode of unrealized potentialities” (1938, 151). We could say that this is the how and the why (Creativity) that novelty (unrealized potentialities) are incorporated into actuality (any number of ecologies). Creativity, then, is the short answer to the question of how to make sense of what Ferrer terms participatory enaction. Whitehead is certainly on a philosophical adventure. And many critics have already condemned this work. Almost one hundred years after Whitehead wrote these words, William Desmond (2012b, 12) has defended the idea of philosophy as adventure by distinguishing between the scholarly habits of what he terms the “wise homebodies” of academia and the “idiocy” that is the hallmark of any would-be philosopher-cum-mystic/shaman/divinatory-participation: “There is a certain excess of being characteristic of what it means to be a self, which can never be completely objectified in an entirely determinate way” (2012b, 47). He is pointing us toward the edges of the acceptable and warning us that academia, like any other community, is largely made up of those who want to maintain the status quo. Depending on what side of the line you fall, the words “status quo” might elicit strong reactions. Maybe you are on the side of intimacy and proven academic dwellings. If so, status quo and gatekeepers sound just fine. Maybe you are on the side of diversity and novel scholarly crossings, then the same words make you draw back. While I tend toward the latter, I am trying to play both sides. When I speak of shamanic, mystic, and divinatory ecologies of participation in these pages, I am considering those forms of participation willing and able to move beyond the accepted boundaries of their communities in very particular ways. Shamanic ecologies intermingle bodies and mystic ecologies contemplate new interiors and selves, while divinatory ecologies perform interesting comparative relationships within arbitrary but no less real cosmoses. Participants in these ecologies are pushing at the boundaries of their

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communities and their intimate dwellings, while also working to mend the tears and ruptures that naturally occur in the life of any group. Whitehead writes of self-enjoyment—which I reduce to self/enjoyment, whereby agential-self cannot be discerned from agential cuts or choices—a form of participation that is always tempered by concern. “Idiocy,” writes Desmond, “also has a certain implication of intimacy” (2012a, 271). We can see a parallel between Tweed’s itinerant movements toward diversity, tempered by a real need for the intimacy of established dwellings. For Desmond, the singularity of any adventure—even creative self/enjoyment—must be tempered, not just by the willingness to wander itinerantly beyond, but also by an intimacy that is as absorbing as any boundary crossing could be. No one ontological starting point offers a complete suite of ethical norms. Rather, we must continue cross-ecological crossings and dwellings to create a workable planetary ethic. Following a similar line of thought, Harding spoke above about the importance of “home,” appropriately critical of philosophy and science as they favor ascetic practices that isolate them from shamanic and divinatory dwellings. Harding tells us that modernity and patriarchy are only “at home” to the extent that the distinction between public and private life can be maintained. It is this distinction between private and public that my stance as scholarpractitioner seeks to blur. A way forward is to encourage both intimacy with shamanic, divinatory, and mystic dwellings, in conjunction with diverse crossings via these distinct forms of participation as well. As one example, we can turn to the wise homebodies of academia who may not tolerate how forthcoming I am in these pages. They have a job to do. They are maintaining their own mystic post/modern dwellings, their objective and reflexive selves. But I also have a job to do, and fortunately I am not alone. I argue in these pages that dwellings and crossings of multiple and conflicting ecologies should all be included within our scholarship. In order to accomplish this, we need more than words and theories. We need our theories to be affected by our shamanic ecologies with their emphasis on diverse bodies as well as the multitude of oracular performances available to us in the form of divinatory ecologies. We need theorists that can provide a powerful mending of home life and scholarly life. Jorge N. Ferrer writes of our participatory predicament—that the use of the word “participatory alludes to the fact that spiritual knowing [or any other kind of knowing] is not objective, neutral, or merely cognitive” (2008, 137). Knowing is a form of communion that is not only intrapersonal (intimacy of dwelling) or transpersonal (diverse crossings) but also interpersonal (between multiple and conflicting ecologies) as well. Ferrer’s scholarship develops the idea fleshes out his approach to our participatory predicament—which is increasingly a planetary predicament as well—through what he calls participatory knowing. It is to Ferrer’s work, and this idea of participatory knowing, that I turn in the following chapter.

Chapter 7

Participatory Knowing, Ecologizing Ethics

To delve more deeply into what I term ecologies of participation, we must consider what Jorge N. Ferrer (2002, 122–23; 2008) calls participatory knowing, a theoretical stance modeled in no small part on the enactive approach of Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, Eleanor Rosch, and Evan Thompson (Maturana and Varela 1987; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991). One of the major theoretical thrusts of this project is that actuality and our lived experience are akin to a series of Whitehead’s actual occasions, or what Ferrer calls participatory events. Though deeply challenging to post/modern assumptions about the nature of a flatland world of factishes, this idea is fairly straightforward. “Participatory knowing, then,” writes Ferrer, “is not a mental representation of pregiven, independent [object], but an enaction, the bringing forth of a world or domain of distinctions cocreated by the different elements in the participatory event” (2002, 123). The facts that make up the fabric of actuality are “drops of experience, complex and interdependent” (Whitehead 1978, 18), with Ferrer emphasizing that participatory knowing is presential, enactive and transformative (2002, 122–23). This must be understood in sharp contrast to the post/modern materialist flatland that many take for granted, a world made up of static, isolated things. This subtle and pervasive belief—that there is a Hobbesian materialist world that is simply “there”—must be reckoned with if we are to attempt a working philosophy that addresses both the challenges of comparative philosophy and religion in the twenty-first century as well as the planetary predicament we all face in relation to life in the anthropocene. Participatory knowing is presential in that it is lived. It requires more than a view from nowhere, a disembodied objective point of view. It requires a multiple ecology approach. My lived experience with my wife and daughter, for example, is complex: I feel a variety of strong emotions that my wife or daughter experience. We are sharing bodies, and so sharing 191

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a particular sort of shamanic ecology. By this, I do not mean that we each have an isolated body, an atomic unit located in post/modern space. Rather, I mean we inhabit an intimate and vital shared experience that is our familial body. We also have a relatively arbitrary but efficacious story we tell about ourselves, a relational network that is intimate and meaningful to us. We enjoy shamanic and divinatory dwellings. A good post/modern would jump in here, claiming a subject-object divide between what seems to be experienced (the subjective, possibly epiphenomenal, inside world) and what actually is (the static, objective outside world). Talk of shared bodies and a meaningful talismanic cosmos is antithema to the naturalism inhabited by post/moderns. Ferrer’s emphasis on the presential nature of participatory knowing reimagines the post/modern subject-object dualism by focusing on a nonmodern understanding of concrete experience. Like so many authors referenced in these pages, he assumes that all of experience is concrete—felt in some way. From this new context, he then proceeds to makes sense of abstractions. Following a similar line of thought, Whitehead (1978, 20) writes, “The true philosophic question is, How can concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet participated in by its own nature?” This is one of Whitehead’s great contributions to twentieth-century philosophy, a trait shared by many authors who selfdescribe or are labeled by others as critical, feminist, and continental. He insists that we begin with the messy complexity of our concrete lived experience, and then try to make sense of it. For example, if I am going to imagine myself as an isolated person, I must first address the complexity of my familial life and then attempt to understand how my wife and daughter are both separate from and co-created with me. It might be perfectly fine to imagine abstract entities like lumber, metal, and hamburger, but I really should remember that these abstractions were and continue to be embedded within vital living communities. What would I be without the people in my life? What is lumber without a forest, or a forest without trees? Though no answer exists, questions like this drive countless human attempts at meaning making. Bertrand Russell (1918, 44) sums up one such attempt when he writes, The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know—it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.

Philosophy, continues Russell, has yet to climb to these lofty and abstract heights. A quick survey of the humanities departments in most major colleges

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and universities around the world underlines the fact that not only is this true, but they are still trying. The search for social scientific results continues to dominate. The humanities, especially to the extent that they do not follow this trend, tend to lose funding and serious consideration. Sometimes held lightly, sometimes pushed to extremes, the search for unbiased objectivities motivates and undergirds our post/modern scientific assumptions. This scientism is a peculiar sort of mystic ecology, and yet it is not as dissimilar as from its Greek, Judeo-Christian, and Islamic roots as post/ moderns would like to think. Each of these traditions places emphasis on what Levinson’s neo-Whorfian work considers relative frames of reference. These naturalist ecologies focus intently on methods whereby they might limit the bias inherent to their triangulated perspective between figure-viewer and ground. There is a basic anxiety inherent to mystic ecologies. They fear the relativism of their positionality. Therefore postcolonial, feminist, and other critiques have had so much force. Post/moderns do not want to admit that theirs is an ecology of participation. But their truths are made up, literally, relative to a certain location. While they can be highly generalizable to all sorts of contexts, they can never be universal. There simply is no objective truth. Aiming to contextualize, rather than turn away from, the cognicentric approaches that continue to be championed by post/modernity, Ferrer and co-author Jacob Sherman defend a multidimensional form of cognition. “In this spirit,” they write, “we propose that a deeper and broader [philosophy] can emerge from the integration of our Romantic hearts (intuition, feeling, imagination), Enlightened minds (reason and critical inquiry), sensuous bodies (somatic and erotic knowing), and contemplative consciousness (mystical knowing)” (2008, 40). Notice that reason and critical inquiry are not replaced or antecedent to intuition or erotic imagination. Bacon’s cognicentric scientism, writes Whitehead (1978, 4–5), left out imagination. Not wild flights of disassociated fancies, but the necessary act of creative inspirations grounded in our shared concrete worlds. This is an intelligence for Whitehead, especially when it is engaged in relationship to the twin requirements of coherence and logic. By emphasizing the presential nature of cognition, Ferrer ensures that we do not lose a connection with the complexity of our lived experience. Not only are we reminded of our relative position, we also become aware that there are other ways to approach knowledge. Focusing, as he does, on the commonsense experience of having a vital, sensuous, erotic experience (shamanic ecologies of participation and their intrinsic though limited vitalities-cum-bodies), a heart-centered relational experience (divinatory ecologies of participation and their absolute but ultimately arbitrary performative truths), and a contemplative, mind-centered experiences (mystic ecologies of participation and their objective and/or reflexive, but ultimately relative truths), Ferrer marks out the boundaries of

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Table 7.1  Basic Forms of Participatory Knowing (Ecologies of Participation) Cabot

Levinson Descola

Viveiros de Castro

Ferrer

Talismanic/ Absolute Divinatory Animism/ Intrinsic Shamanic Naturalism/Mystic Relative

Totemism

n/a

Romantic Heart

Animism

Animist Perspectivism Naturalism

Sensuous/Vital Body

Creative/Agential

Analogism* n/a

n/a

Naturalism

Enlightened/ Contemplative Mind** Enactive participatory knowing

* I am critical of Descola’s category of analogism and reimagine it in chapters 3 and 4. ** I find it helpful to reduce Ferrer’s distinction between the enlightened mind and contemplative consciousness to a single form of participation.

a viable cross-cultural comparative schema that I adapt for my own purposes here (see table 7.1). With the focus, so far on the presential aspect of participatory knowing, the forms of participation outlined above might appear to be predicated on epistemological distinctions. The issues addressed in these pages are, however, of an ontological rather than an epistemological nature. Remember, Ferrer asserts that there are also enactive and transformational aspects of his participatory knowing. “The systematization of knowledge cannot be conducted in watertight compartments,” writes Whitehead (1978, 10). Cognition is presential, contextualized within and as the experience of the particular philosopher. He goes on: “Each fact is more than its forms [enaction], and each form ‘participates’ throughout the world of facts [transformation]” (1978, 20). There is a modicum of creativity or agential novelty inherent in every occasion, every participatory event. The world is not simply “there,” as in “out there,” static and waiting to be discovered and/or represented. ENACTION AND PARTICIPATORY KNOWING In order to better understand Ferrer’s means by enaction, I consider Evan Thompson’s (2007, 13) work as he argues for five basic ideas unified in Varela, Rosch, and Thompson’s The Embodied Mind: 1. Living beings are autonomous agents that actively generate and maintain themselves, and thereby also enact or bring forth their own cognitive domains. 2. The nervous system is an autonomous dynamic system: It actively generates and maintains its own coherent and meaningful patterns of activity. . . .

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The nervous system does not process information in the computationalist sense, but creates meaning. 3. Cognition is the exercise of skillful know-how in situated and embodied action. Cognitive structures and processes emerge from recurrent sensorimotor patterns of perception and action. 4. A cognitive being’s world is not a prespecified, external realm, represented internally by its brain, but a relational domain enacted or brought forth by that being’s autonomous agency and mode of coupling with the environment. 5. Experience is not an epiphenomenal side issue, but is central to any understanding of the mind and needs to be investigated in a careful, phenomenological manner. Building on Thompson’s first point, I argue that cognition cannot be reduced to positivist causation and epiphenomena, nor can it be isolated from interactions and communion (seen as objective awareness). A participatory approach must define itself as distinct from the flatland materialism that is so prevalent in contemporary thought. It must not fall in alongside the scientific mechanism that goes largely unexamined in our communities. A participatory approach must stand up to traditions, like the Neo-Darwinism or the new atheists, that continues to draw arbitrary lines of conflict between scientific and religious people (see Plantinga 2012). A participatory approach is an enactive approach, and as such it must honor different forms of causation. It cannot limit itself to post/modern mechanistic efficient causality. On Thompson’s third point (and related to his first), cognition is participatory in the sense that Ferrer has termed presential. In contrast to a naturalist set of assumptions like the Cartesian model wherein someone (subject) knows an objective something (object/nature), participatory knowing is understood as an “embodied presence pregnant with meaning that transforms both self and world” (Ferrer 2002, 121). Cognition is not abstract or distant, but subject to the constant interplay of “perception and action.” It is creative, agential, and constructive. Not just on an epistemological level. Focusing on diverse epistemologies does not go far enough. Agential participation is creative at an ontological level. The fourth idea articulated by Thompson suggests that—following a similar line of thought as Ferrer (2002, 118) when he asserts the existence of participatory events—actuality is not simply subjective or objective. Actuality is not some prespecified “out there,” no more than it is something that can be isolated “in here”; neither the realists nor the idealists have it right. Rather, in following shamanic forms of participation (animism), we find that diverse physicalities/worlds/natures/bodies are enacted. There is not one continuous world that we simply represent; rather there is an enactive process whereby multiple distinct physicalities/worlds/natures/bodies can become real.

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Similarly, we can also see diverse subjectivities-ultimates being enacted. This is what we find when we follow mystic forms of participation (naturalism). Neither shamanic nor mystic forms of participation are more or less efficacious, more or less enactive, or more or less capable of transformation and metamorphosis. Cognition is not simply representational, with an emphasis on the mind, representations, abstractions, and particular points of view (as highlighted in mystic ecologies and relative frames of reference). Cognition is enactive and participatory, and as such it points to a relational domain: what I have termed divinatory forms of participation (analogism). Truth is often as arbitrary as it is beautiful. Every participatory event, then, can enact novel experiences that are in some important way sensuous and vital (the body swapping of shamanic ecologies), intuitive and beautiful (divinatory ecologies and their enactions of diverse cosmoses), as well as reflexive and/or objective (like those of the mystic ecologies and their diversity of subjectivities). Three points must be kept in mind here. First, there really are no pure ecologies, where only shamanic forms of participation, for example, are utilized. Rather, every ecology has in potentia all of these forms available, yet in practice tends toward one or another or some combination of the three. It is also important to remember that all this talk of shamanic (animist), divinatory (analogist), and mystic (naturalist) forms of participation is weighted heavily toward the human in general, and human language in particular. That is not to say that only these three forms are available to humans or others like bats, single-celled organisms, and trees. There must be a dizzying diversity of modes of participation. Something that becomes clearer as we consider the origins of this enactive approach. In an edited volume on the subject of enaction, John Stewart writes that an enactive approach offers a viable paradigm for the field of cognitive science. He affirms that by signifying cognition as a fundamental feature of living organisms, enaction creates a clear path beyond “Cartesian dualism, idealistic monism, and materialistic monism” (2010, 1). It is important to note this critical feature of the enactive approach in relation to arguments that have been brought against the ontological turn in anthropology. Specifically, the important work of João de Pina-Cabral (2014b, 2014a), which follows Donald Davidson’s arguments for a single-world monistic ontology. Like other authors highlighted in previous chapters, Pina-Cabral voices important concerns regarding the problems of radical incommensurability between differing ontologies. He is afraid, like so many, that a multi-ontology approach leaves us in radically divergent worlds. Something that simply cannot be true. Again, this is why I use the term ecology rather than ontology when talking about our lived experiences. But we cannot let go of the latter word. Like so many others in these pages, Pina-Cabral’s emphasis on a post-Spinozian

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monistic substance falls short of honoring the differing forms of participation. Not only those detailed here, which at minimum include the participatory events and ecologies that are enacted via shamanic, mystic, and divinatory forms of participation but a plethora of others we cannot imagine. Again, we should follow the enactive approach, with its emphasis on agential creativity. To this end Stewart goes on to write that within the enactive approach, an organism begins to look less like a thing and more like a “process with the particular property of engendering itself indefinitely” (2010, 2). The emphasis on process is crucial here. Where Pina-Cabral (2014a, 57) argues for a shared world of becoming, this participatory approach develops something more akin to a process-oriented becoming of worlds. This distinction is fundamental and must be understood. If we want to defend agential realism and freedom, then we must stop asserting singular substances, that is, Nature, and idealist unifications, that is, Culture. Creativity and agency require something altogether alter, a far more radical becoming that the one defended by Pina-Cabral above. Following Thompson’s fifth point above, Stewart frames cognition as a fundamental locus of critical inquiry. But what is cognition? What is this process that is more fundamental than worlds? To answer this question, Thompson offers a brief account of the enactive approach and its “theory of autopoiesis” in relation to Kant’s (1987) consideration of “organic nature” found in the Critique of Judgment. Thompson writes that Kant offered a farreaching account of organisms that bore important similarities to the autopoeitic theory proffered by the enactive approach. This argument gives credence to my reading of participatory knowing and agential participation. In his theory of organic nature, says Thompson, Kant gave a teleological rather than a mechanistic account of the organism. He longed for a future Newton, one that could account for the production of a simple blade of grass without recourse to the mechanism of a Cartesian world and Newtonian physics. “So certain [are the limits of mechanical explanation],” writes Kant (1987, 283), “that we may boldly state that it is absurd for human beings even to attempt [mechanistic explanations of organized beings].” Following the essay by John F. Cornell “A Newton of the Grassblade?,” Thompson outlines three major Kantian assertions that he sees as undergirding Kant’s teleological theory. First, to be organic is to be self-organizing. Organisms have purpose, and therefore are teleological. This is what so many critical theorists want to reject. They assume their own agency, defend the idea of diversity, while rejecting the very notion of freedom that their theories require. We must be wary of postmoderns. Second, mechanism cannot account for organism. Mechanistic thought is fundamentally tied to efficient causation, while a teleological understanding requires final causality of some kind. We must

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be careful of moderns. Finally, no matter the extent to which efficient causation is explanatory within the context of biology, such causation will invariably have to be understood within a teleological understanding of organism (see Thompson 2007, 130). We must move beyond post/moderns and their flatlands. Again, it is important to take a moment to consider this threefold point. Cornell (1986, 407) writes, “The very recognition of a thing as a living organism, according to Kant’s analysis, entails thinking of the end of a sequence of causes as itself a cause; this is quite the opposite of the mechanistic causal notion. A tree, to take Kant’s simple example, displays characteristic properties suggesting that it is both cause and effect of itself.” For Thompson and Cornell, Kant lays a path for our contemporary conversations regarding teleology, in sharp contrast to the popular anti-metaphysical caricature of Kant’s work. For both authors, Kant’s Critique of Judgment calls into question a strict neo-Darwinian, mechanistic theory of evolution and therefore one of the most prevalent and far-reaching assumptions of the post/modern constitution: that the world is flat, that is, lacking all forms of causality beyond simple mechanistic factishes. It is helpful to delve a little more deeply here, as assumptions regarding teleology are so crucial to post/modern flatland ideologies. For biologistcum-philosopher Michael T. Ghiselin, Thompson, Cornell, and authors like them have it all wrong. Darwin is the Newton of the blade of grass, and “treating teleology as a Kantian regulative principle” is a thing of the past (Ghiselin 2005, 128). “Teleology,” writes Ghiselin (2005, 127), “is metaphysical delusion.” If I am going to succeed in my defense of participatory knowing, the enactive approach adopted by Ferrer must be able to answer this charge. Luckily for us Thompson does not shy away from critiques like the one offered by Ghiselin. Given certain advances in our contemporary sciences, Thompson tells us, one might be moved to consider Darwin’s theory in keeping with Kant’s criteria. Thompson clarifies that contemporary conversations revolving around the relations between mechanism and teleology are not as straightforward as they were when all that was available to theorists was Newtonian physics. ­Classical mechanistic views in physics have been superseded by contemporary physics wherein causality is not understood in strictly Newtonian mechanistic terms or explicitly teleological ones. Biologists and philosophers alike have come to understand causality in “teleonomic” or “functionalist” terms that are not beholden to classic Greek understandings of teleology that required final (Thompson’s backward causation), formal (Thompson’s anthropomorphic), or material causality (Thompson’s vitalism). There is some kind of middle road being developed between classic Greek teleology and modern mechanisms in contemporary science. But Thompson asserts,

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following Cornell, that Darwinian evolution as it was first advanced was thoroughly Newtonian and so fails the Kantian parameters set above. Kant, writes Thompson, was concerned with organization at the level of organic nature, arguing that the “Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection does not provide any account of organization at the level of biologically organized individuals that reproduce. Moreover, Darwin’s Newtonian framework, in which design arises from natural selection conceived of as an external force, does not address the endogenous self-organization of the organism” (2007, 133). Darwin’s original theory was not complete, by this account, and so we must look to new theories of “biological self-organization” to fully address Kant’s concerns (e.g., the enactive approach). Returning to the threefold Kantian stance above, there are organic organizations that cannot be accounted for simply by reference to efficient cause. Kant (1987, 236) writes that “we cannot hope to find a priori the slightest basis for that [purposive] unity unless we seek it beyond the concept of nature rather than in it.” Thompson contrasts the views of nineteenth-century British natural theologian William Paley and Kant in relation to Paley’s (1996) understanding of the role of divinity (Christian God) in organisms. Thompson sees Kant as distinguishing between divine purpose and natural purposes. His teleological view explains organisms as having been caused not by external rational agency of some kind, but rather by the organisms’ own formative (autopoeitic) powers. This point brings us directly back to Ghiselin’s critique. Ghiselin (2005, 126) is quite sure on this point. “To allow for change to be indefinite, and sufficient to permit the origin of new species, implies that we may need to rethink some of our fundamental metaphysical assumptions. Maybe species do not have essences.” He juxtaposes this Darwinian insight over and against a “pre-Darwinian” understanding of change. For pre-Darwinians, according to Ghiselin, change is understood as something superficial. Reality is something that pre-existed in the mind of God. There is an essential absolute quality to the world. Having been brought into existence by an act of God, change is then the realization of something that already existed. A kind of continuity characterizes this “pre-Darwinian” system that assumes that all movement is the unfolding of a pre-determined pattern. Ghiselin offers us an excellent account of the concerns held within mystic ecology of participation. He understands Darwinian evolutionary theory as a pointed critique of old ways of thinking. Darwin’s theory requires that something ontologically novel come into being. It calls for something like agential participation. It moves the philosophical conversation out of the abstract and into the concrete, the presential. “Epistemologically, therefore, the Darwinian ontology called for a radical empiricism,” writes Ghiselin (2005, 128), “albeit a sophisticated one. One way or another, claims about the natural world had to be justified on a strictly experiential basis. That includes the metaphysics,

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and on that basis, we are justified in considering metaphysics itself a natural science.” Ghiselin is defending novelty while being critical of determinism. He is calling for a turn from abstract to concrete, while making a case for what he calls radical empiricism. He is clarifying the line between what Whiteheadian scholar Michel Weber terms trans-formative and creative process thought. Weber writes, “Process is a very old concept that can take two main guises: weak (trans-formative) and strong (creative). . . . The weak concept—that already speaks in terms of event, flux, instability and the like—puts becoming before being; ‘being’ is understood as the surface effect of ever-changing underlying relationships. . . . It is a continuist concept that sees Nature’s unrest as a ‘perpetual transition into novelty’” (2006, 79). I locate both shamanic (animism) and mystic (naturalism) ecologies here. Weber (2006, 79) goes on: With the strong concept, not only is the question raised at the ontological level, but it is now bolder: there cannot be a continuous stream of events progressively disclosing new cosmic features. So, Process and Reality’s (1929) “creative advance” claims that genuine novelty can only enter the World in a disruptive, bud-like manner. Its point is to secure true becoming, to make the emergence of the unexpected possible within the fabric of the universe. Change is creation.

Here trans-formative thought represents shamanic and mystic forms of participation in their purest expression. In mystic (naturalist) ecologies, as I define them, there is one world (Nature), multiple human subjective perspectives (cultures), and a method-oriented search for an ultimate objective view. This viewer could be a creator or divine being, but it could also be scientific observer. Mystics do not assume Culture; they attempt to enact Culture. The opposite is true for the shamanic (animist) ecologies of participation. For animists, there is one interiority (Culture), multiple objective bodies-asperspectives (natures). Shamans search for some way to unify all these bodies into a meaningful whole. They do not assume Nature, rather they attempt to enact Nature. Change, within both naturalist and animist accounts, is relatively superficial. Diversity is always in relation to a unitive assumption, whether it be Nature (mystic ecologies) or Culture (shamanic ecologies). I refer to naturalists through the lens of mystic ecologies because they are concerned with the diversity of interiors, cultures, and God(s) that they experience. Naturalists emphasize mystic forms of participation, but not because they have found a unified Nature. They assume the continuity of Nature, and give it little or no other thought. Naturalist ecologies are mystic because they seek unity (self as method-oriented true Culture) among the chaos of subjectivities they experience. I think of animists as practicing shamanic forms of participation because they are on the opposite side.

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They have no concern for whether the tree, the beaver, and the mother share an inside; they simply assume that they do (e.g., the Tree People, Beaver People, Achuar People). In relation to shamanic participation, what concerns animists is the diversity of bodies and physicalities. They seek to unify the chaos of multiple natures with which they live, while assuming a shared interiority or people. They assume Culture, and seek Nature. Creative process thought, with its emphasis on novelty, change, and atomic agential events, blows this transformative world wide open. As change becomes fundamental, rather than superficial, we notice the relative and arbitrary natures of all ecologies. The assumptions of some shared Culture is deconstructed by the self-reflexive aspects of mystic participation, while assumptions of some shared Nature is dismantled by somatic-reflexivity of shamanic participation. Taken together, easy assumptions of some shared ground, whether Culture or Nature, become improbable. The holism so many mystics and shamans seek is always fleeting, entangled in a fusion of horizons. Animist and naturalist dualisms must be called into question, and as such their distinct emphasis on transformative over creative participation made suspect. Ghiselin, in arguing for his Darwinian theory, pushes against the determinism of Neo-Darwinist thought, that is, Nature, the too easy assumptions of mystics and the goals of shamans. He also critiques the idealist monism he conflates with agency and purpose, that is, Culture, the tooeasy assumptions of shamans and the stated goal of mystics. There is no agency, no freedom, available to either. They both assume a continuity underlying all change. Ferrer, Thompson, and Whitehead are all pushing us in the general direction of something more like radical. Against the superficial diversities of naturalism and animism, they seek agential novelty and creative change. To follow them, we must be willing to let go of any sense of shared ground. PARTICIPATORY ETHICS, PARTICIPATORY TESTS No matter how many times the point is made, someone is still going to claim this text as a work of vulgar relativism. Whenever this happens, we can be sure there is a naturalist ecology at play. A fear of relativism, that seeks objective ground. For mystics, there must be some common ground! We need a shared world. This is the common refrain from critics of the piece of participatory philosophy that you hold in your hands. Tellingly, Ferrer doubles down on this point. There is no pregiven reality, he argues: “In sum, my thesis is that once we give up Cartesian-Kantian assumptions about a pregiven [reality] common to all traditions, the so-called problem of conflicting

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truth-claims becomes, for the most part, a pseudoproblem” (2002, 165). In place of conflicting truth-claims, Ferrer offers a series of what he calls participatory tests. We can also see this as the beginning of a participatory ethics. He underlines this point when he writes, “The validity of spiritual knowledge does not rest in its accurate matching with any pregiven content, but in the quality of selfless awareness disclosed and expressed in perception, thinking, feeling, and action” (2002, 165). Just because we cannot simply assume there is one given reality, this does not mean we cannot compare traditions. Ferrer outlines three basic tests that can help discern the viability of different traditions. The first he calls the egocentrism test. Does the technique, the tradition, the common sense of a community provide insight into both the subtle and more overt forms of narcissism and self-centeredness to which we have been beholden? If it does, then it passes the test. It is good and useful, something that we should commend. If we are going to turn this test toward multiple ecologies, it seems more appropriate to highlight this as a narcissism test. In what ways, do each ontology, and subsequent ecologies, become overly self-absorbed and rigid? The second test, for Ferrer, is the dissociation test; to what extent does a particular tradition, community, enaction, bring about the full multidimensional participation for which I have shown him to be arguing throughout these pages? Put simply, does the tradition overemphasize one ontology, to the point of marginalizing others? Is it overly abstract? Ferrer highlights three centers of bodily life: vital-centered (shamanic), heart-centered (divinatory), or head-centered (mystic) ways of participating. Ferrer’s third and final test is what he calls the eco-social-political test. At other times, he references this as a cross-cultural challenge. We might think of this as the social justice, critical theory, feminist, ecological-ethics test. Does the common sense of any given community foster justice (ecological, economic, social, etc.), freedom (political, religious, etc.), equality (gender, class, race, etc.), or other fundamental human rights? This third test is heavily weighted toward the creative ecologies that highlight freedom, agency, and diversity. For this reason, I reframe his third test by referencing the term cross-ecological. Relevant to this point is Ferrer’s category of traditions. This point should be highlighted. For there to be diverse ecologies, different ontological assumptions must be pursued. Traditional philosophia will look different in distinct ecologies. What looks like dissociation for one community will appear completely healthy for other. Narcissism here is vitality and creativity there. We need to encourage these differences. Each ecology will have its own tradition. Distinct traditions should be encouraged, while some common ground must be developed through careful considerations of the dissociation,

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narcissism, and tradition tests. Putting these three together allows for a robust ground of ethical comparison. This is a complex point, that must be developed in more detail. Ferrer also addresses a series of challenges that naturally arise about his participatory approach. First-person approaches to the egocentrism test are not enough. Anyone is perfectly capable of failing what he calls the self-delusion challenge. For this reason, Ferrer argues for second- and third-person egocentrism tests. He also notes that within any given community there is what he calls a traditionalist challenge: Different forms of dissociation can be understood in a very positive light, but each community or ecology must have a level of responsibility for its members. For example, the Christian or scientific mystic might dissociate from his or her bodily experience through any number of dietary, environmental, social, or other extremes (e.g., Shapin 2010). Where this heightened monasticism would be problematic for many communities, within the confines of naturalist mysticism, these are viable dissociations. And yet, of course, these traditionalist trends must be places in conversation with others through our cross-ecological challenge. Some form of balance between centers must be struck. Ferrer has given us a three-fold ethics of comparison. Each ecology will have its own tradition, with certain traditionalist challenges that are relevant to that community. Within each ecology, tests of narcissism and dissociation must be applied. And, for a planetary ethics, these same tests must be applied cross-ecologically. Each ecological must be aware of the limits of ontological arrogance. For example, when mystic ecologies seek objectivity, they might dissociate from the vital reflexivity of shamanic participation. These traditions appear abstract in relation to animist attention to bodies. This must be held carefully. Locking yourself in a sterile room, surrounded by instruments, sterile objects, and methods to reduce vitality (animist), beauty (talismanic), and creativity (agential) are clear ways of disassociating from different aspects of our lived experiences. In doing this, mystics may not notice how relative and contextual their self-reflexivity is. They may also hold their relative objective truths in such a way that they marginalize the philosophia of others. “We have science, and you do not.” This as opposed to “We have a method that works pretty well. How about you?” Following Ferrer’s dissociation test, we have recourse to help mediate this kind of ontological arrogance, and it goes both ways. If an animist claims their vital truths are better than the objective truths of naturalists, we can ask for a similar recognition regarding these different modes of participation. This dissociation test requires each group to bring an amount of critical awareness to their favored modes of participation. In doing so, it encourages them to invite others in.

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PARTICIPATORY ETHICS, ECOLOGICAL TRADITIONS If we are going to address Ferrer’s participatory tests in an ecological way, then we must clarify the ways in which each ontology, in theory, lends itself to practices of dissociation, narcissism, and tradition. Ontologies and lived experiences of traditions are never pure. Ecologies are more the norm. Yet, it is still helpful to clarify ontological distinctions so that we can better apply our cross-ecological comparisons. Before going too far down this road, it must also be said that I begin this work in a very cursory way. More needs to be done to make this a robust ethical system. Communities who live different ecologies need to be brought to the bear on these matters. That said, I understand the traditions of these ontologies in the following way. Mystic naturalists seek transpersonal philosophia. Personhood, in these communities, is most strongly identified with those who are rational thought, and who practice methods that result in objectivity. Talismanic divinatory communities speak interpersonal philosophia. Personhood in these communities is aligned with a harmonious and beautiful cosmos that is clarified by acts of revelatory intuitions. Within animist communities a diversity of bodies is made sense of through vital touch. We can understand this kind of shamanic concourse in relation to intrapersonal philosophia. Finally, agential communities are participatory to the extent that they encourage multipersonal philosophia. Here individual freedom and creativity are key. We can see shamanic tradition of vitality, mystic traditions of objectivity, divinatory traditions of revelation, and participatory traditions of creativity as the healthy grounds for different ecologies. It is also important to note the ways that these traditions can become overly abstract and/or dissociated in their crossings. Or the ways that they can express overly rigid and/or narcissistic dwellings and intimacies (see table 7.2). The objective test (naturalism) considers the insights and experiences of a community and compares them to the very best work of mathematicians, scientists, scholars, mystics, and the fruits of other head-centered jñāna yogas. There is an obvious way in which this mind-centered style of participation attempts to rise above the messiness of contextual life. Mystics fear relativism, and seek universal truths and objective facts that can hold true regardless of context, community, or bodied life. At the end Table 7.2  Exaggerated Crossings and Dwellings Abstract Dissociated Crossing Shamanic vitality Mystic objectivity Divinatory revelation Agential creativity

Dissociated Dissociated Dissociated Dissociated

or or or or

rigid rigid rigid rigid

Rigid Narcissistic Dwelling

bodies-touch minds-thought hearts-intuition diversity-individuality

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of the day, transpersonal knowledge is useful to seek but not possible realize. Every universal fact belies a modicum of very personal preference and ideology. There has been a huge backlash against such theorizing, for good reason, and yet we cannot simply say away attempts at transpersonal knowledge. Tweed’s dwellings and crossings become important once again. We can read these ideas against Ferrer’s tests and my assertion of multiple ontologies. Within mystic style dwellings, the question of intimacy centers around whether our methods are rational and relatively unbiased. Mystic crossings approach alterity in a particular way as well. Within these ecologies, certain community members might wander out through dialogue and debate to see if other communities are also rational in their methods. We need to pursue these objective truths, while also holding them up to our dissociation test as detailed here. Transperonal facts, universal laws, and objective studies must be held accountable to the tests of other ecologies as well. Naturalists assume a shared physicality—that is, Nature—and so assume that this physicality is stable enough to ground their attempts at transpersonal objective truths. But animists know they have different bodies, different natures, and as such can act as a useful counterbalance to assumptions of mystic truths. Animist ecologies assume a shared interior—i.e., the People— and so their ideas of personhood can be understood as intrapersonal. Reading Viveiros de Castro, we can see how different skins and bodies lead to different perspectives of a singular intrapersonal reality. Culture, the People, is the standard, as opposed to Nature. Truth has more to do with intimacy than objectivity. Shamanic experiences of “self” can be understood as a series of vital intimacies. Rather than holding to tests of objectivity, animists consider vitality instead. The question is not, is this true, but rather, does this bring about vital intimate bodies? To what extent does a touch or bodily feeling foster either greater solidarity among the People (e.g., an indigenous sense of shared body and relationality) or a public (e.g., Bennett’s sense of vibrant matter)? Marina T. Romero and Samuel A. Malkemus put this well when they describe vitality as “aliveness in the sense of both maintaining the vital pulse of existence and imbuing one’s life with a fresh and healthy vitality that fills one with vibrant beauty and dynamic passion” (2012, 115). New crossings can be located as shamanic interactions occur between heretofore disparate bodies. Dwellings are maintained through nurturing vital connections. The test is to see whether such intimacies bring about more vitality among the People. The interpersonal/revelatory (talismanic) test considers to what extent the common sense of a community fosters greater depth of appreciation for the assumed Cosmos (their own arbitrary absolute) and performative knowledge. Do the divinatory and oracular practices have power? Dwelling occurs

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through a shared experience of beauty and harmony, while crossings bring about novel performances of intuitive prowess. Here truth is performed within an interpersonal space, the Cosmos. What is important in these ecologies is something like the cool of the Yoruba (oníségún), or the Confucian ideal of becoming a superior person (junzi). Within a given community, do these ideals hold true? Are their members those who embody something like beauty or cool? The Yoruba, for example, “assume that someone who embodies command, coolness, and character is someone extremely beautiful and like unto a god” (Thompson 1971, 108–9). Transpersonal knowledge and universals make less sense here. Truth relates to power, but this is not the rational power to move objects that is so important to naturalist mystics. It is the power found in talismanic divinatory performance (for a more thorough going explanation of divinatory truths, see chapter 10). Here truth is spoken rather than found. It is walked more than it is discovered. The fourth test is multipersonal and has to do with individual freedoms and concern. In the face of our planetary predicament, what are we to do? The short answer is that we must each in our own way enact local-individual truths, but in the context of a much larger participatory predicament. As the 1970s turned toward the 1980s, environmentalist René Dubos made the idea of “thinking globally, and acting locally” famous. In a paper titled “The Despairing Optimist,” he wondered if local regions might become more interesting to people than large countries. He imagined that the environmental crises already well underway would drive people toward local communities, helping them to become more self-sufficient. Dwellings, for participatory agents, are momentary and fleeting. In this way they are radically local, but always in relation to a larger context. Moments of agential freedom, creativity, and individuality can also become narcissistic and/or dissociated. Presaging contemporary tribalism, populism, and identity politics, Dubos (1980) considered the role of technology, enormous disparities in wealth, and the disappearance of viable work, especially for younger people, as areas for concern. In an interview around the same time, Dubos was asked by his interviewer if there is an echo in his work of Voltaire, who wrote in Candide that we should cultivate our gardens. Dubos responded, “It’s very good to think about problems in a global way, I think it is a good intellectual exercise, but the only way where you can do something is your own locality” (1978, 7). While we might seek global justice or individual freedoms on a planetary scale, we must always turn back to our local moments of becoming and meaning. We must tend our gardens, and we must compare. I think the idea of a garden is as fitting as it is problematic. We tell ourselves we want wild uncultivated spaces, and then we shop online. We might imagine a back-to-the-land dystopian/utopian world in some not so distant future

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and then forget the enormity and complexity of our everyday surroundings. Voltaire wrote Candide, in part, to poke at the general optimism of Leibniz, the seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher. Leibniz, was the coinventor of calculus—in parallel to Newton—and defender of slightly more dynamic stuff (monads) than what Newton thought of as atoms. In Candide, Voltaire has a Leibnizian student receive certain lessons from a professor Pangloss. In one of these, Pangloss wonders about the nature of eating pork. He asks Candide if a pig would really consent to such a thing. The Newtonian optimism of mechanism leads us to believe this is a moot point. Pigs are atomic-stuff like in nature, and so available as natural resources to be used for any ends necessary. Newton’s God is a clockmaker, and we might simply say that eating pork is a kind of efficiency. But for a Leibnizian student like his pupil, there is choice, but it is finally located with God. For Leibniz, there are many decisions that could be made, and God has chosen best. But would the pig concede? Is providing oneself as pork for another’s dinner table what is actually the best? There are clues in the first article by Dubos referenced above. In that article, he warns us away from understanding nature as efficient. It is not, exactly, a Newtonian world. But, he says, we should also be wary of giving over our local governance to a handful of specialists, as they tend toward maximizing efficiency over redundancies, creativity, and diversity (Dubos 1980, 156). So, we should move toward the atomicity of Leibnizian and Newtonian individualities, but we should be careful with their God(s). So, should we really turn toward agential creativity? Dubos warns us away from over emphasizing individual freedoms. He sees this as a dead-end game. He then reminds us of the work of E. F. Schumacher, “[who’s] phrase ‘Small is beautiful’ achieved such rapid and widespread acceptance . . . that it must correspond to some deep human longing” (Dubos 1980, 154). It seems that we are meant to look to the small, the local, but not to the too small, the individual. And here we must be careful. In his own work, Schumacher makes a distinction between necessity and freedom. Referencing recent trends in quantum physics he writes, “The ‘freedom’ of indeterminacy is, in fact, the opposite of freedom; a kind of necessity which can be understood only in terms of statistical probability” (1977, 29). There is an important point here. He is telling us that we should not conflate human decisions with those of atomic particles. And yet, if there is agency in the world, I argue, it must go all the way through. “At the level of inanimate matter,” writes Schumacher, “there is no ‘inner space’ where any autonomous powers could be marshaled. . . . ‘[I]nner space’ is the scene of freedom” (1977, 29). But if there is anything like actual “inner” and actual “outer,” non-physical insides and physical outsides, then we are left in dualism. I doubt this is what Schumacher had in mind.

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I bring up Leibniz, Newton, and Voltaire because they were there at the beginnings of our emphasis on local, even atomic, individualities, as well as the importance of individual and global rights. I look to Dubos and Schumacher because they came later, brought in the importance of moving toward an ecological awareness, but they may not have been willing to go quite as far as my agential realism. Participatory events act as the bedrock of our fourth multipersonal test. If there is something akin to agency, then agency must go all the way through. This is the riddle, the key to unlock our participatory raft. Dubos warns us not to overdo freedom, and we must listen. We need to temper our self/enjoyment with concern. We must hold this new ontology to the rigors of cross-ecological dialogue, and in so doing, keep it from ontological arrogance. A diversity of individual freedoms is good, and there are dissociative and narcissistic tendencies that must be considered. Our local agential acts must be in relation to global feelings of both effective pasts, affective presents, and teleological future. Our self/enjoyment, that is, agential participation, does not occur in isolation. And so, we must do a handful of things. We must tend our individual gardens, the seemingly mundane of the everyday. This is the key to one’s agency. And if done well, there will be eccentricities. We should nurture radical acts of creativity—participatory gardens—while remaining aware to the possibilities of abstract and/or rigid ideologies. Diversity, individuality, and freedom, at least within participatory ecologies, are goods within themselves. We need to develop traditional challenges from within these agential ecologies. And we also need to invite our agential tendencies into participation with other ecologies. We need to act locally while being concerned globally. It is useful to judge these four traditions according to each other and to the different ecologies of participation in which they overlap and intertwine. To what extent does the commonsense dwelling of a community foster an intimate sense of coherence? Are their dwellings vital, objective, revelatory, and/or creative? Alternatively, does that same community foster multiple life ways? Do they risk crossings and conversions with other forms of participation? Can a shaman risk their vital truths to communicate more fully with the intuitions and freedoms required by other ecologies? Can the ontological arrogance of mystic ecologies be put down so that objective methods are experienced on par with other ecological sciences? Vitality, revelation, and creativity matter. Objectivity is a journey, not an end. There are obviously challenges involved here. Objectivity is always haunted by the challenge of relativism. Claims of proximity to truth can foster methodological arrogance, overly intensive abstraction, and blind practitioners of other possibilities due to naturalist narcissism. Revelation, for its part, faces a mytho-poetic challenge: while practitioners gain fluency and aesthetic knowledge of their communities/

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cosmology, they risk ignoring the arbitrary and isolated nature of their performance. Through their own forms of narcissism, they risk the harmony they seek. This is especially prevalent when the oral revelations get written down; rational tests and vitality tests must also be incorporated. The vitality of shamanic communities can easily turn toward their own particular ethnocentric challenge: claims of proximity to the People can foster bodily narcissism and abstraction in the form of a shared sensuous experience that marginalizes other life ways. They can become too abstract, too rigid. And participatory ontologies do not get a pass. The creativity and freedom required by agency is always haunted by responsibility to others. Concern for particulars is highlighted against concern for alterity and diversity. But is this enough? Can concern alone save self/enjoyment and freedom from itself? We need vital, objective, and revelatory tests as well. These traditions in general face a dialogical and cross-ecological challenge. Some examples might help. EXAMPLES OF CROSS-ECOLOGICAL DIALOGUE Let’s say we want to know if something passes the communal objectivity test. Is the use of a set of symbols, for example, analytically correct? How can we know? All serious metaphysicians must be willing to enter the ontology room. This, at least, is the stance taken by analytic philosopher Peter van Inwagen (2014, 3). Metaphysics, on this account, must be amenable to being paraphrased into formal logic (following Quine) or, as van Inwagen puts it, a Tarskian language. The point of metaphysics is to remove ambiguity. The method, of course, is analytic in nature. What we want is as few primitive predicates as possible (closed sentences, quantifiable idioms). Otherwise, imprecision and wishful thinking will almost certainly prevail (van Inwagen 2009, 499–506). So, metaphysics points us toward the most precise. The ontology room offers us a respite from all things ambiguous and now we have viable form of mystic participation. In contrast to this naturalist dream of universal quantifiers and perfectly objective methods, linguistic anthropologists Stephen C. Levinson and Nicholas Evans (2009, 429) write, “The misconception that the differences between languages are merely superficial, and that they can be resolved by postulating a more abstract formal level at which individual language differences disappear, is serious.” It is also, they say, a clear-cut case of ethnocentrism (Levinson and Evans 2009, 430). Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2013, 19) tells us that “Western metaphysics is truly the fons et origio of colonialism.” I am not accusing van Inwagen of colonialism, but to the extent that he and other analytic philosophers continue to argue that all human languages must submit themselves to the formal logic of the (naturalist) ontology room,

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they are complicit in this ongoing struggle. They are practicing what Santos termed lazy and abyssal thinking in earlier chapters. Mainstream philosophy, writes postcolonial theorist Richard King (2009, 35), “particularly in its Anglo-American variant but also in the Continental tradition, is preoccupied by parochial questions that derive from its heritage in liberal Protestantism on the one hand, and the secular Enlightenment on the other.” What do other folks think about the ontology room, and the mystic rational subjectivities who wander through such places? D. A. Masolo tells us that African selves are more communal, more in need of what I called revelatory cool above. A self in such a situation needs to have a certain amount of revelation, some performative oracular truth to be considered adequately philosophical. D. Masolo (2010, 11) writes, “As postulated through the [quasi-physical] Akan lenses Wiredu [a preeminent African philosopher] wears, a person, or the human self, is not exactly what one encounters in the familiar Western descriptions and definitions of the self such as substance loaded with attributes or matter and form or mind and body or ego and so forth.” A self, says Masolo, is not the sort of thing that can be found out by way of analytical rational tests. Whitehead (1978, 8) sees philosophy as “haunted.” It is haunted by the clarity of noon-day sun. It seeks premises, free of all assumptions, that are clear and distinct. The certainty of deductive logic is useful, limited, and ultimately quite boring. We cannot start with ultimate generalities, as if we began without bias or life experience. As if we had some strange crystal clear gaze. Whitehead turns this conversation on its head. We should never fail to seek generality and certainty, and yet we must be humble. We never begin in such a state. Philosophy that assumes its originary purity is haunted by its own hubris. Whatever we are, we are not simply that which can manage to find itself through van Inwagen’s ontology room. Whitehead (1978, 8) goes on: “Philosophy has been misled by the example of mathematics.” I would agree—up to a point. Mathematics is just one of the many interesting techniques mystic ecologies like to engage. Quite often post/moderns have been led into thinking that they are enlightened, following the example of the Enlightenment. Do they sometimes get a little overzealous in their attempts to find new and interesting objectivity tests? Absolutely. But the question we need to ask is this: what else is there? One answer to this question is to consider revelation tests, with the knowledge that we must ensure that they are revelatory, they are cool. A cool temperament, writes Jacob K. Olupona, at least within a Western African context, denotes a sort of patience evidenced in a person’s actions. These people show a certain kind of consciousness that exudes self-control and “optimal communication with itself and its environment” (Olupọna and Rey 2008, 226): the sort of “complex biological organism endowed

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with a specific (as a property of the species or biological type to which he or she belongs) capacity to function with at least some minimal competence in the social world of meanings” (Masolo 2010, 11). This is the sort of person that in Yoruba you might think of as oníségún (beautiful or cool), the sort of person that practices gbófó (listening well) and sóró (speaking well) with a certain amount of sùúrù (patience) (Hallen 2000, 69). And how do we know how cool someone is? It takes a community to determine such things (see table 7.3). When considering whether something is revelatory/cool, what we need to consider are the performances and intuitions that are forever keeping the cosmology of the community alive, and to add a creativity test that passes the divinatory insistence on cool-ness. Take for example, Eve K. Sedgwick’s beyond, beneath, and beside. These are the words penned by Sedgwick in her book titled Touching Feeling. “Beneath and behind are hard enough to let go of,” she writes. “What has been even more difficult is to get a little distance from beyond” (2003, 8). Beneath and behind are suggestive of origin, for Sedgwick, something akin to shamanic vitality and intimate bodily dwelling (intrapersonal), while beyond points both to telos and to a critical academic stance (transpersonal). Beyond, as used here, is more akin to an objectivity test. To go beyond, in critical theories, is to call out the essentialism inherent to a theory. It is to “unearth unconscious drives and compulsions,” as we strive to make critical theory ever more perfect (2003, 8). But Sedgwick wants us to practice something like touching feeling. She does not want to reject the philosophia of shamanic vitalities and mystic objectivities. She wants us to consider the beside as a practice in performativity (divinatory participation with its oracular, performative, and arbitrary/provincial

Table 7.3  Yoruba Distinctions Between Knowledge (Cool) and Belief (Not Cool) Best Next Best Next Best Next Best Worst

You know (mó) the other person well, entirely firsthand experience (ímó)—you can assess his/her behavior. You don’t know the other person well, but you have observed firsthand (ímó) how she/he behaves—you can make a partial assessment of his/ her moral character. You don’t really know the person, but people you know well and trust (ígbágbó) have observed him/her firsthand, know him/her well, and can judge his/her moral character. You don’t really know the person, but people you know well and can believe have observed firsthand how he/she behaves in certain situations, and so have some idea of his/her moral character. You don’t know the person and don’t know anyone who knows him/ her, so you can say nothing regarding the “true” validity of what he/ she has said/done.

Source: (Adapted from Hallen 2000, 68)

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truths). She wants us to practice something akin to revelation in relation to mystic and shamanic modes of participation. Touching Feeling is aware of both the critical deconstructive stance held by Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler and the genealogical work of Michel Foucault, and yet it sees in them an attempt at the beyond as they push to defend the behind and the beneath. “To me,” Sedgwick writes, “the almost delirious promise of [History of Sexuality, Volume 1] is most attached to Foucault’s identification of the ‘repressive hypothesis’ and his suggestion that there might be ways of thinking around it” (2003, 9). And what is this “repressive hypothesis”? “Stated broadly, the repressive hypothesis holds that through European history we have moved from a period of relative openness about our bodies and our speech to an ever increasing repression and hypocrisy” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983, 128). Sedgwick is struck by the “almost delirious promise” of this thinking around, but in considering the various ways in which it has been attempted, she notices a cognicentrism. Derrida and Butler’s is a linguistic turn, a cognicentric turning away from gestures and bodies in order to reclaim gestures and bodies. They are practicing an ecology of shamanic-mystic hybridity, where the sensuous beneath is defended via objectivity forms of analytic philosophia. Sedgwick inches toward touching, because it alludes to both the tactile and the emotive. The ambiguity of “touching” can be felt in more ways than one. Feeling can be done with one’s heart and one’s body. Sedgwick is struck by the “touchyfeely” aspects of these words, the idea that to be affected virtually amounts to being touched (2003, 17). Sedgwick’s is, in the end, a defense of affect (e.g., Gregg and Seigworth 2010): the touchy-feely emotive quality of touching and feeling. Her work is not a side-stepping, not a going beyond, but a standing beside. Her focus on performativity asks us to realize our strange intimacy with other, our mysterious besidedness. Many theorists might call out my own work for its touchy-feely qualities—not enough critique, not enough analysis, not enough head. Sedgwick is asking us to stand beside, to practice touching-feeling; I am advocating that we nurture the beyond, the beneathbehind, and the beside, as well as the individual. But in doing so, in practicing our cross-ecological comparisons, we have to keep it cool, in a revelatory (but always provincial) sort of way. We need to ask: is it objective? Following various rational tests, we should invoke naturalist figure-ground comparisons. Is my subjectivity in right proximity to the given ground, that is, objectively aligned with nature? We must also ask: is it beautiful, cool, legit, dope? The words change, but are in reference to an arbitrary absolute. Is the performance in right proximity to the assumed Cosmos, that is, the local arbitrary absolute? We must ask: is it vital? Is it enlivening or emboldening a shared body? Imagine falling in love, making love, and/or getting lost in another’s body. This always lacks

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perspective in the figure-ground naturalist sense of the word. Intimate shamanic dwelling is not beholden to a rational view, in terms of what can make it through the ontology room. It is an experience—the most important experience ever, as long as it is happening. Animacy, says Mel Y. Chen (2012, 2), is suggestive of “the set of notions characterized by family resemblances-[animacy] has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, and liveness.” Chen, powerfully I think, brings her animacy theory to bear on gender, race relations, and other issues that matter to those marginalized by the dominant naturalist/ mystic ecologies. She considers the animacy hierarchies that she presents as ecologies (2012, 89). She uses this term to maintain a kind of imaginal indeterminacy, attempting to ensure, in her own way, that the nature and selves of naturalist ontologies do not dominate her animacies. And what are these animacies and their hierarchies exactly? She frames her work of “digging into animacy as a specific kind of affective and material construct that is not only nonneutral in relation to animals, humans, and living and dead things, but is shaped by race and sexuality, mapping various biopolitical realizations of animacy in the contemporary culture of the United States” (2012, 5). Hers is a similar but slightly different theory of affect than the one offered by Sedgwick above. Following my own terminology, she is clearly enacting a shamanic ecology, attempting through her writing to queer accepted bodies, especially as they relate to sexuality, reproduction, and intimacy, and normative ideas about physicalities when it comes to matters of race. But what sort of body-respecting shamanic ecology would stop with the human? Chen’s queering is also aimed at the anomaly hierarchies that arrange humanity above or beyond the animacies of animal, plant, and other “nonliving” materialities. Like Jane Bennett, she is pushing us toward affect: affecting the alter bodies of the Beaver People, and being affected by their own anomaly in return. It is also important to question whether they, in fact, are animating us. Who is public? Who is body? Who counts as people? Maybe we have something to learn from our animate others. And how might we free ourselves from the dehumanization, the theft of agency, that our naturalist informed mystic ecologies have enacted? “To begin,” writes Chen (2012, 58), “we have to ask whence the queer that got reclaimed.” How did we get from queer, as in dubious, to the queer pride that we are only beginning to celebrate today? One animate ecology, a dominate bodily dwelling, attempted to marginalize the other by making them “queer.” Chen traces this path of representation from non-sexualized eccentricities to homosexuality and, in a slightly different stream, criminality. In the 1970s gay men took the moniker for themselves, pushing for a new visibility by owning their queer (alter) bodies. They pushed new shamanic crossings.

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“Queer has been animated,” Chen writes, “and continues to animate . . . across a range of meanings, especially in the context of its participation in a political movement” (2012, 73). Queer, following Bennett’s terminology, has become a new public, a new shared dwelling—something that certain shamanically inclined ecologies fought hard to win. Sure, many of them may have pushed forward through alternative means, but Chen’s argument is crucial: It is not just that they changed the terminology, thought things through, and managed in the end to bring some clarity to language—no, more radically, language has been put to enactive use. Queer gained in momentum, becoming more and more a bodily dwelling, a shamanically enacted ecology. And what is the lesson to draw? There are animacy hierarchies alive and well. We do form different dwellings, not only through our mystic ecologies that enact new selves, but through our shamanic dwelling in and as coherent bodies. There is a vitality to these hierarchies; they are alive and full of affect. They push us, prod us, and make us enact new ecologies. They ask us to dwell in intimacy with others, creating crossings that are heretofore ignored. To form a working theory of ecologies of participation, we must include these animate qualities as well. We often tend toward intimate dwelling with regard to ecologies. There is so much outside of awareness, and so it is useful and hopeful to look over the edges of our dwelling—to the shamanic, mystic, and divinatory crossings that challenge our intimate boundaries. One of the main ways that post/modern thought works to limit the voices, bodies, and ecologies of others is through the continued assertion of its flatland metaphysics. This is the primary driver behind the commodification, objectification, and colonization of peoples, organisms, and lands. Inspired by Gnosticism (rejection of the body), Christianity (idealization of a creator God), and logical nominalism (atomic universe), post/modern flatland metaphysics assumes that there is no meaning in the world. By imagining a natural world without meaning, this flatland tradition also gave rise to humanist critiques. I have told this story in other chapters, but I take an alternative look at it here. Like Petrarch we turn inward. This participatory approach, with its creative agential realism, requires something more than a mindless universe.

Chapter 8

Mystics, Mutants, and Co-Authored Gods

Can a human become a rock? Can a rock become a human? Is there enough overlap in experience between them that a human and a rock could in some way exchange perspectives? Is there any way in the world that the words rock and experience go together? Given my own intimate and unsettling experience some years ago, my answer is yes. What follows will surely put any remnants of the reader’s post/modern commitments to the test. Recall the distinction I made between the wise homebodies of any community—those who maintain the intimacy of dwelling—and those who risk itinerant ecological crossings. Take for example mystic forms of empowered imagination (e.g., Ibn al-‘Arabī or Saint Teresa of Avila; see Hollenback 1996), and compare these to the wise homebodies of their respective naturalist communities. Dwelling requires the maintenance of accepted and traditional subjectivities (e.g., traditional accounts of proper relationship between a saint and Allah or God). Mystic crossings require risking novel subjectivities. In Saint Teresa’s case, for example, this takes the form of a divine union that was alternatively championed and condemned by her contemporaries (see Ahlgren 2016, 129). Shamanic ecologies enact crossings via literal body-swapping and fleshy border-intermingling, while the wise homebodies of these animistic communities do what they can to maintain the sense of a shared communal body (e.g., Achuar, Araweté, Jaguar, and Tapir People). While the performances encouraged within divinatory ecologies enact an always changing cosmos through their empowered double-speak (Holbraad 2012), the wise homebodies of these analogistic communities do everything in their power to maintain a semblance of social harmony as evidence of intimate dwelling. As previously stated, I am not as interested in the wise homebodies of these communities, mostly because I am not one of them. Jonathan Z. Smith 215

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(1982) has ruled out this sort of thing, asking scholars to focus their attention on the homebodies, the everyday, and the mundane. There is a wisdom here, intimacy found through dwelling, but it simply is not the wisdom that I keep. I insist, rather, that crossings between assumed human boundaries and rock bodies and perspectives are in fact possible. This is what interests me as a scholar, because this is what I have experienced in my own life. As you will see in the discussion that follows, I have lost my “home” (my common sense and/or dwelling) on more than one occasion, a fact that drives me toward the empowered imagination of the mystic participation, the body-swapping techniques of the shamanic participation, and the mytho-poetic knowledgemaking performances of the divinatory ecologies. I am not interested in the world, for I have lost my way. I am interested in world/s because, at least for me, there is no other way. And yet, I imagine that many readers will be compelled to explain (away) the experiences articulated in this book using a reductio ad homo constructus. If I persist in my assertion that rocks do in fact have a robust form of experience, most readers will reduce this to a product of imagination or even psychosis that is firmly located in the human. But where is this imagination? Is it different from my body, my flesh, or the hard surface of the rock? I attempt to address such concerns in a variety of ways, considering at length the rich abundance of ethnography we have available, as well as the philosophical inflections of anthropologists and linguists alike. In this chapter, by way of helping me to accomplish my goals, I introduce the theoretical work of Jeffrey J. Kripal in religious studies. I look to Kripal’s work by way of clarifying my own ideas. Within his comparative method, I find relatively strong association with naturalism and mystics. While it would be interesting to find a scholar that simply stayed in their naturalist lane, I am more interested in ecologies than pure ontologies. To this end, Kripal’s work is interesting because he adds to his mysticism an attempt to accentuate his comparisons by recourse to the body swapping of animist shamans. Where Kripal weaves a comparative ecology of mystic-shamans, in the following two chapters we find Viveiros de Castro and Martin Holbraad considering comparative methods of more straight-forward shamanic animists and talismanic diviners respectively. In each case, I highlight the important contributions of these authors, while clarifying important distinctions between their different methods and my own. To determine whether a human can become a rock or vice versa, it is necessary to consider two parallel ideas. On one side, shamans assume rocks do in fact have experiences. Their rock-ness is grounded in their minerality and the density of their bodies. On the other side, mystics assume humans are the locus of all experience. On the shamanic side, I really did intermingle bodies and perspectives with a rock (shamanic participation, animism).

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I recount this experience below. On the mystic side, nature is what is real, and I imagined this experience. Kripal’s work cuts down the middle. For him, imagination, is far more complex than we admit. He understands the natural in a peculiar way. Through certain intensifications, animists and naturalists alike can accentuate their realities by empowering their imaginations (see Hollenback 1996). In his most recent work, Kripal has taken on the terminology of the super natural. This as opposed to a dualism, like supernatural and natural. He adopts the French idea of paranormal, whereby what is natural can be expanded in extraordinary ways. To this end, Kripal (2017, 316) defends what he calls a dual aspect monism. This is telling. Here the natural acts in a “super” way. “The realms of science and religion,” I assume physicality and interiority, “cannot be kept apart. It is One World. Or, if you prefer, it is the One” (Kripal 2017, 316). And within this One, Kripal wonders, are we engaged with something like “biological gods”? Scientific, as in same Nature, different cultures, interiors, empowered imaginations. But also, maybe, animistic, as in same Culture, different natures, skins, and bodies. In the pages below, you will meet the Light, and a rock, and a plethora of other beings. Following Kripal, can we see these as biological species? Yes, and, Kripal’s is a dual aspect monism. There is a common trope in religious studies, whereby perennialists and many new age popularizers assume that spirituality is akin to there being many paths up some singular ultimate mountain. Religious studies scholars have focused intently on the details, argued that differences matter, and come away with a different idea. There are in fact many different mountains. A good post/modern scholar is a flatland mystic in disguise. They assume a Nature monism, the physicality of reality is given, and then proceed to add a constructivist layer of cultures to this mix. Something is going on, and we are seeing it all through our cultures. Kripal’s biological gods are slightly different. They are human, in a sense. “I came to think that all of these mountains emerge out of the earth of our humanity, that is, out of us” he writes. “I have never encountered a religious experience, vision, out-of-body experience, scriptural text, or revelation that was not experienced or expressed by a human being” (Kripal 2017, 309). There are three points here that need to be teased out. I agree with Kripal that what we experience is largely human-centric. I titled an earlier version of this chapter, “Posthuman Mystics,” and Kripal rightly called me out. We must be humble in the face of our limitations. We must see the ways in which our traditions, ontologies, and ecologies are all-too-human. There is a second point in Kripal’s work that I find highly interesting. He writes, “Clearly if the gods exist, they need us to speak. In truth, I think the gods are us, but we are not ready to see this yet” (2017, 309). There is an agential creativity at our core, a process whereby we co-create radically diverse worlds. Kripal goes

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on: “I think they are not the unconscious, unintegrated part of us speaking to the conscious integrated part of us” (2017, 309). And it is here, however slightly, that we part ways. Yes, if we have agency as I have detailed in this book, if we can co-create realities, then much of our unconscious, unintegrated parts are at play. And, I hope, there is more than this. My original title for this chapter was less about us and more about them. We should be humble in the face of our limitations. It is helpful in an increasingly planetary landscape to note that our different religions often act more of a “filter or prism of the sacred, and that each filter [is] blocking out as much of the divine light as it [is] letting in” (Kripal 2017, 309). But at the same time, we should hope for slightly more. If there is some enactive process, some agential core, a process of becoming, co-creating participatory events, then it should also be not-only-human. More-than-human or otherthan-human might be too much to ask, at least, for us. We cannot simply shed our humanity. We cannot assume to know something wholly other than ourselves. And yet, we should try harder to invite the not-only-human in. If there is agency, then it should go all the way through. The gods are creating us, we are creating them, and we are joined in this by cells, and mites, and flora, and fauna—if agency, then agency all the way through. But I am not sure Kripal wants to go this far. He is certainly pushing at the edges of post/modern naturalist limits. He is arguing against a flatland constructivist reading as he asserts “biological gods” (Kripal n.d.). In this recent work, I take him to be defending both an animist monism—shared interior, diverse outsides; and a naturalist monism—shared outside, diverse interiors. As a slight aside, this can be a little confusing. One might assume a mystic would assert a monistic interior, a singular or particular God, and they do, but this is not what they assume, but rather what they seek. Mystics search for objective insides, God, scientific observer, and truth, because they do not assume these. They fear relativism, but not of Nature, but rather of Culture. Animists worry the exact opposite, diverse outsides. They assume a shared interior, the People, and then proceed to search for some shared Nature. But whichever way this is playing out, it is important to keep in mind that these are natural opposites of one another. Having pointed to these two ontologies, we at minimum, need more—at least four. But I get ahead of myself. A careful consideration of Kripal’s early work can help tease out my point, and can be even more effective considered in parallel to my own experience with rocks and Light. To the extent that Kripal wrestles with post/modern constructivism, aiming eventually to overcome it, what he calls his comparative mystics becomes especially useful for the task at hand. In Kripal’s earliest work, he tends to reduce the super, the trans, and the other to the post/modern human. Clearly, he has inherited some of the naturalist leanings of mystic ecologies mentioned

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above. Can we really reduce all subjectivities to imaginations, cultural constructions, or chemicals that bump into each other in the brain? It’s possible, but then that old flatland of factishes wins the day. Where on this line should our insides be? Do these insides and subjectivities even exist, or is there only efficient causality and post/modern materialism? I endeavor, in this chapter, to locate my own experience of human-rock intermingling as something other than human. Some, as I mentioned, would call this posthuman. I would agree, with some caveats. There is a tendency in academia today to turn away from mystic ecologies and their naturalist tendencies toward shamanic ecologies and their animist multiplicities (see chapter 9). Another interesting trend is to turn away from mystic ecologies and their naturalist tendencies toward divinatory ecologies and their relational logic and talismanic dwelling base upon interdependencies (see chapter 10). In this chapter I follow these authors and problematize Kripal’s tendency toward naturalism (as well as naturalism and post/modernism in general) by reading it in parallel to the ontological turn in anthropology. In doing so I pay special attention to Viveiros de Castro’s and Descola’s animistic Amerindian shamanism, what Viveiros de Castro has started to call perspectivism. I also endeavor to bring the talismans and the motile-truths performed within divinatory ecologies into this conversation. But if I stopped here, nothing new would be said. I want to add to this conversation my fourth ontology of agency. It is hinted at within Kripal’s work, but I want to bring it more fully to the fore. Fundamental to Kripal’s comparative research are a handful of assertions. The ones I would like to focus on here, through a critical reading of his work, include the importance of recognizing comparative scholarship as a spiritual practice, the role of scholar-practitioners in these practices, the emphasis on heresy outlined by Kripal, as well as his emphasis on humanism (mystic or otherwise). I deeply admire Kripal’s work and defend here the basic thrust of his research, while inserting a not-so-small heresy of my own into the conversation with Kripal’s humanism. As evidenced by my consideration of nominalist and humanist turns in Western thought in earlier chapters, and following the work of Jean Gebser, I locate these trends at the end of a decadent mystic naturalism. But I also see them as the soil for something wholly new, a fourth ontology, one grounded on participatory events and agential realism. Kripal’s work is so useful for my purposes because he is still riding this line. In looking to his work, I hope to open the door wide for a more robust understanding of the complexities of human–rock ecological crossings. Throughout I ask only that you join me in the fun, and try to catch me at this heresy that I mean to commit. And what is this heresy I speak of? Here is a hint: my blasphemy is ontological in nature, must do with a multiplicity of ontologies, seeks to honor Kripal’s own heretical metaphysics, and all the

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while proclaims that it is postmetaphysical. Whether required or not, and I tend toward the former, it is predicated on what I understand as my own very personal ontological border crossings. Read together, these traditions open the door for the creative and agential realism required by my participatory approach. For those with more of a linear frame of mind: I begin with a brief consideration of the work of Jürgen Habermas, and in doing so I accept his postKantian postmetaphysical stance. I watch with him as Ludwig Feuerbach claims a kind of post-Hegelian humanism, and catch Kripal at the practice of a similar sort of Feuerbachian metaphysics, which, per Kant and Habermas, is forbidden. I accept Habermas’s critical stance and follow him as he places limits on metaphysics and theology, but there is a participatory jig here—a dance to a triple rhythm. And thus, I have already made my claim and have found myself, well, not post-anything—not even posthuman, at least to the extent that the post suggests a moving away from or a turning of one’s back on the other. I accept Habermas’s postmetaphysics, Kripal’s humanist metaphysics, and a whole lot more. I defend Descola and Viveiros de Castro animism, affect theory’s talismans, as well as my own freedom an agency. In doing so, I speculate and do philosophy, and so problematize the post in Habermas’s own post/modernism. RAMAKRISHNA, PERSPECTIVISM, AND THE ROCK Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, I attained an undergraduate degree in philosophy. Not surprisingly, an existential angst and deep depression began to set in after the completion of my studies. I spent some time couch surfing and working in an Irish pub in the Chinatown of Honolulu, Hawaii. I was more than a little lost when an old friend called me out of the blue one day and invited me to accompany him to South America. We bought one-way tickets to Santiago, Chile, and I began running as fast as I could from something that would so destabilize what I thought of as reality that I have never found my way back to anything quite like Kripal’s humanist mystics again. After traveling for several months throughout South America, I found myself walking into the ruins of a sacred Incan temple. Fellow travelers had often asked if my traveling companion and I had been to Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains of Peru and so I decided to make the trip. I hiked into Machu Picchu from the “back side” on the winter solstice of 2000, which meant we reached the site before the hordes arrived by bus. We crested the mountain above the temple at sunrise and entered the Sun Gate (Intipunku) just as the first rays of the day broke through the clouds.

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Our guide, who had led us on the Inca Trail over the previous four days, suggested that we make straight for a place that he referred to as the “hitching post” (Intihuatana) where, he said, it was customary to tie the sun to the world on the two equinoxes of each year. This was the solstice but still, we were told, it was an auspicious day. As we approached the spot we noticed a man sitting in the quiet of the ruins. Our guide introduced him to us as his mentor, a local anthropologist. The two men suggested that each of us place our hands a few inches from the rock so that we might feel the energy of the place running through us. Several people immediately moved toward the rock and closed their eyes, hands outstretched. Others hung back, smiling at their companions’ New Age inclinations. I hung back for a moment as well, but not because I was above such things. My heart was racing and making loud thumping sounds in my ears. The profound anxiety that had motivated me to run across oceans and continents had suddenly become more acute. As my heart pounded, I tried to shake off these feelings. I forced myself to place my hand a few inches from the rock and immediately heard a loud sucking and popping noise. As the noise overcame me, I became the rock. I did not vanish from the view of the group, yet I knew without a doubt that I had taken on the body of the rock/hitching post. Thousands of images began to wash over me, like a near-death experience in which one’s life flashes before one’s eyes. But rather than seeing my own life, I saw the life of the Incan Empire from the point of view, I have since come to believe, of this rock. I found myself anchored, if you could call this adventure in shamanic body crossing an anchoring, in an animist ecology of participation. This body swapping, as discussed earlier, lies at the very crux of Viveiros de Castro’s shamanic perspectivism. At some point the sucking and popping noise entered my awareness again and I found myself thrust back into the “real world,” but everything had changed. Where once there had been solid ground, everything had shattered; everything, absolutely everything, was made up of vibrating white light. I stumbled and fell to one knee. A friend helped me to my feet and walked me down some steps to sit on the lawn below. I sat there reeling in this new world of light and was inundated by the spirits of the place. I was visited by a twelve-foot purple condor, a couple (man and woman) who introduced themselves as the mother and father of the ruins, and innumerable other beings that clamored for my attention. Seeing such beings was not new to me—I had engaged with them all my life—but now I could not shut them out. Even worse, I began to live in constant fear of becoming them, losing myself, forgetting which body was mine. Stuck in a world of vibrating white light and purple condors, my hopes of becoming a philosopher began to seem distant. Philosophy is a word that pushes and prods, bringing constant struggle to our lives. In Western

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metaphysics, the term ontology points us toward existence, essence, and being, and ultimately Essence and/or Being (absolute insides). This “logic of the One,” writes religious studies scholar Laurel Schneider (2008, 83), “is a bedrock article of faith in a reality that can be described by the simplifying concept of a single, cosmic text: a ‘uni-verse.’” How I wanted to believe that the “uni-verse” was just one—to rest in something like Essence, Being, or Truth. I wanted an ultimate inside to welcome me into this kind of ontology. But my body swapping with the rock undid all this. I could not have articulated it up on that mountain, but something had changed. Ontology—it sounds so enticing, like something useful and solid. But this is not what I was experiencing. Had it only been for the Light—which I understood as something akin to Essence or Being—I think I would not have been so shaken. I already had some perennialist tendencies, and what could make more sense to a neo-perennialist than the Ultimate everything that has ever been and will be? That is not to say that Otto’s characterization of these experiences as both tremendum and fascinans was lost on me. Experiences of such nondual ultimates (note the plural) do not find us basking in the golden rays of absolute understanding. Whoever it is that is doing the basking, well they are not, at least not in any way that might make sense to any kind of them. But there they are over and again, just waiting to be and/or Be-ing. Ontology smacks of Existence, Essence, and Being, and the various phenomena in between. This is the foundation of Kripal’s mystical humanism, ontology, though it need not be, for he calls out for more. Pointing us in the direction of Indian saint Ramakrishna, Kripal (2007, 101) tells us that ontology is fundamental. What is the Light, the ocean into which all rivers must eventually pour? Ramakrishna is “maddeningly complex” on this question, says Kripal (2007, 101). Ramakrishna’s is an ontology of appreciation (cataphatic saying) and critique (apophatic saying away). Dialectical gnosis (vijnana), Kripal calls it, following the Hindu Tantric tradition. Ramakrishna enacts a bipolar dance of the god Shiva (transcendent consciousness) and the goddess Shakti (immanent Energy). He does not go in for the Advaita Vedanta “doctrine of illusions” (mayavada) whereby all phenomena are misconceptions and delusions. Nor does he wholly side with the immanent side of the dance. Rather, writes Kripal (2007, 101), “Ramakrishna much preferred the sweet states of divine-human encounter—devotion (bhakti) and love (prema)—over the metaphysical absolutes of nirvana and brahman, though he recognized the latter as fundamental dimensions of the divine Pleroma.” Kripal’s characterization of Ramakrishna sounds good to me. But the experience of the “sweets” (e.g., purple condors, trees, and dead grandmothers) was troubling to me; an explanation of this, along with revisiting ontologies, may help to clarify Ramakrishna’s obfuscations.

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If the Light is the what is, then the world of phenomena is illusion, including but not limited to the I. The world of vibrating white light into which I was suddenly thrust was not solid, it was not continuous or nature, and in fact made illusory any attempts to reference solid ground. The Light is ultimate Culture. An idealist monism. Realizing the Light, meant waking up to the fact that I am the Light. There is no separation, no other. This is a mystic’s dream come true, and it was somehow familiar to me. It made sense that I was either a self, running around putting my hand next to rocks, or Self, the dreamer who forgets Himself in the game of touching. But like Ramakrishna, I found myself enamored with the sweets (i.e., the sensuous and erotic mixing of bodies). The goal of any good naturalism is a heroic search, a rigorous method, through which one can come to know the interiority. In a traditional mystic ecology, Nature is assumed, cultures are problematic, and Culture is sought. Method is all important, because whether yogi or scientist, rigor is meant to assure that the relativism of cultures is overcome. For many mystics, the ideal is to discover, not enact, the ultimate point of view. If, for example, you take a Vedic (especially the Advaita Vedanta of eighth-century philosopher Adi Shankara) or Neoplatonic (especially through the work of Plotinus and his One) route, then cultures should not be a problem. Within these traditions, everything is subsumed within the One. This is the truth I realized in recognizing my self as the Light, and it works, but only to the extent that one can keep Shakti, and a singular God, and a triune God, and all the gods, and oracular truths, and Achuar and Squirrel People from haunting ones every enlightened breath. In realizing the Light, I also mixed bodies with a rock. Before I touched that rock, I felt sure that there was some truth out there waiting to be found. I lived a pretty normal life on this naturalist ground. I assumed Nature, was troubled by cultures, and dreamt of an ultimate inside—a Culture, Self, or One. This is a pretty clear example of a mystic ecology of participation. I did not know for sure if this ultimate inside was most like Ik Onkar, Brahman, Allah, Yahweh, Godhead, Light, or similar sorts of insides that go on ad infinitum. But I did know that there must be, in essence, as in ontology, only One. I had spent my whole life up to this point dreaming of mystic forms of participation, and on that foggy morning with the rock I found something far more troubling, at least for my naturalist tendencies—I got mixed up with the sweets, the other than the light, natures in the plural, not Nature or Culture. This led me toward shamanic ecologies. Shamanism, like philosophy and ontology, is another word that has chased me through the years. It is somehow tied to the sensuous mixing of bodies that began on that mountain in Peru. I tried to forget my body-rock swapping, but the word shamanism would not let me go. I sat zazen. I contemplated the

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Light. I studied logic. I was a dutiful mystic. But there were other experiences trying to get in, diverse bodies. I wanted to remain in my mystic ecology, to rest in the assumption of some shared singularity (Nature, not natures), but this word and its sweets troubled me along the way. I pursued philosophy, but as I took various feminist and decolonial turns, it also gave me away. Before I met the rock, when I assumed there was only something like the Light, I thought the path of mystics was the way. But now I have come to another sort of truth. If philosophy is worth anything then it must be able to move beyond ontology toward ontologies in the plural. As my shamanic experience with the rock chased me, even after my mystic experience of the Light, even after the shocking emptiness of zazen, I finally gave in. And so, I return to Kripal and his humanism and I wonder: Is his comparative method available within Ramakrishna’s bipolar dialectical gnosis? Does Kripal’s comparative mystics honor Ramakrishna in all his lived experience? In a bit of a twist, I look to Ramakrishna as well. I see him as living toward something like an agential creative form of participation. Kripal wants to honor this practitioner and his life, but I find Kripal in this earlier work subsuming Ramakrishna’s experience within a post/modern comparative schema—a constructivist turn toward singular Nature and multiple cultures. In his more recent work, I find Kripal still teetering on the edge of mysticism, having added a version of animism, but still, I think, looking for Creativity. His work is still too humanist, his biological gods too post/modern, naturalist, and even animist. There is something telling here. So many authors in these pages vacillate between these two poles. Naturalism and animism are natural opposites, and those that inhabit one are probably more prone to the other. The new materialists are like scientific-shamans. They have recovered their materialism, and thrown off the nominalist saying away of dynamism of their effective ground. But what of divinatory and agential logics of performance. While I find both Kripal and the new materialists-cum-animists looking for agential forms of participation, they tend not to be able to accept the radical discontinuities, the oracular truths, and the functional but fleeting unifications—that is, agency—this would entail. But I get ahead of myself. Ramakrishna might still hold a key. Kripal gives us a clue to the ways Ramakrishna does not fit within a naturalist ecology when he tells us that Ramakrishna’s stance is tantric. As such, says Kripal, Ramakrishna’s lived experiences are profoundly local and context specific, but also tending toward the universal. But if Ramakrishna is a mystic, then his truth must be universal. How can ontology, as in the logic of Existence, Essence, and Being, be local? I argue that Ramakrishna is involved with naturalist, animist, agential, and divinatory ecologies of

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participation. Agential events and talismans always speak to local and motil truths. This can be disconcerting to both the shaman and the mystic, as they assume some shared common ground—Culture and Nature respectively. Like myself, Ramakrishna appears available to body-swapping natures. Like all good mystics, he has at least tasted the possibility of a singular perfect Culture. Kripal’s answer in his early is different. In his early work, Kripal locates Ramakrishna is a reductio ad homo constructus. Not a simple social constructivism to be sure, but a post/modern reductive humanism nonetheless. In his later work, he expands this to include a dual aspect monism. As such, we could see him understanding Ramakrishna as beholden to both shamanic and mystic tendencies toward unification, a kind of humanist filter, maybe even a more aware, but still unconscious, biological god. But we need to push this even further. Much like Iamblichus among the ancient Greeks, Ramakrishna may be involved in talismanic theurgy. And if we read him in relation to our agential ontology, we might also see his co-creative tendencies along the lines of participatory events. Kripal sees Ramakrishna as “a kind of cultural archetype of a certain type of comparative mystics that simultaneously denies the ultimacy of cultural and ethnic differences and celebrates their psychological necessity, even as it grounds both movements in an ontology of human being” (2007, 107–8). What he has done is to appreciate and then say away Ramakrishna’s multipleontology approach, with its emphasis on agential participation. Kripal notices and then says away Ramakrishna’s agential participation, and in turn provides his own post/modern naturalist humanism in its place. My body–rock swapping requires more than this, and so I follow Descola toward multiple ontologies. But to get there we must take a closer look at Kripal’s comparative mystics. KRIPAL’S COMPARATIVE MYSTICS, RAMAKRISHNA, AND THE ROCK In their introduction to The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies, Ferrer and Sherman defend the tradition of self-implication that I engaged in the previous section when they write, “Although such self-implication has been traditionally looked at as contaminating inquiry, a number of notable scholars within Religious Studies (from Robert A. Orsi to Kripal) would join hands here with those pioneering the field of Spirituality in recognizing the futility of excising one’s own religious journey from scholarly endeavor” (2008, 22). Ferrer and Sherman also include the recent works of Don Cupitt, Grace Jantzen, Hunt Overzee, James Taylor, and Paul Stoller in their list of self-implicating scholars (and countless others could be added).

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But I am most curious about Kripal and his comparative mystics. Kripal’s way of involving himself is to turn to spiritual pluralism, attempting to both assert and say away his ontological assumptions, but in doing so he offers a particularly subtle form of humanist (read naturalist and mystic) triumphalism. Kripal lays out an apophatic (non)ground for his mystical humanism while calling for the “intellectual courage of a truly open-ended anthropology.” It is just such an inquiry to which these pages are committed. In Kripal’s (2007, 88) own words, Such “mystical humanism” reduces all religious language to the human being, but to human being now conceived as an unfathomable biological, chemical, and quantum depth, an immeasurable, unquantifiable potential, an anciently evolved cosmic body literally composed of exploded stars, an instinctually undetermined, ever-receding horizon, and a radical, irreducible plurality expressed and explored in countless cultural forms and practices.

This mystical humanism is grounded in the human being, though a human being defined as broadly as possible. The question of course is whether this is enough. Kripal means to consider unfathomable horizons, including but not limited to scientific, Advaita Vedantan, Tibetan, Islamic, and Amazonian ways of engaging as human beings. Kripal’s (2007, 82–89) comparative mystics rely on his reading of Feuerbach’s mystical humanism, which turns toward a contemporary reimagining of Indian mystic and saint Ramakrishna’s experiments in spiritual pluralism. Ramakrishna’s humanism emerges out of the dual roles of Hindu cataphatic inclusivism and apophatic traditions of saying away. In laying out his “(non)ground,” Kripal is well aware of various postmodern, critical, feminist, and postcolonial traditions within the academy. He wants to become neither a simple cultural cheerleader (a kind of naïve cataphatic perennialist) nor a heartless destroyer of worldviews (apophatic postmodern deconstruction and/or constructivism leading to solipsism). He acknowledges the possibilities of “epistemological imperialism” and “neocolonialism,” and continues in his practice of comparative mystics. Kripal (2007, 94) uses the term mystics rather than mysticism following the work of French anthropologist Michel de Certeau (who emphasizes the dynamic la mystique as opposed to the more general le mysticisme). And in emphasizing the term comparative he writes, The qualifier comparative [is used] to indicate a discourse that undermines the doctrinal claims of individual religions by setting them beside the claims of other religions. The purpose of such a comparative mystics is to expose all doctrinal claims as historically and culturally relative expressions of a deeper mystery or ontological ground (the gnostic Pleroma) that nevertheless requires these relative expressions for its self-revelation.

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Ramakrishna acts as an interesting point of dialogue around Kripal’s comparative mystics, because of Ramakrishna’s ability to both celebrate and deny (assert and say away) within the context of an ontology of the human being (however broadly defined), or “mystical humanism.” Kripal (2007, 94) goes on to clarify that while, [c]ultural differences and local knowledges are socially and politically important [they are] not ontologically ultimate, and that the gnostic deconstruction or saying-away of cultural and religious “essences”—which flourishes especially in the subversive countercultures of the mystical traditions—is the level at which deep communication may be realizable.

I find myself bowing deeply to Kripal’s work, and to the motivations behind what he writes. Yet something does not feel quite right. Gnostic ­Pleroma? How is this any different from the countless attempts at ontology— as in Existence, Essence, and Being—that have come before? Kripal clarifies in his more recent work that he has begun to put down his post-Ph.D. pluralism. He seeks to clarify his human as filter thesis. He writes, “none of [these spiritual-ultimates-cum-mountains] can say with any convincing argument, ‘I am the highest!’ Each of these different mountains, moreover, give us different things” (Kripal 2017, 309). You can almost feel it, the co-creative capacity of the human, which sounds a lot like agential realism, but Kripal’s are not quite participatory events. They seem to stop at the human. Again, this is a subtle point, and so it is useful to continue our consideration of his work. As Kripal is saying away various cultural and religious essences in this early work, I struggle with his emphasis on apophasis, as well as the cataphatic assertion of an ontology of human being, no matter how broadly defined. The problem is that Kripal’s apophatic postmodernism and cataphatic human being fall well within the bounds of what Descola (2013) terms naturalism. It continues to assume a shared Nature, while emphasizing a diversity of cultures. If his comparative method is to be viable, I would challenge him to place his naturalism in dialogue with other ecologies of participation. To his credit, Kripal (2004) does just this. He has placed his comparative mystics in conversation with the works of Ulrich Beck (2004), Bruno Latour (2004), Tobie Nathan (2004), and Viveiros de Castro (2004) in the context of the symposium titled “Talking Peace With Gods” (Perl et al. 2004). In considering our shared participatory predicament and the current state of comparative studies, Nathan (2004, 530) writes, “We [have] to find representatives for the gods among those strange human beings who, without abandoning their own kind, without renouncing their divine owners, love their neighbors’ gods as well—love all gods so much that the differences between gods, their

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peculiarities, become a deep concern.” If the choice had been mine, I would have stayed well away from purple condors and other sensuous somethings. But here I am, an admixture of bodies, physicalities, and skins. It is this lived experience that has motivated me toward the work of Viveiros de Castro and his shamanic perspectivism. Referencing this very same body of scholarship, Kripal (2004, 488) writes, “[We must take the] risk of mutual contamination and transformation across worldviews.” Kripal is invoking something like the ontological border crossing and ecologies of participation I defend in these pages, yet Kripal’s emphasis on human-ness needs to be pushed against if his comparative mystics are to hold—a point that Kripal himself is more than willing to pursue. Again, we turn to Kripal’s consideration of Ramakrishna for his comparative mystics. One could hardly do better than this Bengali savant in choosing a single person from a single place. Kripal (1998) has gone into great detail regarding Ramakrishna’s life and spiritual biography, a story that defies simple logics or categorization. He sees Ramakrishna as practicing an erotic, bipolar, dialectical form of comparative mystics (Kripal 2004, 498). This suggests, to me, an emphasis on shamanic, divinatory, and mystic forms of participation respectively. Erotic interactions pushed far enough can certainly become confusing for those participating, especially regarding the edges and distinctions between one and another’s bodies. To the extent that such a person moves across, between, and through different bodies, I argue, they play in the shamanic waters of what Viveiros de Castro (2014) would call perspectivism and Descola (2013) would call an animist ontology. At the same time the bipolar nature of Ramakrishna’s practice seems to point to a cosmic tension, a motile truth, that one could easily be forgiven for seeing as divinatory and talismanic in nature. And finally, to the extent that Ramakrishna’s dialectical practice occasionally finds him standing on solid ground or emphasizing the One over the Many (on the rare occasion that he does), we see in him the outlines of a naturalist ontology (mysticism). Naturalists, above all others, have struggled over the years to find some way to understand the participation of the One and Many. Notice how the assumptions and motivations align. Mystics assume the many, really assuming it, Nature, is given, and then they worry the One. Some perfectly triangulated point of view. An animist would experience it differently, but still as the One and the Many. Except here they would assume One-Culture (rather than the Nature of mystics) and many-natures (instead of the cultures of mystics). Where mystics seek to unify insides as the One, shamans try to unify outsides as the One. In his most recent work, Kripal has returned to the One, a dual aspect monism. He has been hard at work, listening to authors like Viveiros de Castro. There are mystics, there are shamans, and they are part of the same One naturalist-animist ecology, a Nature-Culture monism.

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But how can this be—a dual aspect monism? That is not a monism at all, but rather a bipolar theory of divinatory logic. Both Viveiros de Castro and Descola are arguing for the possibility of multiple ontologies (unfortunately, as we shall see, Viveiros de Castro also argues to privilege his own shamanic/ animist ontology over and above all mysticisms and naturalisms). A real heresy if ever there was one. Does Ramakrishna’s thought, or, maybe more pointedly, Kripal’s comparative mystics place one of these over and above the other? As I have already mentioned, Kripal tells us that when pressed to define the one ocean into which all rivers finally run, Ramakrishna leaves his commentators in dispute when it comes to such issues. And yet Kripal himself seems to fall on the side of clarity when he writes, “Cultural differences and local knowledge are socially and politically important but not ontologically ultimate, and that ontological ultimacy—which flourishes especially in subversive countercultures or mystical traditions—is the level at which deep communication may be realizable” (2007, 489). Following these words, we find Descola’s heresy in plain view. Descola has asserted the possibility of multiple ontologies. But this is a heresy with which Kripal is still wrestling in his own work, as evidenced in his earliest writing by a continual retreat into Feuerbachian and contemporary scholarly humanism. In his early work, he wants to reduce Viveiros de Castro’s multinaturalist play of bodies (animism/shamanic ecologies) to a multicultural play of subjectivities (naturalism/mystic ecologies). In his later work, he wants a dual aspect monism, which allows for shamanic attempts at body-swapping participation. But he seems to have missed something. His early work remains well within the boundaries of a Western ontology of the One—namely naturalism with its multiple cultures (humanness) all in relation to an assumed ground (nature). His later work seems to want to have the best of all animist and naturalist worlds, wherein the One is both Nature-biological and Culture-gods. If we read this in relation to Descola’s multiple-ontology approach, we can, at minimum, see the possibility of aligning his recent work with the divinatory logic of talismanic truth (see chapter 10). But I am not sure even Kripal’s latest work goes this far. But he does seem to require something altogether different. A talismanic participation requires a shared Nature-Culture—a shared One-One Cosmos—which is parallel to Kripal’s dual aspect monism. But agential participation says this all away. Participatory events require a radical discontinuity, a Many-Many if you will. Where these agential functions are the only unifications that can be found. Fleeting and hopelessly atomic, the agents are individuals with the freedom to self/enjoy. Kripal, I argue, is beginning to play in these waters. He is looking for a co-creative function, as well as some divinatory Cosmos, and it is helpful to trace how he came this way.

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In his earlier work, Kripal follows Feuerbach in his excitement as he recognizes that all of these—the Light, Shiva, Shakti, God, Yahweh, Allah, and Kali—are projections; not projections in the materialist sense (as in reducible to Nature), but rather projections in his mystical humanist sense (as in reducible to a “complexly conscious field”). It will help to quote Kripal (2007, 164) at some length: Each human being, each reflection of the Adam of Light, is Two, that is, each person is simultaneously a conscious, constructed self or socialized ego and a much larger complexly conscious field that normally manifests itself only in nonordinary states of consciousness and energy, which the religious traditions have historically objectified, mythologized, and projected outward into the sky as divine, as “God,” and so on, or interjected inwards into the human being as nirvana, brahman, and so on.

Kripal’s “complexly conscious field” is where his comparative mystics are at their penultimate point. You may find yourself on the side of the naturalist or the animist in response to this, neither one of which can ultimately work. If a complexly conscious field is somehow related to a continuity called Nature, then we have naturalism. If the complexly conscious field is the continuity (Culture), and is seen in relation to a multiplicity of physicalities or natures, then we have animism. To choose one over the other is to do comparative metaphysics without diviners; “I am right and you are wrong.” Or maybe, such a comparative mystics assumes them by asserting a dual aspect monism—a nonsensical idea that would find itself easily at home with a talismanic Cosmos. The trick is to hold all three together, and more. But it is not only post/modern materialism that stands in our way. We must also consider post/modern humanism as well. The next step toward this goal can be found through a consideration of Jürgen Habermas’s postmetaphysics. This will help to clarify the problem of choosing one ontology over the other. MULTIPLE ONTOLOGIES Habermas (1992, 116–17) warns us, “The metaphysical priority of unity above plurality and the contextualistic priority of plurality above unity are secret accomplices.” Here is the never-ending conversation of post/modernity, as well as the issue at the heart of choosing between a naturalist (continuity of nature, multiple interiorities) or an animist (continuity of people and/or subjectivity, multiple physicalities) ontology. “A transcendental illusion,” writes Habermas (1992, 143), “arises therefrom only when the totality of the lifeworld [i.e., nature or shared physicality], presupposed as a background in everyday practice, is hypostatized as the speculative idea of

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the One and All, or as the transcendental idea of a mental spontaneity that brings everything forth out of itself.” Habermas has seen, along with Kant, the basic problem that all naturalist forms of participation face. They begin by assuming a shared ground, and then proceed to speculate with regard to an ultimate Subject or perfectly objective, but actually subjective, point of view (i.e., scientific method). What is necessary, writes Habermas, is a plurality of voices—as in an emphasis on comparison, participation, and communication, not a pluralism, as in an ontological multiplicity of physicalities (remember the new materialists above). The former is my stance throughout this book: the answer is not monism, or pluralism, or materialism, or theism, or some sort of bipolar play of opposites (think Schelling or the Chinese yin-yang). To finally rest in any of these is to fall into an untenable and arbitrary trap. Whitehead (1978, 3) tells us that speculative philosophy should be understood as a practice, not an end, and as such it is something we should nurture. He tells us that “metaphysical categories are not dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities” (1978, 8). Metaphysics, when done well, cannot be located solely among mystic ecologies. The practice of metaphysics requires rigorous method—the rational tests of mystics and scientists are important. But metaphysics should also be cool (divinatory and talismanic) as well as vital (animist ecologies that nurture the people) and prone to freedom (agential ecologies of self/enjoyment). This fourth ontology is especially important for our contemporary times. It allows for a diaphaneity whereby multiple ontologies can be held. It allows us a freedom from time and space, offering a relative time-space that does not assume any monism (the play of Culture or Nature engaged by shamans and mystics) or dual aspect monism at all (the Cosmos of diviners). As such, metaphysics must be held in an ecological way. It becomes a participatory raft. Not an ontology to be asserted, it is, rather, a transparency to multiple modes of participation and becoming. Speculative philosophy should not seek only the Truth as enacted within mystic ecologies. It should seek ontologies—not ontology—in the plural. It is at this point that we honor Ramakrishna’s talismanic and profoundly local performative truths. There is nothing wrong with mystic ecologies and their attempts to enact coherent lasting insides or, for that matter, shamanic ecologies and their attempts to enact coherent lasting outsides. But we also need a healthy way of universalizing, one that harkens to the beautiful and harmonious—divinatory cool should take its rightful place in parallel to mystic and/or shamanic fascinations with objective and the vital. You see, there is a key within the performative truths of diviners. They are arbitrary, but this does not take away from their talismanic power—that is, their truths. We can turn once again toward Habermas to ground this point.

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In aligning what he terms his postmetaphysics with a Kantian philosophy of religion, Habermas underlines a variety of important issues that we must face if we are going to speculate in the context of our participatory and/or planetary predicament. Habermas finds Kant placing a secular morality over and above theological or doctrinal faith. A planetary and/or participatory ethics must trump any attempts at metaphysics if we are going to include all participants at the table. As such, Habermas locates Kant as defending the need for an “ethical community,” but not of the Platonic sort. Kant’s communal moral compass must be grounded in some deontological good. Habermas wonders aloud whether Kant is able to ground his ethical community without recourse to metaphysics, and then proceeds to assert his own commitment to a postmetaphysical pluralism. This is a crucial step, for the question remains as to whether such a thing can really be held up as an ideal for comparative studies. We must keep in mind Habermas’s three points: we need some sort of secular/postsecular egalitarianism, an ethical community much like the one defended by Kant, and there are fundamental limits that must be placed on the practice of metaphysics. Habermas (1992, 142) offers a “weak but not defeatistic concept of linguistically embodied reason” to avoid an overreliance on metaphysics, for example, the speculative enactions of mystic ecologies. I offer a much stronger participatory approach to linguistics and philosophy. By assuming that all actions are presential and potentially enactive, we keep the door open for radically new transformations and ecologies. Ferrer and Sherman (2008) write, “What neither Habermas nor other modern thinkers could have expected, however, is that the transference of religious meanings onto language is leading today to a renewed and perhaps disconcerting revaluation of the sacred dimensions of religious language (and, indeed, of human language per se). The lingiustification of the sacred is paving the way for a resacralization of language.” Following their lead, I defend the resacralization of language. Language is fundamental to, among many things, the co-creation of physicalities (shamanic), interiorities (mystic), and harmonious correlations in a cosmos (divinatory ecologies). Language is enactive (agential participation). This is what we are allowed within our participatory raft. In fact, building on my consideration of Whitehead’s propositional thinking in earlier chapters, we are language—or language is us—a key to the symbolic mysteries of becoming, agency all the way through. Following this participatory raft of multiple ontologies, there are no absolutely autonomous selves, or given objective truths. At least none that we can be sure of. We can bow to the powers of Abrahamic-cum-scientific rationalism, without fully conceding that they have actually found universal Facts. Our participatory approach allows us to see that there are ecologies and their enaction all the way up, down, and all around. But this is not

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the only way forward. There are other performative truths available to us, beyond the agential ones I propose. Divinatory logics should also be considered in their own right, if we are going to find a robust comparative method (see chapter 10). But at this point, I simply mean to remind the reader of Habermas’s postmetaphysical assertions by way of distancing them from my own participatory stance. His work is important, not because I adopt his thought without qualification, but rather because he does such a thorough job of recognizing the post-Kantian limits on metaphysics. If we practice metaphysics—making attempts to assert what is universal and necessary—we will inevitably leave someone out (at best) and/or hurt someone (at worst). This is just as true for metaphysics done within mystic ecologies as in shamanic ecologies. Leaving life ways and knowledges out is unavoidable, but it can be held in a better multiple-ontology (i.e., participatory) way. But how could we hold such a paradoxical idea? Divinatory ecologies, of course. We must begin to recognize the ways in which Kripal’s humanism falls short of my comparative participatory goal. To flesh out this point, I again look to Habermas and his reading of the history of philosophy. We find Habermas (2008, 229) considering Hegel, who “criticizes Kant as the enlightener who measures religion against the yardstick of abstract concepts . . . and dismisses its essential content as something merely positive.” By “positive,” Hegel points to something within the grasp of reason, but a reason that has lost its virtue. If we follow Kant we are left to an ethical community without a transcendent Good or, as Habermas would have it, a postmetaphysical egalitarianism. Hegel cannot stand by and allow religion to be reduced to an object by a mystic reason that has lost its primary objective (i.e., a metaphysical ultimate). This is not a reason that knows its limits, but rather a reason that has lost its way, a mysticism that forgot its mystics. So, what is a philosopher like Hegel to do? Habermas (2008, 230) writes, “[Hegel’s] conceptual transcendence ­[Aufhebung] of religion as a whole now takes the place of a selective assimilation of individual religious contents by a reason aware of its limits.” Hegel subsumes religion within the larger unfolding of the Absolute Spirit. On his account, his own philosophy finds itself the more developed expression of a process of self-actualization that transcends and includes religion. According to Habermas, Hegel’s work is an attempt to go back to pre-Kantian pre-critical time when reason did not know its limits. For Kant, metaphysics alone is largely a dead-end street. We simply cannot know essences and absolutes or realize our mystic dwellings. We are left in the end to discover only natural intricacies and patterns. Post/modern Enlightenment mystic ecologies start by looking toward the ground (and risk enacting and/or crossing shamanic ecologies). Reason, within Kantian attempts at metaphysics, pretends to

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know its limits, and all the while is really quite scientific. Kant’s is simply a post-Enlightenment mystic ecology. Habermas (2008, 243–47) takes three basic lessons from Kant’s categorical imperative. First, Plato’s speculative metaphysics is no longer possible in a post-Kantian world. No matter how much we may long to know the essence of Being, it is forever out of our reach. No single mystic ecology is ever going to get it right. But Kant has thrown down the gauntlet; we must practice a postmetaphysical thinking that devalues ontology (at least the naturalist ontology enacted by mystic ecologies). This does not mean, however, that people will not continue with their attempts to reason Being. We will always have mystic tending ecologies of participation. Habermas offers two examples that we should no longer tolerate: religious apologetics and scientism. We must, says Habermas, take an agnostic position that does not argue for one religion (apologetics) or assume that all religions are without cognitive content (scientism) and avoid being mystic ecologies that defend their turf at all cost (apologetics) or mystical ecologies who have forgotten the need for both crossings and dwellings and claim the perfect View (i.e., scientific observer). Rather than turn our backs on or subsume (e.g., Hegel) these traditions, we must dialogue with them (e.g., Karl Jaspers). Finally, following the first two points, Habermas’s postmetaphysical stance is against religious philosophy of any kind. Habermas places Hegel’s metaphysics firmly within the category of apologetics. Some will argue that parts of Hegel’s work are non-metaphysical, while others will assert that his contributions can be rehabilitated in the face of Kant’s limits on reason. Such issues must be saved for other authors (see Lucas 1989). For now, we must follow Habermas once again as he turns his attention to Feuerbach, a thinker whose work is fundamental to Kripal’s comparative mystics. Feuerbach, writes Habermas, turns Hegel on his head by inverting the primacy of ultimate outsides (i.e., Nature over ultimate insides, for example, Spirit). The disappointment of watching Hegel’s supposed regression to metaphysics and retreat into theory over practice led the left-leaning Hegelians (e.g., Marx and Feuerbach) to “radicalize the Kantian critique of religion in a different, materialistic direction” (Habermas 2008, 231). Van A. Harvey (1995, 27) puts it this way, “[For Feuerbach], religion is not, as Hegel thought, the revelation of the Infinite in the finite; rather, it is the self-discovery by the finite [nature] of its own infinite nature.” For Feuerbach, nature (especially in the form of the finite, bodies, societies, etc.) reigns supreme. This is the beginnings of a post/modern naturalistic mystic ecologies that wants to do away with insides (except, of course, the scientific observer)—a radical effort largely taken for granted by people all over the world. But is this what Kant had in mind when he placed his limits on reason?

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Remember Habermas’s post-Kantian postmetaphysical critique of Hegel and Feuerbach and my original hint about potential heresy: my blasphemy is ontological in nature, has to do with a multiplicity of ontologies, seeks to honor Kripal’s own heretical metaphysics, and all the while proclaims that it is postmetaphysical. Have you figured out this riddle of practicing speculative philosophy in a postmetaphysical world? Kripal is aware of the need for Habermas’s postmetaphysical stance and assures us that there can be no study of religion with recourse to Enlightenment reason and reductive measures. We should not rest here, but we cannot ignore this critical turn either (Kripal 2007, 168). Kripal is certainly on to something, but just as Hegel (arguably) and Feuerbach were thrown back into pre-critical, pre-Kantian metaphysics (mystic participation), so too has he fallen into a similar sort of trap. But I think there is a way forward, one that can be found throughout Kripal’s writing. My answer, of course, is a complex play of multiple ontologies, in between shamanic, mystic, divinatory, and agential ecologies. This multipleontology approach to philosophy moves us away from speculation that falls too easily into assertions of naturalist or animist universality. It adopts both talismanic oracles and participatory knowing with their performative truths. This is the way forward, whereby we practice philosophy within limits while honoring Kant and Habermas and their postmetaphysical concerns. PARTICIPATORY KNOWING AND AUTHORING THE IMPOSSIBLE In a review of Kripal’s earlier work, religious studies scholar Wouter J. Hanegraaff writes, “Kripal strongly agrees with Feuerbach that the truth claims of the religions are unfounded if taken literally, but emphasizes that this does not make religion meaningless” (2008, 266; for response see Kripal 2008). In reading the same passages that I considered above, Hanegraaff comes to the conclusion that Kripal has given himself away as a “full-blown reductionist, or even an atheist skeptic of the Richard Dawkins variety” where scholars know better than the ones they study (2008, 266). Hanegraaff, rightly I think, finds Kripal following what he calls an Esalen-style neo-perennialism (as in the 1960s/1970s up to present countercultural hot springs at the center of the New Age). In this contemporary psychologically and evolutionarily laden vision that follows the likes of Hegel and Sri Aurobindo, God becomes consciousness of himself as that which is thought by us. “In Kripal’s vision, then,” writes Hanegraaff, “humanity is evolving or growing up from its primitive or childlike stages of naïve belief in local deities and mythologies, through an intermediary stage of criticism and doubt, towards a global and universal spirituality” (2008, 270).

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This position has been critiqued at some length (Cabot 2018), and fortunately it is not where Kripal’s most recent work ends. In Authors of the Impossible, he writes of a “super-imagination that appears on the horizon of thought” (2010, 9). He is describing the paranormal, and thus beginning to take seriously communities that have been left of out contemporary scholarship. Where scholarship on such established saints as Ramakrishna is welcome in the academy, talk of aliens and “extraterrestrial esotericism” is not (Kripal 2017, 316–18). Kripal is beginning to look seriously at spiritualists, alien abductees, and science fiction writers, and in doing so he assures us “that things also get wilder—way wilder” (2010, 9). He begins to write of the “Human as Two”: human as both brain (scientific materialism) and Mind (some form of participatory consciousness). He is not reducing religious experience to the human, as in the brain, but a fuller expression of this idea does not present itself until his next book, Mutants and Mystics. It is in this text that Kripal begins to really take seriously not only the possibility that we author the impossible but that, in fact, we co-author the impossible. This is the point at which diviners and ecologies of talismanic participation enter the conversation. In Mutants and Mystics Kripal focuses his attention on a slew of different authors, and in doing so he offers seven different mytho-themes that he finds percolating within popular culture through both science fiction and comic book/superhero genres: divinization, orientation, alienation, radiation, mutation, realization, and authorship. I begin my discussion with the last two and then move to the others. Kripal considers a variety of authors, but his description of the work of Whitley Strieber is most striking to me. The well-known science fiction image of an alien appears on the cover of Strieber’s classic work titled Communion (1987). Strieber, by his own account, is a devoted comparativist, and by Kripal’s account, a certified author of the impossible (e.g., able to enact multiple ecological crossings). By way of drawing a thread through his own scholarship, experience, and writings, Strieber comes up with three basic options regarding what’s actually going on (see Kripal 2011, 316–19). Option one: “they” created us, whoever “they” are—possibilities include the Christian God, the Yoruba orishas, the Egyptian pantheon or Strieber’s own many and varied experiences with others (Strieber is particularly interested here in what Kripal calls the “ancient-astronaut thesis”). Option two is slightly different, an inversion of the first. In this scenario, we created “them.” This resembles an amped-up version of Feuerbachian projection, whereby our empowered imagination actually creates what we think. “Ideation,” writes Kripal, “becomes materialization” (2011, 316). This is a mystic ecology, the edge with which Kripal has been playing in his own work up to this point. There is some sort of projection going on, coming either from the brain (post/modern naturalism) or the Mind (paranormal

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naturalism). Options one and two reduce, essentially, to some form of naturalist ecology. But there is an option three, which Kripal calls Strieber’s most sophisticated and interesting and which Strieber finds most attractive and scary (2011, 317): Perhaps they created us and we created them. I am aiming in these pages for something just like option three. “Such monster speculations,” writes Kripal, “boil down to the central idea that the world of experience is a kind of quanta” (2011, 317). “Thus the notion of continuous transmission in science must be replaced by the notion of immediate transmission through a route of successive quanta of extensiveness,” writes Whitehead (1978, 307), “[For] these quanta of extensiveness are the basic regions of successive contiguous occasions.” The density of Whitehead’s writing, the opacity of this idea of quanta, must be understood by Kripal and Strieber if they are going to fully understand the radically alterity of option three. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call option three co-authorship. Co-­authorship suggests a process whereby, in Kripal’s words, “a kind of indeterminate potentiality . . . ‘collapses’ or becomes determinate through our individual decisions and belief (and I believe through our collective cultures and beliefs)” (2011, 317). What is the process whereby potentiality collapses and becomes determinate? Is it simply through the act of an empowered decision (see Hollenback 1996)? No: for that is simply a naturalist and mystic style of participation. Is it simply that through the act of Amerindian perspectivism diverse bodies are enacted (see Viveiros de Castro 2014)? No: for that is simply an animist and shamanic style of participation. For an occasion to become determinate three different things must happen. First the occasion, with its mental and physical poles, feels the entirety of everything that has ever been, all “bodies” and “objects” and physical somethings. This is what Whitehead calls physical prehensions. I put “bodies” and “objects” in quotations to warn you away from assuming, like the naturalist, that such participatory events are solid or part of a continuity or nature. In Whitehead’s radical rereading of subjectivity(-superject), “apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (1978, 307). “Subject,” on this participatory approach, means three things. First, there is no subject or object out there, but rather a variety of nexuses (e.g., bodies, selves, cosmoses), which will be discussed below. Second, a necessary component of every occasion is the subjective form, the physical pole, the ability to feel and/or prehend what has come before. This idea of prehension is one of the most original and difficult ideas ever presented in Western philosophy (Hartshorne 1984, 109). It is about sensuous intermingling, not thinking or decisions. This is the land of Bennett’s vibrant vital matterings. Prehensions, I have argued earlier, are the sorts of things in which shamanic

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ecologies are most engaged—to put it simply, effect. When Kripal emphasizes the mind and decisions, he is showing his tendency toward naturalism and mystic ecologies. Telos matters. Whitehead also leaves more than ample room for the practice of subjective aims, decisions, the particularly naturalist and talismanic forms of itinerant crossings. Affects happen. But what holds all this together? In a mystic ontology, telos is supreme. In a shamanic ontology, effect is ultimate. Within a talisman cosmos, affects are absolute. And in a participatory ontology, agency rules the day. Now, these are all limited in important ways. If we follow Whitehead and place too much emphasis on agency, we might marginalize vital intimacies in favor of self/enjoyment. If we place talismanic affective truths as primary, we will lose the objectivity of naturalist science. There is not right way to go here, and yet the ontology of agency is relatively novel, and so I continue to emphasize it here. The following paragraph gets technical, covering material from chapter 2, but it is worth repeating. Every occasion, every agential self/enjoyment, feels at least the effects of past agential events, that is, effects. Whitehead understands the process of feeling the effects of past occasions as acts of prehension. These effects can be more-or-less intense within the relative concern of an agential occasion. If these physical prehensions become so intense as to be experienced propositions, then we step toward our most basic (Levinson’s intrinsic) frame of reference within human language. This is what Whitehead calls propositional feelings, and what I locate in parallel to shamanic forms participation. Whitehead breaks up what he calls conceptual prehensions into comparative and intellectual feelings. These can be associated with divinatory logic (Levinson’s absolute) and the rational knowing of mystics ­(Levinson’s relative frame of reference). Needless to say, these are all very human attempts at meaning making. But Whitehead goes further, pushing us to consider the possibility that human language—as a stand-in for the deeper mystery of participation—is also capable of making worlds. Here, Whitehead locates acts of decision. These are akin to Barad’s agential cuts. Agency occurs as choices are made to enjoy some particular experience. I find Kripal pushing us in this direction. He is more than ready for something wilder, maybe even something a little bit “loopy.” And yet it is not wholly clear what this might mean. He tells us that, central to his notion of the paranormal, is the practice of co-authoring the impossible. On his read, this is a paradoxical notion of the Human as Two (2011, 333). This does look something like talismanic logic, whereby a shared interior (Mind) and a shared physicality (Nature) come together to create a third, that is, Cosmos. Kripal’s Human as Two comes from his book The Authors of the Impossible and suggests a brain-Mind combination of some kind. He is approaching

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his biological gods and his dual aspect monism. He is pushing beyond the second option offered above, the idea of an empowered imagination. Within this new turn, biology and mind are both Super. This is a Super Story of Biology-Gods. To this end, he tells us that what we really have is a Human as Two-in-One. Matter and Mind and something else, fantastic in its “bothand, physical-mythical, masterful-mental, real-unreal” (2011, 333). Kripal is starting to enact more divinatory (not to be confused with his own mytheme of divinization) ecologies. REIMAGINING KRIPAL’S MYTHEMES FOR OUR PARTICIPATORY STORY We need shamanic (animism), mystic (naturalism), divinatory (talismanic), and agential (participatory) ecologies if we are going to change the Super Story that runs as a theme through Kripal’s writing to a more participatory narrative. Divinization and demonization are the first of Kripal’s mythemes, a running story through our psyche, our insides, where we are approached by divine and/or demon others (depending on your point of view) in our dreams. Kripal sees this process as a dissolution of the ego, but why not the dissolution of the body-as-vital/self (shamanic crossings), agent-as-self/enjoyment (participatory crossings), or cosmos-as-coherent/community (divinatory crossings)? Much like Ferrer’s participatory tests in the last chapter, we need to expand Kripal’s mythemes to accommodate, at minimum, all four of our ontologies. If we are going to use words like dissolution, we need to extend what might be at stake. Briefly, we could include the dissolution of cosmos into chaos (talismanic), of body in bodies (shamanic), and agency into the absolutes of Mind, Nature, and Cosmos. In his next mytheme, Kripal notes that our orientation has been to the “far away”: long ago (naturalist linear past), the “East” (our romantic orientalist other), or maybe even to the pre-moderns of Africa or the New World. Instead of looking to the far away, Kripal is attempting to orient us back to ourselves, right here, within our own communities. And while it might sound strange at first, if we adopt my fourfold emphasis on agential, shamanic, mystic, and divinatory participation, this orientation process might come a little more easily. Shamanic dwellings, for example, are made up of kinship rituals, as well as our sexual and social intercourse. When you go home for the holidays and your father cooks his famous tart, that is shamanic (though probably of the homebody dwelling kind). It is a way of relating in and through a shared body, a means of unifying the physicality he holds true. Jonathan Z. Smith was right to ask us to inquire into the mundane. This is good, and we should reimagine the mundane through the lens of multiple ontologies.

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In considering his third mytheme, Kripal writes of alienation. He focuses on the science fiction and superhero versions in which we realize they are out there and are mixed up in our lives. This is also reminiscent of Ferrer’s dissociation test. Alienation comes in many forms, and I find myself wondering about the power of the post/modern constitution. Perhaps the profound alienation after Western Enlightenment has brought us back to ourselves, finally— to our diverse bodies (shamanic) and our diverse cosmologies (divinatory). We have alienated ourselves from the vital (animism) and the revelatory (talismanic) truths, and must return to these “superstitions” and “religions” that we thought we had outgrown. Our science cannot find the bottom, the continuity of nature that our mystic leaning ecologies have assumed. We are enacting shamanic ecologies as our scientists “discover” by way of enacting, not nature, but natures in the plural. Kripal’s fourth mytheme is that of radiation, which he sees through an emphasis on the potentiality of matter. The closer we get to the “secret life of matter, the stranger things appear until one encounters a kind of pure potency, that is literally everything” (2011, 27). This sounds like the shamanic ecologies of the new materialism that I touched upon above. Shamans enact diverse outsides, by assuming, and then forgetting, a shared inside. But the new materialists and their new animism must learn to join the methods of objectivity within mystic ecologies (diversity of insides), the ways in which divinatory ecologies speak different coherent revelations (shared inside-outsides), and the ways in which participatory ecologies enact multiple creative events (diversity of outsides and insides). If we read Ferrer’s participatory tests alongside Kripal’s mythemes, we find new avenues toward planetary ethics. We should encourage dissolution, watch out for alienation, celebrate radiation. We should do this while touching multiple ontologies and what they hold dear. Methods of vitalization, objectification, creativity, and revelations all become relavent forms of radiation. And we need to watch out for alienation. If we look to the last mytheme of radiation, especially as detailed by Kripal, we approach the sorts of performative excess encouraged with divinatory ecologies. Talismanic truths are predicated on a quasi-physical (shared inside-outside) performance of hyphenated truths, not just the Human as Two (shamanic dwelling as bodies or mystic dwelling as selves), but a third thing: Cosmos as play of opposing tensions. When Kripal writes of quanta in this context, he does not emphasize discontinuity. To push too far in this direction would lead to the agential realism of participatory events. Kripal’s work trends more toward the talismanic. His Human as Two-as-One is fluid. His most recent assertion of dual aspect monism has the flavor of arbitrary oracular truth. Kripal is enacting his own ecology, a divinatory crossing into shamanic and mystic lands.

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It is when Kripal writes of mutation, his fifth mytheme, that we really see his Esalen-style neo-perennialism shining through. And yet, this is also the point of greatest opportunity. As I have written at length in other chapters, we need to emphasize the quality of mutation that is so important to theories of evolution. I sided with Gebser in chapter one, who writes, “[I] have disavowed the concept of evolution and prefer instead to speak of mutations” (Gebser 1985, 142). To this end, I think Kripal’s terminology is spot on, but we must be careful not to conflate mystic-naturalist ideas of linearity and progress with evolutionary theories of mutation. Gebser goes on: “What is at stake here is neither a loss nor a gain, neither an ascent nor a descent, but a re-arrangement or a restructuration, a mutative unfolding” (1985, 134). As with Kripal, I see a certain divinatory logic here. There are times when Gebser assumes an originary Cosmos, that unfolds through rearrangement. There are other times where Gebser clarifies origin and Creativity, a dynamic process rather than a talismanic cosmos. I fall on the latter, seeing rearrangement of affects (divinatory), the lure of telos (naturalism), as well as the push of effects (animist if dynamic, and scientifically materialist if nominalist) all at play in evolution. But as I argue passim, especially in chapter 7, we need to ground our evolutionary theories on an agential enactive realism. Progress is one of the most foundational beliefs underlying our current post/modern naturalism. Evolutionary theories are too often aligned with this unexamined assumption. We need to double down on the idea of mutations so that we can argue for radical change without falling into modern naturalist triumphalism. Evolutionary theories cannot be conflated with animism. Shamanic ecologies conflate space and time, into a point-like topography. Considering the large body of ethnographic literature available, Fernando Santos-Granero contrasts the naturalist notions of individual persons (i.e., diversity of insides) with “Amazonians [shamanic ecologies that] conceive of persons/bodies as being relationally constituted, permeable, metamorphic, and in permanent flux . . . which is conducive to ‘relations of substance’ (Seeger 1980; Gow 1991; Overing 1999; Overing and Passes 2000; McCallum 2001; Belaunde 2001)” (Santos-Granero 2012). We can read in this a shared shamanic dwelling—a body. For within shamanic ecologies, a continuity (intimate dwelling) of a body must be achieved. It cannot be assumed. There is an emphasis on metamorphosis, and so animist time is not linear and historical, as in a shared story in relation to a continuity of physicality; time is a story of the people (the original shared interiority) and the becoming of the current body (the particular shared dwelling that must continually be reenacted, as in Achuar or Jivarro People). There is no linearity of shared world-nature-objectivityreality to be found here. There is no progress. Rather, there are a series of vital topographical moments and intrapersonal temporality.

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Evolutionary theories cannot be conflated with naturalism. Identification with a more evolved status, writes Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, “is based on an ontological chasm between the human and the non-human, usually conveyed by excluding what belongs to ‘nature’ [shared outside]” (2011, 150). In contrast to this naturalist idea, Apffel-Marglin argues for a series of performances and enactments that help to co-create a shared place. We need to complexify evolutionary theories in ways that are not anthropocentric. We must continue to tease apart assumptions of social progress from theories of evolutionary mutation. Doing so helps us to delineate important distinctions between naturalist and participatory ecologies. Evolutionary theories cannot be conflated with divinatory ontologies. Talismanic time is intersubjective, a play of self-other relationships formed in and through oracular acts and performances (Munn 1986, 9). The talismanic present is circular, including at once what we might understand as past and present. In studying the talismanic themes of self and time among road workers in Mozambique, Morten Neilsen finds an emphasis on tomorrowness rather than future. “Tomorrowness (vumundzuku) might perhaps best be described as this transformative potential of the future lodged in the present. Despite its likely failure, the future inserts itself in the present as an organizing tendency that connects multiple entities (persons, ideas, things) in a momentary durational assemblage” (2013, 85). Neilsen sees this as pointing toward an open-endedness, one that certainly looks forward but has no real use for a final telos or cause. This is a place of accidents and indeterminacies, a forever present that keeps changing, an interpersonal temporality where personhood equals Cosmos. To more fully appreciate Kripal’s mytheme of mutation we must read it next to realization and authorship. In this way, evolutionary theories can be aligned with an agential or enactive understanding of mutations. To this end, as we take this final turn toward Kripal’s last mythemes, we find a door that opens to reveal an agential participatory twist in our tale. First, we have the realization that what we take to be a stable world or dwelling is being manipulated. There is more to actuality than meets the eye. Our story does not simply rotate around the naturalists and their God/human/self interior Creator or viewer. Second, we have authorship, or co-authorship to be clear. There are others, and it is possible for us to play along with them. We are authoring the story, they are us, and we are them. Can you feel it, the shared bodies, the mixings and interminglings that are possible with them? Kripal is not just playing at decisions or projections of humans, biological and otherwise. Kripal’s comparative mystics begin to resemble a participatory approach to comparison. If we read his emphasis on mutation in relation to this turn toward realization, we get something akin to agential participation.

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We can read the mythemes of mutation, realization, and authorship through Kripal’s lens of co-authorship. It is here that he comes closest to the participatory knowing at the heart of my ecologies of participation. The world/s is/are not simply there. This is the radical idea. “There is a becoming of continuity [the tomorrowness of talismanic and divinatory participation]; but no continuity of becoming [the discontinuity of animist bodies and naturalist selves]” (Whitehead 1978, 36). We need divinatory (Cosmos-Nature-Culture), mystic (Nature-cultures), and shamanic (Culture-natures) ecologies. But we also need something radically discontinuous as well. You can hear Smith (1982) calling out that we are headed the wrong way, into the wilds, and leaving behind the “empty” rituals of that construct place (Smith 1987). But it is not Smith that is especially concerned with Kripal’s work at this point; it is Hanegraaff and other similarly wise homebodies of academia that are certainly ready to jump in. Hanegraaff (2008, 274) asks an important question: “What should we conclude about this sophisticated postmodern and psychoanalytic upgrade of Esalen transpersonalism applied to the study of religion?” Hanegraaff is concerned not with focusing one’s scholarly attention on these folks but rather with mixing up one’s scholarship with this sort of transpersonalism, or any other stance for that matter. He helps to clarify this point by making a distinction between those scholars who focus their attention on historical and textual research of primary sources and those who understand the practice of religious studies as primarily normative (or quasi-normative meta-discourse). Hanegraaff finds Kripal mixed up with the latter approach, and as such he could say as much, if not more, about my own (would he even call it) scholarship within these pages. Luckily for us, Kevin Schilbrack (2014, 187) has written a “manifesto” on this topic, and in doing so offers the useful distinction between describers and explainers. The former follows Hanegraaff’s approach, sticking to the primary materials, while attempting to stay away from any and all critical or normative engagements with the self-understanding of the people they study. The latter follow something more akin to Kripal’s approach, whereby the self-understanding of those studied can be asked to answer a myriad of questions, including, but not limited to, whether their teachings are true, moral, real, or just. Schilbrack makes a further distinction between empiricist and critical commitments among describers. The empiricist tows the post-Enlightment line (the modern part of the post/ modern constitution, see the introduction) as he or she tries to emulate the self-understanding of scientists in thinking they have found some level of never-before-experienced objectivity. Accordingly, all values, morality, and truths should be taken off the table in order to generate the social-scientific research that Donald Wiebe (2005; see also 2008) calls objective and pure.

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Though Hanegraaff asks us to adopt a more value-free stance, he is not among the positivists/ empiricists like Wiebe. Schilbrack turns to the work of Russell McCutcheon (2001) in discussing the role of the critic (as opposed to caretakers) in the academy. This is where we find the post in the post/modern constitution, a subtle position that is not easily seen (see Cabézon’s clarifications in the introduction). “[This] scholarly task,” writes Schilbrack (2014, 194), “is [not to evaluate, but] instead to redescribe religious phenomena from a human perspective. . . . [This critical approach] seeks to expose the rhetorical mechanism by which social norms are constructed, to historicize what communities claim is eternal, and to demonstrate the contingency of what communities claim is necessary.” These scholar-critics are aware that their position is not wholly neutral (McCutcheon 2001, 106). “The kind of postmodern criticism open to the scholar of religion, then,” writes McCutcheon (2001, 109), “is a form of demystification.” While critiquing Kripal for falling into the role of scholar-critic, Hanegraaff (1995) defends an empirical methodological agnosticism that both McCutcheon and Kripal have already invalidated. We need to evaluate and speculate, and luckily McCutcheon has a hunch about theory and method. There is something that we share that is private, fleeting, and local, but also “1. public (inasmuch as people express them [a key verb here]), 2. universal (inasmuch as large numbers of people apparently share them, thereby making individuals into groups), and 3. virtually timeless (inasmuch as these groups apparently endure over time, possessing what some today call cultural memories” (McCutcheon 2012, 81–82). McCutcheon is talking, not about stabs in the dark or guesses, but hunches, hunches that in some mysterious way are public (while being private), must be expressed or performed, are universal insofar as people share them and as discontinuities or individuals are made into wholes, and are virtually timeless, as in some future tomorrowness that asserts itself in the present. Hunches change just as easily as they move us. Have you felt one? I am sure you have. And this is a clue for both you and me as to how we are to go about our comparisons. Now we are getting into divinatory crossings and dwellings. “In its most radical version,” write Ferrer and Sherman (2008, 32), “a participatory perspective does not contend that there are two, three, or any limited quantity of pregiven spiritual ultimates, but rather that the radical openness, interrelatedness, and creativity of the mystery and/or the cosmos allows for the participatory enaction of an indefinite number of possible selfdisclosures of reality and corresponding metaphysical or religious worlds.” We cannot rest in animist continuities (the people) or naturalist ones (nature). We need peoples (selves) and natures (bodies). There is some sort of play between these two, and it is something akin to a hunch, or better yet, an

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incredible diversity of hunches. And how do we know that we are not headed off a cliff, where everything, absolutely everything goes? We have Ferrer’s participatory tests from the last chapter, and now we have Kripal’s mythemes. We can take each of these and put them to a multiontology test. We can read alienation and realization through the lens of trans-, intra-, inter-, and multi-personal. In each case, we define “personhood” in very different ways: in relation to objectivity (trans-, naturalist), vitality (intra-, animist), cool (inter-, talismanic), and/or freedom (multi-, participatory). These tests and others can keep us on track, ensuring that we do not become too alienated or dissociated through our adventures. But these tests underline the need for participation and the fact that we are all mixed up: not one ontology, but ontologies in the plural. We are, each of us, living in overlapping ecologies, and as such we need to find ways to listen to and honor the life ways of others. The ecologies of participation I outline are just one peculiar attempt to do this. For his part, Kripal ends his treatise on the mythemes of Mutants and Mystics hoping that we “become our own authors and artists of the impossible” (Kripal 2011, 334). With the help of our innate ecologies of participation, we appear to hold the possibility of something a lot like where we have been. And if you dare to look or feel or rest upon a hunch, you will certainly be shocked awake by the impossibility of the journey that brought us here. Regarding my heresy, my blasphemy is not that I have “gone beyond” Enlightenment reason and Habermas’s post-Kantian postmetaphysics, no more than it is that I have gone beyond metaphysics. Rather, I have followed a hunch down the rabbit hole of multiple ontologies and tried to dance my way back through four distinct rhythms or ecologies: that of the shamanic, agential, mystic, and divinatory crossings and dwellings. It is here that we find fresh and dynamic ground upon which to reimagine Kripal’s comparative mystics.

Chapter 9

Shamanic Perspectivism and Comparative Method

Think about a shaman and a philosopher. Which one would you choose to spend time with? Who would you choose to think with? To live with? With whom would you rather solve life-or-death problems, like ongoing, humancaused climate change? Consider why you’ve made these choices. What do you assume about these two words and what they tell you about these types of people? Are there significant differences between them, and is there a way to bridge those differences? It is my argument within this chapter that too many contemporary theorists make unfortunate value judgements here. They tend to idolize one or other. In the following pages, I focus specifically on the ways in which Descola and Viveiros de Castro locate shamanic ecologies as more important than naturalist ones. These authors argue that shamanic ecologies enact radically diverse bodies, physicalities, and, in the end, world/s. Animists are efficacious. They create vital and diverse natures, and they should be applauded for this. At the same time, they assert that theologians, philosophers, scientists, and naturalist mystic of all kinds are engaged in lifeless, dangerous, and dead end ontological assumptions. In short, these authors have conflated all naturalist mystics with post/modern flatland metaphysics. These communities do not enact anything at all. Quite the contrary: they are seen to be working with an impoverished ontology. One that does not create anything but superficial glosses (constructs) in relation to an assumed real (Nature). To the extent that both Viveiros de Castro and Descola conflate post/modern naturalism with the whole of naturalism, they have bought into the flatland narrative of post-Enlightenment thought. They need to read Kripal’s authors of the impossible, take seriously Descartes’s ego, and realize the instability of the Enlightenment ground. 247

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VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, SHAMANISM, AND MULTIPLE ONTOLOGIES Viveiros de Castro has developed his ethnographical work primarily through association with the Achuar, Araweté, and other Amerindian peoples of South America. To the extent that Kripal references the work of Viveiros de Castro, he appears to move beyond the post/modern constitution and the naturalism that is so prevalent in our academy, inviting the work of comparative ontologies defended here. But can Kripal’s emphasis on the human hold if placed in relationship with the dwellings and crossings of enacted through Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism? This perspectivism is in some ways quite distinct from the naturalism that has been so foundational to Western philosophy, at least since Aristotle first emphasized substances and the continuity of nature. For his part, Viveiros de Castro (1998) makes the distinction between multinaturalist and multiculturalist ways of framing experience; as I interpret it, animist shamanic ecologies enact multiple natures and naturalist mystic ecologies enact multiple cultures. This line of thought parallels the distinction that Descola has made between animist and naturalist ontologies. Animist thought like that of the Achuar people of Amazonia details a lived experience that is grounded in a shared subjectivity (Culture, the people) and discontinuous physicalities or natures (multiple bodies, skins, worlds). Here multiple objective realities are possible in ways that seem irrational to the naturalist. This is because the opposite is true from the naturalist standpoint where what is shared or public is marked by objectivity (nature and/or the body), while subjectivity is either private (the domain of God or an individual) or epiphenomena (reducible to the objective à la scientific materialism). Where the animist forms of participation co-create objective realities by personifying the other (Achuar people, Raven people, Thunder Beings, etc.), naturalist forms of participation enact various interiorities (e.g., scientific observer, brahman, God, mystic) by reference to nature. Viveiros de Castro (2004, 468) writes that when he uses the word shamanism he means to point to “the capacity evinced by some individuals to cross ontological boundaries deliberately and adopt the perspective of nonhuman subjectivities in order to administer the relations between humans and nonhumans.” I fell in love with the gods of the Inca people, with the plethora of physicalities that have become available to me since. I came kicking and screaming, fighting the word shaman at every turn. To the extent that it describes someone who is competent at bodily crossings like those found in shamanic ecologies, the term shaman does seem to apply. This word also seems to have a life all its own. It has forced me to reevaluate my relationships with that other word that is always waiting in the background: ontology.

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In the end, I have had to take on other words as well, such as philosopher, mystic and diviner. The new animism is important to consider, especially as it brings limits to our naturalist assumptions. If we try to reduce my rock–body swapping from the last chapter to Feuerbachian projection, as in reducible to human, then we have not fully understood the nature of animism and we are simply offering another mystic ecology, part of a long line of naturalist ecologies that are prone to physics (e.g., Aristotle’s substance, Enlightenment science and its objects) and metaphysics (e.g., Aristotle’s four causalities and materialist science and its non-teleological ground). In both cases the use of the term ontology points to the assumption that there is a shared reality, essence, or the like. There is an objective continuity that is assumed; we cannot elucidate it. Animist ontologies are not interested in the internal real, or concerned with relativism of multiple interiors, proximity to faith and/or the truth. Rather, shamanic ecologies are at pains to maintain the integrity of their bodies. Why? Because nature is not a given (at least not for them); rather, natures are experiences that must be enacted or constructed. Nature, as in that which is stable and essential, cannot be assumed, for there are multiple bodies, multiple worlds. Those in an ecology of animism assume a shared interiority (i.e., the people), not a shared physicality (i.e., nature). In focusing on the people closest to home, say the Achuar, a general attempt is made to maintain some sort of unified body, physicality, or nature. Achuar bodies are not a given; they are crafted, created, seated, and enacted. To the extent that a mystic assumes a given nature and concerns himself with a multiplicity of subjective interiors, Achuar people assume a given peopleness and then experience a multiplicity of objective realities. There are shamanic ecologies that seek itinerant crossings—that is, inhabiting multiple and conflicting bodies, and in doing so cross all sorts of shamanic dwellings. They might become a beaver, a tree, or even a rock. It is crucial to understand that it is not a subjective experience that changes here. That would suggest mystic forms of participation, wherein a continuity of physicality, nature, or body is assumed. Shamanic ecologies enact a series of personifications of materiality, animism; what counts is the body one is wearing. In such a setting, as I became rock, I was rock, not human. I was of the rock-people, not of the backpacker-people. There were hints of the naturalist idea of human, but there is no way at all to reduce this to naturalism and/or humanism. That would disrespect not only myself, but the rock. The process would once again be lost. Different metaphysics, as they are traditionally understood, with their various ultimates, are iterations of naturalist ecologies. Mystic ecologies like these assume a ground (nature) and a viewer, and then enact multiple and distinct subjectivities. Shamanic ecologies assume a shared interiority

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or people, and then enact multiple and distinct physicalities or bodies. This distinction is crucial. To the extent that Feuerbach and others enact mystical humanisms, they are metaphysicians of the mystic kind. A perfectly viable form of participation, but not one that can or should trump shamanic and divinatory ecologies of participation. A mystic form of participation tends toward naturalism and is roughly equivalent to the role of a shamanic form of participation in an animist ecology. There is nothing at all wrong with metaphysics as practiced by mystic ecologies per se, yet such practices should not be conflated with the whole of speculative philosophy, what I think of as philosophia. We should take seriously the dualisms of mystic and shamanic ecologies (subject-object; body-people), but we should not rest in these. We should rest in the arbitrary performative truths of divinatory ecologies as they enact cosmoses. Each one will do it differently, maintaining room for other truths, shamanic, mystic, and those performed by other divinatory ecologies. This is not to say that divinatory ecologies always do it better. They enact cosmoses, and that is cool, but we also need bodies and selves, and probably all sorts of other things in between. If one is to engage in this speculative search for contemporary wisdom, a greater variety of experience (human, more-than-human, and other-thanhuman) must be invited in. Mystic ecologies and their dwellings are a particularly naturalist activity. Naturalism assumes a ground-nature and a viewer-creator. To the extent that mystics would reduce my shamanic body-swapping to human projection, even of an empowered mystical kind, humanism is limited to naturalism as defined here. What we need is to place animism and naturalism in conversation with one another, and for this we need Descola’s multi-ontology approach. DESCOLA, SHAMANISM, AND MULTIPLE ONTOLOGIES Descola tells us that naturalism is the idea that nature exists. Aristotle thought this in his own peculiar way. Same with Plotinus, though he subsumed it within his One. Kant assumed the ground, then wrestled with the diversity and challenges of multiple interiors. In the process, I argue, these people were invested in wild acts of participatory co-creation. They co-authored—read enacted—nature, final cause, the One and the Many, the scientific objectivity of the Enlightenment, and the parallel Kantian critique. Descola writes, “Naturalism also implies a counterpart, a world of artifice and free will, the complexity of which has progressively emerged under the scrutiny of analysis” (2014c, 277). Is this world of artifice, this flatland of

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factishes and epiphenomenon, all that the naturalists have? In our examination of Bruno Latour in the opening chapter, we found that the post/moderns co-create their realities just like anybody else. But we have to be careful here. To what extent have we absolutely been modern? The agential realism that I argue for in these pages is largely born out a decadent naturalist ecology, i.e., post/modernity. That does not mean that it could not, or has not, shown itself in other ways. But, and this is important, ideas about co-creation, perspectivism, and enaction are generally expressed as a way out of post/modernities dualisms. Like everyone, according to our participatory raft, post/moderns partake in acts of participatory knowing just like everyone else. We co-create our worlds. This is what Whitehead (1978, 36, 167) called the becoming of continuity, as opposed to a continuity of becoming—beyond this process of identification beyond which there is nothing, nothing, bare nothing. There is no world of continuity within our participatory approach. Ferrer calls actuality an “ocean with many shores” (2008, 142). He writes of mystic ecologies enacting teleologies, while Viveiros de Castro’s work points us toward effective shamanic ecologies. Both enact, co-author, co-create, and participate. And both require, at base, a neostructuralist agential realism. Descola (2014, 277) tells us that his position excludes two hypotheses that are often bandied about: that there are multiple, ontologically distinct, untranslatable worlds (an example of inane and vulgar relativism that no one believes), and that there is simply one world about which we all hold distinct views. These are the animist (e.g., Marshal Sahlins and Bruce Kapferer) or naturalist (e.g., Webb Keane and G.E.R. Lloyd) assumptions that, when overemphasized, prevent us from feeling into multiple and conflicting ecologies. Ferrer’s ocean of many shores may refer to our participatory predicament (2008, 136): an ocean (as Derrida and Deleuze would put it) of not only animist-style participatory events, but naturalist, talismanic, and agential ones as well. Ferrer describes participatory knowing as an “often passionate activity that can involve not only the opening of the mind [naturalism], but also the body [and] vital energies [animism], the heart [talismanic], and [other] subtle forms of consciousness” (2008, 136). This may seem too extreme to those married to one—usually naturalist—form of participation. Those who would not recognize this form of knowing as participatory in the sense of enactive and co-creative. “In short,” writes Descola, “the task of anthropology [and philosophy] is to account for how worlds are composed” (2014, 274)—not what the world is, a question to which shamanic, mystic, and divinatory ecologies, confusingly, all have different answers. What is important is how the worlds are enacted, because shamanic, mystic and divinatory ecologies all do it differently. ­Following from the participatory approach defended by Cassirer and Langer,

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they utilize distinct symbolic functions. And this is where contemporary philosophia should focus its attention. That is why Whitehead’s philosophy is called a process philosophy—not because events are primary (whether they be naturalist-cultures, animist-natures, or talismanic-Culture-Nature), but because the agential process, as in the how rather than the what, is what we can finally come to know. Michael M. J. Fischer (2014) and many others would disagree, but mostly because this is a radical idea, one that maybe even Descola nor Viveiros de Castro has fully appreciated up to now. Fischer (2014, 336) calls the philosophies of Descola, Latour, and Viveiros de Castro origami-like in nature. The wholes are never greater than the parts. Bruce Kapferer (2014, 392) has seen this too. Who knows what the ocean is? Derrida, Deleuze, Kapferer, Sahlins, and Viveiros de Castro each in their own way want to reduce it to the play of animists and shamanic ecologies. Descola’s work is important because he is moving away from the is to the how. But he is not there yet. The story promoted by these thinkers tends to go like this: the only real efficacy that philosophers (especially of the Western tradition) and their naturalist assumptions bring to the table is imperialism, hierarchy, and colonization. As so many around the world are painfully aware, this has not gone well. Viveiros de Castro, in particular, finds in this phenomenon a rallying cry: No more unities, substances, or extrinsic coordinations! No more naturalism! No more polarities, analogies, hierarchical correlations, or unities! No more talismans! And again: No more unities! At least, none of the physical kind. Following Viveiros de Castro, we must explode nature into a plethora of distinct bodies and skins. Fischer and Kapferer are onto something. Viveiros de Castro’s rallying cry (along with the poststructuralists, new Deleuzians, and new materialists) is this: no more wholes, only parts. But, as Jean-Michel Rabaté (2003) marked in his history of structuralism/neo-structuralism, there is a whole hiding behind this credo. Somewhere in between Saussure and Husserl, we deconstruct, but there is always the phantom of structure lurking and holding it all together. In Viveiros de Castro’s work it becomes clear that the animist assumption of a shared interior unites Derridean and Deleuzian events, as much as they would love to distance themselves from this idea. The injunction to rid ourselves of all “hierarchical totalities” and the “unitary-whole-combinatory” and replace them with “differential-fractals” sounds good on paper. But following Mel Y. Chen (2012), such actions result merely in animacy hierarchies. Through them Viveiros de Castro (2014, 105) hopes to achieve a “flat ontology” with “flattened multiplicities” and “continuous variation.” But without some sort of “whole” to hold it all together, how can it work? Bennett (2010, xi), when she quotes Deleuze, is clear that this is a monism: ontologically one, but formally diverse. Much like Latour did with his divinatory networks, Viveiros de Castro has simply flattened the world in an animist way.

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The scientific materialist wants to do away with insides and m-worlds —i.e., morality, modality, meaning, and the existence of something like mental worlds (see Price, 2010). In doing so, they assume a shared but flattened outside. The new materialist, similarly, wants to denounce the same insides in order to achieve a diversity of outsides. They assert a monism that is one but somehow diverse as well. These are strange and interesting games, ecologies in between the naturalist and animist ontologies from which they sprang. This makes them neither right nor wrong—such things are impossible to know. Rather, what is interesting is how they went about these enactions in the first place. It is not the what but the how that undergirds my own participatory philosophia. If we gloss over Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism, it sounds a little like Whitehead’s (1978, 36) own philosophy, especially when he writes, “There is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming.” For Whitehead, however, real novelty is private, and therefore unambiguously one. As such, it is agential. Whitehead is not sneaking or smuggling in some opaque unification. Rather, he places self/enjoyment and free will up front and center. In this way, his occasions are agential and free. There is no single unity that holds it all together for Whitehead, but a multiplicity of unities. Functions rather than substances, bodies, cosmologies, or unitary spiritual ultimates. While Whitehead’s work places emphasis on participatory events, his work allows us to invite other ontologies in. It can act as the ground of a multi-ontology approach. In fact, there are naturalist unities (subjective aims and conceptual prehensions), animist unities (subjective forms and physical prehensions), and talismanic unities (the motile dipolar truths that can be located somewhere in between). The concept of unities as opposed to unity is subtle but important to understand. We must make the effort to comprehend why we cannot have a flat ontology and continuous variation. Fischer is right, at least in part. Deleuze, Latour, and Viveiros de Castro are playing a game of origami, folding this way and that in order to preserve the wholes that hold their game together. Descola, on the other hand, produced a book that is an imposing chronicle of hows. If we flatten our ontology by emphasizing either interiority (strong idealism) or physicality (strong materialism), we are left with the dual problems of causality and change. Bertrand Russell attempted a move like this toward continuous variation almost one hundred years ago. Russell, who could be called one of the grandparents of the new materialism, writes, “The most fundamental of my intellectual beliefs is that . . . the universe is all spots and jumps, without unity, without continuity, without coherence or orderliness or any of the other properties that governesses love” (1962, 95). As I detailed in earlier chapters, he was writing against the idealism of F. H. Bradley, but try as he might, he could not get real novelty or change out of his animist-realist position. With nothing but a plethora of atomic units, Russell’s realist-empiricist

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ontological pluralism could not make any sense of internal relations or interiority. Russell thought it best to look toward Leibniz and his monadology: “I think we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibniz’s monads; and thus it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can” (2009, 231). Both Descola (2013, 140) and Viveiros de Castro agree. The latter (2014, 110) writes, “This perspective is internal or immanent; the different associations of the ‘thing’ make it differ from itself—‘it is the thing itself that has been allowed to be deployed as multiple’ (Latour 2005: 116). In short, and the point goes back to Leibniz, there are no points of view on things—it is things and beings that are the points of view (Deleuze 1994: 49; 1990d: 173–174).” But again, the problem of insides appears. What were Leibniz’s monads looking out upon? What kept them all together? The only answer that he could find was God. We are stuck, along with Russell, somewhere in between Leibniz’s God and Bradley’s idealism (see Whitehead 1978, 190). As I clarified above, Whitehead’s philosophy offers, as he calls it, a reformed subjectivist principle, actual occasions, final and real, in a process of becoming. There are at least a couple of the ways to enact these processes. One way is through both the assumption of an inside (Culture, the people) and physical prehensions—shamanic forms of perspectivism, wherein the chaosmos and diversity of bodies are felt and potentially even tried on. This leads to something wholly novel (prehensions through Whitehead’s propositional feeling; a contiguous, not continuous, diversity of bodies). Another path can be found through the assumption of an outside (Nature), after which a diversity of ideas are felt—mystic forms of perspectivism, wherein the chaosmos and diversity of subjectivities and novel potentialities are enacted and/or enjoyed. These naturalist practices lead to something wholly novel (prehensions through Whitehead’s rational knowing; a contiguous, not continuous, diversity of subjectivities). But Viveiros de Castro and company have not fully owned the fact that the diversity of their bodies requires some sort of whole. Whitehead’s processes of becoming are also divinatory in nature. They are dipolar. A play of mental (naturalist mystic prehensions) and physical (animist shamanic prehensions). And, more importantly, they are atomic in their agential decisions. As each occasion feels into its past (effect, shamanism), it also feels into its future (telos, mysticism). It is held within a duration, an affect that is divinatory in nature. But then, and this is crucial, there is an agential cut, a decision to enjoy some atomic and peculiar presential moment that is wholly unique. This is a subtle point that I drew out in more detail in earlier chapters, but it must be brought to bear hear. We need a philosophia of functions, a symbolic assertion of radical becoming that is not tied to any

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singular unity at all. We must maintain the individuality and discontinuity of outsides required by agential participation. This, I think, helps to buttress Fischer’s point. What at first seems like a smooth Deleuzian dream of events and novelty is in the end more akin to origami (I cannot help but think of David Bohm). If there are many sense-datum (Russell) or differentiated fractals (Viveiros de Castro) out there, how are they connected to one another? What lies behind this multiplicity? When we ask Viveiros de Castro this question, we catch him slipping his own animist unity (i.e., the people) through an Amerindian door. I applaud him for this, but I invite him to spread the love. I ask him, “Why keep your perspectivism for yourself and your favored shamanic ecologies? Why not allow the mystic and divinatory ecologies their own perspectivism too?” CANNIBAL METAPHYSICS: NOT JUST FOR SHAMANS For both Descola and Viveiros de Castro, the counterpart of animism is naturalism. As such, naturalism assumes an opposite schema to that of animism (Descola 2013, 172). “A classic feature of many animist ontologies is the ability to undergo metamorphosis,” writes Descola (2013, 135 italics mine). In this same passage Descola details how humans can become embodied as plants and animals, how animals can swap bodies with each other, and how both plants and animals can take off their skins to reveal their souls living and inhabiting the bodies of human beings. To the extent that we co-create intimate dwellings with dogs, cats, lovers, and gardens, we all know this basic experience of sharing a body. Though this is a common experience, we also tend to ignore it relative to the degree we emphasize the ways we dwell in and as mystic (naturalist) ecologies. If you have made love with someone, been neighbors with someone, hated someone, lived with a pet, or chosen a tree near your home as your favorite, then you have been enmeshed and entangled with the shamanic dwellings/ bodies of another. This points us toward the basic body swapping or perspectivism of an animist-inflected ecology. Animists, in emphasizing the ambiguity of bodies, enact diverse physicalities, natures, and worlds. ­Naturalists, on the other hand, “with [their] one and only nature, [refer] directly to the mute and impersonal ontological domain, the contours of which were definitely drawn by the mechanistic revolution” (Descola 2013, 173). For both Descola and Viveiros de Castro, animism and naturalism are mirror images, opposing binaries. And yet animists and their shamanic ecologies are capable of metamorphosis and world-making, while naturalism and its mystic ecologies—whether philosophers, theologians, or scientists—inhabit a mute and impersonal domain. If these two ontologies are really opposites, why do

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animists get to have all the fun? What is missing is an enactive and/or participatory raft, an agential realism that can stand in as a fourth neostructuralist ontology. Both authors seek agency, but conflate it at times with animist shamans. In his earlier work Descola located much of the Western canon within the context of a naturalist ontology, including but not limited to the work of Aristotle (especially his emphasis on categorical logic and efficient causality). He has shifted this emphasis in his most recent work, placing Aristotle in an animist ontology (due to his consideration of efficient, formal, and final causality) and considering only a modern, post-Enlightenment, materialist flatland to be indicative of naturalism (Descola 2013, 172–73). It seems unfair to grant agency only to animists. But in fact, the animists (shamanic ecologies) are marginalizing the naturalists (mystic ecologies) in response to their own experiences of marginalization. I argue that if these two ontologies are really opposites, then naturalism should be afforded the same metamorphosis-inducing efficacy and enactive ability attributed to animism. To begin this corrective process, it is helpful to see how various conversations between Descola and Viveiros de Castro encouraged Descola to carry out a superficial, constructivist reading of naturalism parallel with a robust (enactive) reading of animism. I am especially interested in a series of lectures given by Viveiros de Castro at the University of Cambridge between February and March of 1998. During these lectures, he provided definitions of animism and naturalism: “Our traditional [naturalist] problem is how to connect and universalize—individual substances are given, relations have to be made—the Amerindian’s is how to separate and particularize—relations are given, substances must be defined. You will certainly recall [Roy] Wagner’s [1975, 1977] formulation of this contrast” (Viveiros de Castro 2012, 126). Viveiros de Castro’s definition is similar to one I attribute to Descola: one that is overtly critical of Descola’s (1992, 1994, 1996) early tripartite constructivism (animism, totemism, and naturalism), wherein all three ontologies can be characterized as different ways of representing or constructing in relation to a given Nature. Viveiros de Castro’s lecture series was recently published by the Journal of Ethnographic Theory; in the introduction, Wagner alludes to the suggestion made by many contemporary scholars (especially, but not limited to, anthropologists) that Viveiros de Castro’s work signifies a paradigm shift (à la Kuhn) in academia. Wagner (2012a, 12) quickly decides that such an assertion is almost meaningless in the context of a post/modern academy, concluding, “To me, this magisterial essay is the benchmark of 21st century anthropology, not so much a new beginning, as a figure-ground reversal of the old one.” Wagner asserts that a figure-ground reversal occurs when a perspective changes, pointing to his work with the Barok and Tolai people of Papua New Guinea.

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How does a perspective change? Power in the form of alterity becomes embodied. Something beyond the bodily perspective is desired, and the realization of that alterity literally transforms the body or reality—the perspective—of the desirer, effectively transforming the physicality, world, and perspective found in the original body. A cycle ensues whereby the new and novel perspective reminds the tabapot (a Tolai reference to the perspectivist idea of a person) of physicalities of the body that have now been lost. Underlining this point, Wagner writes, “The Tolai say that man is a tabapot, a figure-ground reversal, forever desiring that which is outside of his form (body), only to hunger again for the human form once the external has been obtained” (2012b, 542). It is just such a radical shift in realities that Wagner sees in Viveiros de Castro’s words and his writings. Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism has called into question the solidity of Nature. He speaks of a multinaturalism, and opposes this to the multiculturalism that has dominated anthropology and the history of modern thought. His work with the Achuar Indians of the Amazon destabilizes the naturalist’s sense of the given. Nature becomes natures; as the Amerindians make no assumptions about a continuity of physicality, they experience a becoming and perishing of multiple natures, multiple bodies, multiple intimate dwellings as skins. The people-ness behind the scenes holds these together. Viveiros de Castro has taken the Achuar seriously, and in doing so he has opened the door to beaver-people, rock-people, raven-people, and, of course, Achuar-people. What stands between and differentiates these people are bodily perspectives. Viveiros de Castro argues for anthropomorphism rather than anthropocentrism, hoping to decenter humans while destabilizing their colonizing stare. You can hear the rallying cry of the speculative realists, the new materialists, and all the posthuman authors gaining popularity today. We must transcend the all-too-human hubris of the Western as well as non-Western traditions. Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism allowed Descola a figure-ground reversal of his own. Through an ongoing dialogue over the last several decades, Descola (2013, 172–73; see also Viveiros de Castro 2014, 77–93) was able to recognize his early social constructivist position and move beyond it— beyond nature and culture, to build on the title of Descola’s recent book. The idea that there might not be one shared physicality or nature struck a chord. Descola adopted Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism, changing his own ideas about the possible meanings of animism. This, I think, was all for the good. But this figure-ground reversal also changed Descola’s ideas regarding naturalism, this time for the worse. He writes, “When, in earlier works, I characterized naturalism as a straightforward belief in the self-evidence of nature, I was simply following a positive definition that goes back to the Greeks” (Descola 2013, 172).

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Unfortunately, Descola goes on to conflate this positive (though limited) definition with post/modern materialism. He continues, “This reductionist definition remained imprisoned within a conceptual genealogy internal to Western cosmology” (2013, 172). Considering an ontology that takes anthropomorphism seriously, like Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism, allowed Descola and other authors to break free of naturalist assumptions about the integrity or univocity of Nature. This move opened the way for the kind of multiple-ontology approach endorsed here. But neither Descola nor Viveiros de Castro has understood the full efficacy of anthropocentrism in the full light of their own robust and, I would say, enactive readings of animism. Viveiros de Castro finds naturalism and its anthropocentric assertions haunted by relativism. The naturalism of Western metaphysics “supposes a multiplicity of subjective and partial representations of an external and unified nature, while [perspectivism] proposes a representational or subjective unity which is applied to an objective multiplicity, generated by bodily differences” (2012, 131). Viveiros de Castro is interested in the process of personification whereby multiple and radically distinct natures are enacted. Multiplicities are his new “quasi-objects,” something that, according to him, parallels the fractal persons of Roy Wagner, the partial connections of Marilyn Strathern, and the actor-network of Latour (Viveiros de Castro 2014, 111). These examples are telling, as I align Viveiros de Castro’s animist perspectivism with Latour’s network, but not with the work of Wagner or Strathern. Viveiros de Castro (2014, 111) quotes Wagner, “A fractal person is never a unit standing in relation to an aggregate, or an aggregate standing in relation to a unit, but always an entity with relationship integrally implied” (Wagner 1991, 163). In the last chapter, I described how Sahlins mistook Polynesian talismans for animist participations. Viveiros de Castro has done the same. Wagner’s fractal person is made up not of events (discontinuities and diversities of bodies for animist ecologies and interiorities for naturalist ecologies) but of quasi-objects (a paradoxical and shifting tension of the in-between of insideoutside, the hyphenated correlations of talismans). This is more akin to the quasi-physicalism of West African talismans than it is to the multinaturalism of Amerindian animism. Viveiros de Castro wants to resist the temptations of any and every “transcendental unification” (2014, 111). He is a good poststructuralist; he has been reading his Deleuze. But which of Wagner’s relationships are “integrally implied”? They are not aggregates or unifications of multiple diverse parts. Rather, they are motile talismanic truths, the same sort of changing correlations that I have argued are at the heart of divinatory ecologies and talismanic participation. Strathern similarly sidesteps the idea of aggregates and unifications,

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where plural (either object-nature-body or subject-culture-inside) is unified. For Strathern, complex acts of comparison have changed the plural; Martin Holbraad and Morten Pedersen (2009, 379–80) have called these postplural acts of abstention. Such comparisons overcome the distinction between abstract (outsides for animists, insides for naturalists) and concrete (insides for shamanic ecologies, outsides for mystic ones). Holbraad and Pedersen (2009, 382) see a parallel in Strathern’s postplural abstentions with Lévi-Strauss’s science of the concrete. Strathern’s comparisons are not toward the pluralisms of Deleuze, animists, and new materialists. Strathern is playing at fluid and ever-changing tensions of abstract-concrete, inside-outside, always with an eye for the hyphen and the tension rather than one side, whether inside/outside, or the other. Viveiros de Castro has critiqued Descola for his Lévi-Straussian analogical tendencies, but he is picking and choosing his battles. He admires Strathern and Wagner for their divinatory logics. But this, I think, is because he conflates them with his animism. While pointing to Amerindian ontologies as exemplars of efficacy and creativity, he misses altogether the mirror reading of naturalism and anthropocentrism whereby a multiplicity of teleological ultimates are enacted in a similar fashion. He also misses the distinctions between his own animist perspectivism (á la Deleuze and Amerindians) and the talismanic perspectivism of Wagner and Strathern. Why read perspectivism and anthropomorphism and their multiple natures as distinct, efficacious, and real, while reading naturalism with its anthropocentrism and multiple cultures and talismans with its cosmocentrism and multiple cosmoses as more akin to hubris and farce? Viveiros de Castro writes of solipsism and the continual threat it holds for naturalist ecologies. On his account, naturalists fear looking into the eyes of someone who is supposedly of their “own kind” and failing to recognize themselves in the other. Imagine a Christian, a Muslim, a Sikh, and a neo-Darwinian all standing in the same room, looking at one another. They all assume, more or less, the same givenness of the room; the room is part of the continuity of nature. But where they differ is in their assumptions about telos and subjectivity; what is the correct or true view of reality. On Viveiros de Castro’s (2012, 126) account, these differences are imagined. This can be seen as we turn toward Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism and its emphasis on a shared interiority, the People. He has reduced God, Allah, and the non-teleological materialism of modern scientism to the singularity of the Christian, Muslim, and neo-Darwinian mind. Assuming a shared subjectivity (people) and proceeding to personify the seemingly other is an efficacious form of world-making, while assuming a shared physicality (Nature) and proceeding to objectify the other is not an efficacious form of reality-making.

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For Viveiros de Castro, naturalism’s teleological ultimates are reducible to post/modern, non-teleological assumptions (social constructivism). God, Allah, and modern materialism are superficial constructs—a statement that Viveiros de Castro never actually makes, but that represents a natural outcome of his work. “Perspectivism implies multinaturalism,” says Viveiros de Castro (2012, 112), “for a perspective is not a representation.” Viveiros de Castro commends Deleuze for his realization that diversity and difference are “also communication and contagion between heterogeneities” (Viveiros de Castro 2014, 112; see also Zourabichvili 2004, 99). This interest in Deleuzian “reciprocal contamination” looks like an interest in what Whitehead calls physical prehensions and propositional feelings. But what of his other nexus: intellectual feeling and rational knowing, with their increased emphasis on conceptual prehensions? Viveiros de Castro seems to have turned his back on these. And here is the clue we need to understand why Viveiros de Castro, along with Descola, reads naturalism in such a superficial, post/modern, constructivist way. Naturalists are concerned with representations. “My problem with the concept of representation,” says Viveiros de Castro, “is the ontological poverty that this concept implies—a poverty characteristic of modernity” (2012, 152). Modernity: the final gasp of the monotheistic (read naturalist) assertion of Creator and created. The modern monism of Nature is “the last avatar of our monotheistic cosmology” (2012, 151). The reader of these pages may sense a desire to dismiss naturalist ontologies. God is equivalent to a poverty of thought. The Achuar body is a dynamic event of becoming. This does not sound right. There is something amiss here. The real way forward, Viveiros de Castro seems to say, is through a play of monism and pluralism. He sees Amerindians emphasizing a monism of spirit and a pluralism of bodies. He finds naturalists emphasizing a monism of spirit (Creator) and of body (created), and therefore falling into an unmanageable dualism (2012, 151–53). But why not see naturalists as offering a real alternative ontology whereby the monism tends toward nature and the pluralism or diversity is found among subjectivities, telos, God(s), and spiritual ultimates? Animism does not have pluralism locked down; naturalists have enacted multiple selves/spiritual ultimates while animists are enacting multiple bodies/physicalities. You need naturalism if you want social justice and critical theory. Viveiros de Castro seems to see his perspectivism (animism) as the answer to a naturalist metaphysics; we must “appreciate the fact that these two cosmological outlooks are mutually incompatible” (2012, 150). To grab hold of both monism and pluralism would be to destabilize philosophy and to trend toward “Absolute relativism” (2012, 150). But this choice need not be made. We must argue not about what is, but rather about the hows, the processes,

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and the forms of participatory knowing. A good start would be twofold: We should recognize the importance of talismanic ontologies and their Strathernian ability to be postplural, and we should commit to acts of comparison, following Descola, Lévy-Bruhl, Lévi-Strauss, Strathern, and Wagner. Finally, we must turn from considerations of what the ocean with its many shores might be and focus instead on the processes of becoming. As we do this we find that we are on solid ground (naturalism) among a shared people (animism), and that natures (shamanic dwellings) and cultures (mystic dwellings) are not just diverse but enacted. There is no other way—or, at least, this is the only way I can see, because we have also agreed to include the arbitrary, concrete, ever-changing oracular truths of the divinatory ecologies and their analogistic cosmoses as dwellings. We must recognize the efficacy of both of these ontologies, naturalism and animism, without trying to say away one or the other or both. We need to practice ecological crossings. Both Descola and Viveiros de Castro fall short when they paint animism as capable of metamorphosis and world-making, while naturalists are left to their impoverished ontology. By clarifying this point, I look to a recent dialogue regarding the ontological turn that was born out of the American Association of Anthropology’s (AAA) annual meeting in 2013. PARTICIPATORY PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ONTOLOGIES Martin Holbraad, Morten Axel Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro all attended a roundtable discussion on the ontological turn in anthropology for the annual meeting of the AAA in Chicago in 2013. They opened the session by offering a position paper that was intended to frame the dialogue. In this paper they asserted that the use of the term ontology is a political act, intentionally used to assert the importance of difference rather than essence. Whereas ontology is often used to refer to the essence of reality, Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro sought to utilize this term in a different manner: “The anthropology of ontology is anthropology as ontology; not the comparison of ontologies, but comparison as ontology” (Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro, January 13, 2014). This is crucial, for they have made the act of comparison the bedrock of ontology. We are in good company among LévyBruhl, Lévi-Strauss, Strathern, and Descola. We are approaching a sort of motile bricolage, some of our better divinatory ecologies. For them, the act of comparison trumps any particular assertion of multiple ontologies, ontology, or lack thereof. At least it seems so at first. They continue, “To put it very directly (crudely, to be sure), domination is a matter

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of holding the capacity to differ under control—to place limits upon alterity” (January 13, 2014). Rejection of domination is the underlying theme. Here difference wins out over Being. But comparison is a search for both similarity and difference. Comparison requires assertions. And there is always a question haunting these conversations about how conversation can take place at all. If it is all about difference, how can the two sides interact? What is it that connects us? Where do we go for solid ground? Is there any medium of communication? If we look to the naturalist, the answer is a shared physicality; if we look to the animist the answer is a shared interiority. Viveiros de Castro brings his Amerindian shared interiority into his metaphysical assertions, and yet he does not quite own the repercussions of this act. The answer is not animism or naturalism. The answer is comparison, a multiple-ontology approach to philosophical speculation. It is this comparison-first stance that I locate as the foundation of what I call in these pages a participatory philosophy. In a participatory philosophy, participation is always haunting our philosophy. This does not mean that participation is always primary to our assertions but rather that it is always looking over the shoulder of any philosophical praxis. Underlining this participatory turn in the field of religious studies, Ferrer writes, “Participatory also refers to the fundamental ontological predicament of human beings. . . . Human beings are—whether they know it or not—always participating in the self-disclosure of the mystery” (2008, 136). Participation does not mean asserting one or another ontological assertion (i.e., mode of identification) over all others. If we push our predilection for difference too far we risk the “Charybdis of self-contradictory and morally pernicious relativism.” If we press our assertions of sameness too far we find ourselves in bed with “Scylla [and] an authoritarian absolutism” (Ferrer 2002, 188). But there is a tendency among our critically inclined theorists in general, and the ontological turn in particular, to fall in with little sea monsters like Charybdis, all the while subtly invoking the larger monster of Scylla. Comparison as ontology does not mean placing one set of multiple ontologies above all others. Rather, it means stepping out and engaging with the other. Here we might risk transformation by way of conversion (Ferrer and Sherman 2008, 30) or metamorphosis (Viveiros de Castro 2012), or something else altogether unique. Is this what Viveiros de Castro is trying to do? The answer seems to be a clear no. While Descola tries to locate some kind of multiple-ontology approach as the basis for contemporary philosophy, Viveiros de Castro wants nothing to do with this. He seems to view Descola’s project as something of a fool’s errand, one that will inevitably lead back to the same colonizing Western metaphysics that they both seek to escape and under which Viveiros de Castro wants to throw a bomb, doing

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away with Nature and its monisms once and for all (Latour 2009). For myself, I am all for decolonization, but bombs are not comparative, as in politics for the twenty-first century. No bombs are declarative, as in politics as usual for the last several centuries. “Every Great Divider is a mononaturalist,” writes Viveiros de Castro (2013, 26), and the assumption seems to be that we should get rid of all naturalists because of this. Viveiros de Castro (2014, 105) is right to call for a “progressive” and “practical” ontology “in which knowing is no longer a way of representing the unknown but of interacting with it.” But then, in almost the same breath, he makes his particular assertion once again. “[We need] a way of creating rather than contemplating, reflecting, or communicating (see Deleuze and Guattari 1991)” (Viveiros de Castro 2014, 105). Viveiros de Castro has clearly adopted Deleuze and Guattari’s transcendental empiricism, though in doing so he has turned his back on transcendental idealism. Deleuze’s relationship with subjectivity and personhood is complex, and well beyond the scope of this book. Writing in between Deleuze and Whitehead, Isabelle Stengers helps us to understand the point I hope to drive home. “I would not use Whitehead to explain what Deleuze did not, could not or would not explain,” she writes, “but I would propose that it is at the locus of their most obvious divergence, the Whiteheadian God as condition of the cosmos, that they communicate” (2009, 43). Remember Russell, as well as Viveiros de Castro, stuck between a Leibnizian God and a Bradleyian idealism? Stengers, as always, is championing the practice of thinking with. Here she calls out, maybe not to Deleuze, but certainly to those who continue his philosophical project: Please do not simply turn your back on God, on subjective unities, or spiritual ultimates. Don’t turn your back on naturalism, with its assumption of nature and its emphasis on contemplation. What is contemplation? Stengers seems to ask. Why did Whitehead work so hard to include the interiority of things? We would do well to remember the overarching maxim offered by Viveiros de Castro: “Not the comparison of ontologies, but comparison as [the bedrock of] ontology.” Is Viveiros de Castro willing to communicate with the naturalists he has worked so hard to denigrate? During the round table at the AAA, Eduardo Kohn’s position paper brought this question home. “What is the Nature of Nature?” he asked. “This is much more complicated. My concern is that when we discard this monolithic Nature, we actually, in this rejection, stabilize it” (January 13, 2014). I could not agree more. Descola’s move is toward making comparison universal, a needed neostructuralist revision of Lévi-Straussian bricolage. At the same time, Viveiros de Castro’s is the same old move, that is, my ontology is better than yours. Descola is not quite off the hook given his preference for certain ontologies and in the end he makes animism the most desirable. Kohn goes on: “In finding ways to allow thinking forests to think themselves through us,

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we cannot just walk away from Ontology1 [Nature, mono-naturalism]—how things are—because Ontology2 (Culture, social construction) is not just a western ontology, but a human one. The point is that we have to be able to say how this is (Ontology1), so that in recognizing its limits we might open ourselves to that which lies beyond it and us (toward something much stranger than what we take monolithic Nature to be)” (January 13, 2014). And what is this “something much stranger than what we take monolithic Nature to be”? “In its most radical version,” write Ferrer and Sherman, “a participatory perspective does not contend that there are two, three, or any limited quantity of pregiven spiritual ultimates, but rather that the radical openness, interrelatedness, and creativity of the mystery and/or the cosmos allows for the participatory enaction of an indefinite number of possible selfdisclosures of reality and corresponding metaphysical or religious worlds” (2008, 32). Mononaturalists are the great dividers of subjectivity, interiority, teleology, and spiritual ultimates. Animists only have one. They are monoculturalists, and as such they seek to control difference in their own very peculiar way. Animists are the great dividers of objectivity, physicality, bodies, and worlds, while naturalists only have one, that is, nature. Why should we choose one over the other? Following Kohn, we recognize that our attempts to reject naturalism only work to stabilize it. We become what we hate. If we are going to enact a participatory philosophy, or a politics of ontology as Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro have it, then we cannot move back, sidewise, or otherwise toward an Amerindian ontology. We will have to go forward and compare. Naturalism is not bad, boring, or reducible to that which colonizes. Contemplation is just as efficacious and transformative as Amerindian body swapping. Assuming nature and the process of enacting multiple cultures, interiors, spiritual ultimates, and scientific observers is actually quite radical—something Viveiros de Castro and company would surely appreciate if they took a moment to consider it in this way. Speaking at the same roundtable, Hellen Verran picked up on the words “comparison as ontology,” warning that we must experience “disconcertment as immanent ontic tensions clotted in becoming as an ontological politics within the force fields of mutually interrupting political ontologies” (January 13, 2014). Viveiros de Castro worries that if we read naturalism as parallel to animism, then the power of animism will be lost (Latour 2009). His ­Amerindian perspectivism has the potential to disrupt the old guard of Western philosophy and naturalism. But the emphasis here must be on disruption, rather than on “leaving in the dust the old infernal distinction between the One and the Multiple” (Viveiros de Castro 2014, 108). The point of my own multiple-ontology approach, following my particular reading of Descola, is that we must not leave anyone in the dust. Deleuzian multiplicities should not

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win the day, as Viveiros de Castro argues in stating that he chooses equivocation over comparison. Comparison almost certainly implicates the subject by making it the pure comparative mind (Viveiros de Castro 2014, 86). This is not always true if we lean on our diviners. Strathern, it seems, was able to absent herself from her own partial connections (Holbraad and Pedersen 2009, 373). Why can’t we do the same? As long as we manage to step out of the animist-naturalist equation of “he said she said,” then comparison is fine. But how do we do this? We have to include both talismanic and agential forms of participation. We need ecologies of participation. To this end, Viveiros de Castro and Descola should communicate with those on whom they have turned their backs. We must resist efforts to throw bombs and win ontological battles against the oppressor. This is how the oppressed become the oppressors. Verran writes, “That tension zone is, it seems to me, exactly where an ontologically-sensitive ethnography is located” (January 13, 2014). Ontologically sensitive philosophy must do the same—stay in the middle, in the comparison. But how? By asserting a fourth ontology into the mix, a co-creative agential realism. This ontology should be placed in dialogue with the enactions and assumptions of shamans, diviners, and mystics. Viveiros de Castro (2012, 114) tells us that animists’ bodies are not substantive or fixed in the way that naturalists imagine bodies to be; perspectival bodies are “an assemblage of affects or ways of being that constitute a habitus.” Such a “habitus” is literally a different nature/world, and this, Viveiros de Castro assures us, is the origin of perspectives. My simple suggestion is that we afford naturalist and talismanic participations the same robust reading, in which naturalist forms of participatory knowing cannot be reduced to representation. We can begin to understand the diversity of interiorities available to naturalists as an “assemblage of affects or ways of being” that enact different but equally efficacious teleological ultimates: whether Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, variations on a monotheistic creator, or Descartes’s mind. Ferrer (2008, 136–37) writes at length on this point, asserting a participatory predicament wherein knowledge is not representational but cocreative and enactive: I suggest that human spirituality emerges from cocreative participation in an always dynamic and undetermined mystery, spiritual power, and/or creative energy of life or reality. . . . This relation is not one of appropriation, possession, or passive representation of pregiven knowledge or truths, but of communion and cocreative participation. . . . [Participatory] knowing is not a mental representation of pregiven, independent spiritual objects, but an enaction, the “bringing forth” of a world or domain of distinctions cocreated by the different elements involved in the participatory event.

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It follows that an assemblage of affects that make up a particular ecology may enact a world (animist perspectivism, multinaturalism), a domain of distinctions (naturalist perspectivism, multiculturalism), or a paradoxical, ever-changing universal truth (talismanic perspectivism, multicosmological). The point is that we continue to invite in all of these forms of participation. Perspectivism is not just for cannibal metaphysics anymore. There are multiple modes of perspectivism, which at minimum can be seen among the divinatory, mystic, and shamanic ecologies. A PERSPECTIVAL LOOK AT ENACTION Scientists are generally dwelling within naturalist mystic ecologies. They assume a shared outside (nature), and they worry about the insides. “Are my methods right,” they ask. “Am I being objective, that is, representing the discoverable nature properly?” But here is the catch, the quantum crossings that created the dilemma causing Whitehead, among others, to consider a new way. Newton’s physics posited a series of atomic units located in a shared space. Quantum physics pressed this idea further, positing a quantum of possibility, the sort of thing that called into question the continuity of Newtonian space in particular and nature in general. A humanist turn rose to challenge these dead and mechanistic things. A diversity of insides and outsides ensued. Whitehead stepped into this fray and asserted his creative process thought. “Thus,” writes Whitehead, “the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism” (Whitehead 1978, 36). This is a crucial distinction for my project in particular, and for a participatory approach in general. In order for contemporary thought to keep from getting weighed down by post/modern (naturalist) materialisms, it must account for novelty in some way. Process thought and Whitehead’s work manages to do just this by following the lead of nineteenth-century geology and biology as well as twentieth-century physics. Following this scientific tradition, Ghiselin defends the need to account for novelty while dismissing teleology and metaphysics, while conflating all teleology with the kind of divine telos championed by Paley and peers. As I have already made clear, this is not the teleology Kant sought. Nor is it the purposiveness defended by process thinkers like Whitehead, or by Ferrer and his participatory approach. It must also be said that Thompson offers a complex consideration of teleology in his text Mind in Life. In the end he appears to follow Hans Jonas (1966, 80) in locating some form of freedom in biological processes. This freedom is most obvious for Jonas in the process of metabolism. Following Varela and Maturana Thompson clarifies this freedom by reference to “sense-making.” He tells us that Varela distinguishes autopoietic

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sense-making as a “surplus of significance” in contrast to the physicochemical world that lacks this overabundance. Sucrose does not have a “food significance” unless bacteria interacts with the sucrose. Thompson further clarifies this point: “Varela states that the structural coupling of organism and environment always involves a ‘surplus of significance’ provided by the organism” (2007, 154). At first blush this may seem like an attempt from within animism and its shamanic tendencies to personify life in the physically alter, but that is not what Thompson and Varela want. Thompson tells us, again following Jonas, that only life can recognize life. Bacteria does not personify sucrose; it organizes it somehow. This demonstrates the naturalist-cum-mysticism tendencies of Thompson’s enactive approach. We humans personify bacteria, making it more like us. But bacteria is not offered this same avenue; it cannot personify sucrose. Organism (biology) stands between matter (physics) and mind (psychology). Enaction is the process of sense-making, whereby “significance and valence . . . [are] brought forth, and constituted by living beings” (Thompson 2007, 158). Intentionality is limited to the realm of the living, the organism. The concern that Thompson seems wariest of, is that he will be accused of conflating adaptation with cognition. He does not want to get caught in the trap of anthropocentrism. He writes, “We have seen that sense-making requires more than minimal autopoiesis; it requires autopoiesis enhanced with a capacity for adaptivity. . . . [A]utopoiesis plus adaptivity entails sensemaking, which is cognition in its minimal biological form” (Thompson 2007, 159). Thompson then admits that this is a very broad definition of cognition. It certainly is, at least for a naturalist who assumes a continuity of ground. But it is not nearly broad enough from the standpoint of animism. Thompson cannot bring himself to personify sucrose. He cannot get down with the shamans. In effect, he is left with a not-so-subtle gap between matter and life. He has not managed to locate telos outside of an autopoietic system. Organisms have it; rocks don’t. Whereas animist ecologies assume anthropomorphism, the enactive approach struggles with anthropocentrism. Western evolutionary theories tend to favor an idea of sociality (sense-making), and then debate at what point in the evolutionary schema this adaptive response can first be found. For Thompson and company, sense-making is only found in complex forms of autopoiesis, while for many social anthropologists, sociality is something that is available only in the human realm. Humans have animality, but animals do not have humanity (e.g., Ingold 1991). My point is not to argue that some special form of consciousness or telos should be located among sucrose and others of the physicochemical world, for that would be anthropocentric. Viveiros de Castro underlines the point that animist models try to account for evolution by referring to anthropomorphic assumptions. Clarifying in turn

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that “for Amazonian peoples, the original common condition of both humans and animals is not animality but, rather, humanity” (2004, 465), he writes that not only are animals ex-humans, but so is everything down to whatever one wishes to declare the “primordial plenum.” To the extent that Thompson and the enactive approach are still struggling with anthropocentrism, we can be certain that they are still working well within the confines of a naturalist ecology of participation. To the extent that the enactive approach cannot abide by ontological claims regarding teleology and the personhood of rocks, it seems to me that it fails to involve Amerindian perspectivism. Thompson might ask, at this point, so what? The easy answer following from my considerations of cross-ecological boundary crossings is that we should invite the other in because it is good for us, at least to the extent that we fancy ourselves philosophers. This answer may or may not have traction with Thompson, and so I add an addendum. The question that we must ask concerns Thompson’s seriousness about solving his teleological conundrum. An easy answer lies outside of his naturalist assumptions, but is he willing to consider it? Is he willing to take a step cross-ecologically and risk not only his sanity (interiority), but also the stability of his body? (See chapter 3 for a detailed account of my own adventure in perspectival body swapping.) Following philosophers such as Whitehead and Deleuze, as well as anthropologists such as Viveiros de Castro and Descola, I cannot imagine a way to solve this particular teleological puzzle without engaging with what another participatory author, Jürgen Kremer, has called participatory/shamanic concourse. On Kremer’s (2002) account, a participatory approach requires the “recovery of indigenous mind,” and practicing the kind of transspecific ecological border crossing that I defend here. But again, Thompson will have to risk his body, the univocity he assumes (Nature), the same solid ground assumed by the vast majority of the Western tradition. Many of our Western philosophers, metaphysicians, and theologians have risked conversion and relativism, but how many have risked metamorphosis and cannibalism? My guess is not very many. My hope is that many more will find something of worth in animist perspectivism—not just for sake of itinerant crossings, but also because the limits of their naturalist dwellings have proved too narrow. Because the answers that are sought require new forms of participation, an impulse to be shocked and overcome by something altogether alter, a politics of ontology as Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro put it. My assertion is that the answer Thompson and other naturalists seek regarding the gap between mind and matter can be his for the taking to the extent that he can put down his anthropocentric ecology (naturalism) and find an anthropomorphic (animism) solution to the riddle of the bacteria, the sucrose, and the possibility of sensemaking in our biological sciences.

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Should we simply pledge allegiance to Viveiros de Castro and his bomb, that is Amerindian shamanism? This is an important ontology, but not the only one. If we force the word ontology to point toward essence, then we risk the same old arguments. My pluralistic (animist) ontology is better than your mononaturalist ontology. My pluralistic (naturalist) ontology is better than your monoculturalist ontology. Turning toward the enactive approach and reading all ontologies through this lens helps us to see how we can in fact hold naturalism and animism together. Viveiros de Castro is sure that this will lead to some vulgar relativism, but it will not. By adopting enaction and locating it as fundamental to our “comparison as ontology,” we do not have to argue over what is finally essential—Amerindian people-ness and multinaturalism, or Western continuities of nature and multiculturalism. Amerindians assume a shared interiority and enact a diversity of bodies and worlds. Western naturalists assume a shared physicality and enact a diversity of interiorities and subjectivities. Neither one has to win out in the end. Rather, they must each be appreciated for what they bring to the table.

Chapter 10

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One does not have to look hard to find Kant haunting page after page of this book. He is the philosopher (dare I say metaphysician?) that, maybe more than any other, opened the door for the enactive reading of naturalism that I defend throughout these pages. If we read Kant in this way we find philosophers enacting multiple interiorities, subjectivities, and ultimates through a particular mode of participatory knowing (naturalism). But this is a very particular, maybe even peculiar reading, and one that is not widely accepted throughout the academy. The traditional reading assumes that Kant actually closed the door on metaphysics. He set important limits on what could be known by recognizing the role of the observer, and, as he defended the possibility of future metaphysics, he assured us that it must be something akin to science. But what is science? What does a scientific methodology do? Does it discover or does it create (see Latour, introduction)? This is a question that tends to dominate conversations within the ontological turn in anthropology, as one author after another attempts to highlight his or her particular ethnographic theory and area of expertise as enactive, while delimiting philosophy, theology, metaphysics, and science to the realm of superficiality and dominance that must be escaped. In this chapter I turn to another important example of this trend. It seems appropriate that we find the voice of Viveiros de Castro guiding this conversation once again. Viveiros de Castro finds Martin Holbraad’s Truth in Motion similarly troubled by the ghost of Kant. Holbraad’s work is one of the most important pieces of scholarship to come out of the ontological turn in anthropology. It also offers a unique glimpse into the ontology of talismanic participation, and so requires a closer look here. Speaking to what he sees as a “strong Kantian accent” in Holbraad’s work, Viveiros de Castro imagines Truth in Motion 271

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“as a kind of latter day Critique of Anthropological Reason. [Chapter 2] for instance reads as a version of the ‘antinomies of reason’; and the job done in [the conclusion] looks amazingly like a ‘transcendental deduction’ sort of argument. The whole project of the author, as a matter of fact, made me think of a Kantian-like effort to establish the conditions of possibility of all anthropological knowledge” (qtd. in Holbraad 2012, 260). Referencing this conversation, Holbraad reflects on his work and finds it to be post-Kantian, non-Kantian, and post-, non-, and/or anti-recursive. My intention within this chapter is to follow Holbraad’s self-reflection, tracing ways in which these three movements express themselves in academia. It should also be noted from the very outset that I associate Holbraad’s recursive methodology with divination and performative talismanic truths. A RECURSIVE TURN Holbraad’s emphasis on what he terms recursive anthropology is critical (post-Kantian) insofar as he follows Kant’s lead in utilizing subjective experiences of the world to say something meaningful about the nature of our categories of thought. On Holbraad’s read, Kant’s is a subjective or epistemological turn, one that is opposed to a speculative or metaphysical praxis that utilizes its categories to say something about the world. Holbraad (2012, 261–62) underlines this point by clarifying that if we “replace ‘world’ with ‘other,’ ‘experience of the world’ with ‘ethnography,’ and ‘categories of thought’ with ‘analytical concepts,’ [then my] account of Kantian critique becomes a fair description of recursive anthropology. . . hence the Kantian accent.” What is this Kantian emphasis? One of Kant’s great contributions was to recognize the necessity of examining our experience of the sensible (Newtonian) world (Nature) by way of critically evaluating our assumptions about this world. Holbraad sees his work as an amplification of this process whereby the sources of critique are multiplied by the diversity of ethnographies available to us regarding different experiences of the “sensible world.” This is also where Holbraad’s work begins to diverge from Kant, becoming, as he writes, a “critique of the Critique” (2012, 262; see also Alexander 1966). Where Kant’s transcendental categories are beholden to a single given Newtonian reality (a straightforward naturalism), Holbraad’s non-Kantian move replaces “categories of thought” with “analytic concepts.” These concepts are derivatives of particular recursive anthropological practices. For example, Holbraad looks to issues of motility and truth in Cuban Ifá divination by way of calling into question naturalist ontological assumptions of Euro-American anthropologists attempting to make sense of apparently

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“irrational” mana-terms (power). Holbraad offers the use of aché (power = powder = power) in Ifá divinatory practices as his example of such a manaterm. Where Kant’s world is one (a naturalist ecology), Holbraad’s is overflowing with alterity. The Ifá ecology he references, populated as it is by a diversity of others, is held together by what seems to amount to a plethora of arbitrary relations. It is just such an expression of diversity and attempts to make whole by use of analogy and divination that led Descola to characterize West African ontologies as beholden to a fundamental atomism and desperate attempts at meaning making. But, tellingly, this is not how Holbraad reads the West African–influenced Ifá. Where Kant relies on a given experience of the world (naturalism), Holbraad looks to the incredible diversity of ethnographies available to us—including but not limited to those that consider the particular practices and ontological assumptions of post/modernity and its sciences (e.g., Latour 1987, 1993; Latour and Woolgar 1986)—in order to render his scholarly work recursive and, as we shall soon see, oracular. Holbraad (2012, 263) discovers that “by virtue of just such a non-Kantianism. . . recursive anthropological arguments can, depending on the ethnographic circumstances, engender explicitly antiKantian (anti-Newtonian, anti-Durkheimian, or anti– anything else) conceptualizations.” One might wonder at this point if we are headed over a cliff of vulgar relativism, or maybe bordering on solipsism, and again we hear Descola’s concerns regarding his ontological category of analogism. Where could all this diversity lead but toward some desperate attempt (Descola cites a variety of divinatory traditions throughout human history) at meaning making? Though it has not traditionally focused on topics of divinatory participation and ethnographic theory, the conversation regarding relativism and realism is not new within the field of philosophy. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, in one classic example, lay out what they see as the basic “sources” and “forms” of relativism. They then beg to differ on the meaning of relativism, falling as they do on slightly different sides of the realist-relativist dilemma (Hollis and Lukes 1982a, b; Hollis 1982; Lukes 1982). As the realist-relativist debates begin in earnest, careers are made as scholars identify themselves with rationalism, relativism, and the grey areas in between (e.g., Krausz 1989). Many possibilities arise out of this relativist-rationalist project, including variations of a postpositivist philosophy in which easy assumptions about nature become complicated in interesting ways (e.g., Bracken 2007, who’s post-Nietzschian critical stance is more in keeping with my overall project; Shweder 1989). We can locate Holbraad’s recursive anthropology somewhere here. As he brings in a diversity of different voices through his defense of ethnographic theory, doors to the oracular open beyond even the play of shamans and philosophers who navigate between animist and naturalist modes of participatory knowing. But we are not there yet.

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As mentioned above, Holbraad sees his work as post-, anti-, and nonrecursive. He delimits his theoretical assertions by locating them in relation to a “move,” one that cannot make pretenses toward a working set of conditions or categories for the “possibility of all knowledge.” In a very real way, this means that his recursive program is arbitrary, a point that I return to later. There is no attempt at an overarching theory; in place of such attempts Holbraad emphasizes the transformative aspects of his recursive anthropology. This turn toward transformation is of course not unique. Within the context of the participatory approach defended in these pages, Ferrer and Sherman (2008) acknowledge the important feminist emphasis on transformation. They also reference the work of Mike Sandbothe (2004) who notes the change of emphasis from representation to transformation that has occurred for those shifting allegiances from analytic and linguistic philosophy to more pragmatic expressions. But I think Holbraad’s work pushes us in a slightly different direction. His recursive practice of comparison becomes an opportunity for a particular kind of transformation of the talismanic sort. Mauss (1975) recognized something along these lines when he challenged ethnographers to face the alterity inherent within what have since come to be called “mana-terms.” Emic and non-naturalist references to “power” seem to violate and/or contradict what are assumed to be the natural laws of a naturalist world. Those who believe in the efficacy of these expressions of power have long been labeled irrational, childish, and/or primitive. And yet, there is a long tradition of wrestling with these mana-terms that cannot be easily swept under the table. While informed by these discussions, Holbraad’s contribution is relatively unique, and so must be considered in some detail. In a telling example, Holbraad (2007) begins an essay on philosophy and Cuban Ifá divination by writing that what is most important about ethnographic datum is our ability not to extend our theories over them, but rather to push beyond the edges and toward the ontological border-crossings that these encounters can allow. Ethnographic data, on this account, is given the ability to transform and expand our own “theoretical imagination.” Within such encounters, we do not risk altering the assumptions of the other (like the Christian missionary and her work of conversion). Instead, we risk our own assumptions and borders. In risking this sort of transformation, we are not practicing science, says Holbraad, but something else altogether. To this end, he writes, “[A]nthropological analysis is best compared not to science but to philosophy” (2007, 190). This is a curious statement—one that, as a philosopher considering the ontological turn, I find striking. Holbraad is assuming that philosophy is a speculative pursuit that tends to transgress its own critical limits. Philosophy, on this account, cannot be conflated with something like an analytic metaphysics or finally align itself with the scientific methodology. Mystics, metaphysics, and philosophy are

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prone to overreach. Can you hear Kant’s ghost rattling the furniture? But here is a question, following Kant: To what extent must metaphysics become like science if it is going to survive? My answer is that we have to read Kant as someone who opened the door for metaphysics by turning his focus to the role of the observer within a naturalist ecology. Contemporary metaphysics, as I argued in previous chapters, points us toward a multiple-ontology approach to ecologies of participation. This speculative practice, as argued for in these pages, requires a form of participatory knowing that is able to enact multiple subjects, interiorities, cultures, and spiritual ultimates. But is this Holbraad’s read on the future of philosophy and ethnographic theory? I am not sure, and in fact, I wonder if he offers us another way. What is it that Holbraad is after with his recursive turn? As we continue to look toward his work, Holbraad offers a challenge. Can your philosophy, with its search for ontology (as in singularities and unities) deal with oracular truth, as in I know it is true because the oracle told me so? Oracles are not modern (other people believe in oracles, moderns know they are not natural) or postmodern (we all believe because our beliefs are constructed, so we cannot say if there are oracles or not, but in general, there are no oracles, because they are not natural). Oracular truth might be primitive, indigenous, or New Age, but it should not enter into conversations around realism—should it? Holbraad has thrown down his recursive gauntlet. Magic, practiced by Ifá diviners, does what modern science and the onto-theo-logical tendencies in Western philosophy forbid. Diviners speak truth, and seat power, through talismanic thinking. Oracular truth is recursive, and so nonessential. Philosophy, to the extent that it weds itself to the affirmation of some onto-essentialcontinuous-shared-ground, cannot enact anything. To call into question the onto-essential-continuity of Western imagination is to wander on the precarious relativist edge. But this is not what either Holbraad or I am defending in these pages. Magic—as in mana/power—makes meaning (see Hill 1987). Holbraad’s research follows Viveiros de Castro’s lead in two important ways. First, he offers a form of knowing that is enactive, as in creative and capable of making (not discovering) meaning. Where Viveiros de Castro’s shamanic ecologies enact bodies and physicalities, Holbraad’s divinatory ecologies enact correlations, cosmoses, and arbitrary-but-meaningful truths. But, while for Holbraad, recursive, oracular, and divinatory participation with alterity is understood as enactive, the thought of philosophers, scientists, and their naturalisms are left (once again) defending a superficial ontology that cannot create anything. Like Descola and Viveiros de Castro, and so many other authors we have met in these pages, for Holbraad, naturalism falls flat.

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In order to better clarify this distinction, we must come to understand Holbraad’s recursive method, which he aligns with what he terms thinking through. Holbraad (2007, 199–200) makes a clear distinction between thinking through and thinking about. Yet he only alludes to the possibility of thinking with. I have picked up on his fleeting distinction, finding it useful to distinguish more clearly between modern thinking about (which, in the context of anthropology, Holbraad associates with British empiricism) and postmodern thinking with (which, in the context of anthropology, Holbraad associates with French rationalism). These distinctions are also explored in detail in the introduction to Thinking Through Things (Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell 2007). Thinking through, then, is enactive in a divinatory way, and can be contrasted with what Holbraad calls thinking about (e.g., modern naturalist scholarship) and thinking with (e.g., postmodern naturalist scholarship). The trick, if we are going to defend a participatory approach, is to find a way to include both the modern and the postmodern by recognizing their particular mode of thought is enactive as well. Mystics enact gods and atoms, just like diviners enact orishas and talismanic knowledge. In order to accomplish this task, it is helpful to remember Latour’s post/ modern constitution, as outlined in some detail in the introduction of this book. Through her particular methodology, the modern, he tells us, discovers things, that is, the stuff which exists in the realm of the discovered, nature. The postmodern does something a little different. Following in the wake of Kant’s critical turn, he self-reflexively places the human at the center of the story, and finds that in fact these discoveries are all created, that is, subjective experiences constructed in multiple realms called cultures. They, the pre-moderns, have not discovered the actual facts of nature, much less the Western self-reflexivity to recognize that their constructs are bound to cultural assumptions. This last point is driven home time and again, as our post/ moderns assure us that they are in fact humble people (see Cabezón 2006). We do not step beyond the bounds of reason, they tell us. We understand that our view of nature is based on hypothesis, and therefore that our facts are created. We also understand that culture is larger than us, and that our ability to observe the true facts of nature is colored by these creative, cultural lenses. This humble position, writes Latour (2010), is a positioning that ostensibly lands one between the counterarguments held by adherents of realism (thinking about) and/or constructivism (thinking with). Post/moderns assume a realm of facts, while Latour raises the question of causality. How do these facts interact, and where do they come from? Post/moderns locate pre-moderns as those who believe in fetishes, says Latour, but these same post/moderns have their own factishes. We all co-create or enact, says Latour; whether fetish or fact, multinaturalism or mononaturalism, these are all co-created. And so Latour tells us that we have never been modern, but in doing so he

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runs afoul of Kant. We cannot be nonmoderns, not if we are going to come close to anything like the participatory approach outlined in these pages. Our task is not to produce a new theory or ontology that trumps that of the post/ moderns. No, the task is comparison as metaphysical starting point, as in we must find some way to invite the post/moderns in. We must not only defend thinking through (to use Holbraad’s terminology), but also thinking about and thinking with as well. RECURSIVE METHOD AND THINKING THROUGH As I have often done throughout this book, I move to examine the ontological turn in anthropology within the hallways of religious studies. In the introductory essay to his edited collection Thinking Through Myths, Kevin Schilbrack emphasizes his own process of thinking through, a stance which is similar to Holbraad’s recursive one. Schilbrack does not use the phrase thinking through in quite the same way that Holbraad does, and yet there is an important similarity. Following the critical work of Bruce Lincoln, Schilbrack (2002, 5–10) offers a particular definition of myth. Lincoln (1989, 23–26) established a fourfold understanding of shared discourse. On his account we have fables (stories that are clearly fictional), legends (stories that lack credibility), histories (stories that have credibility), and myths (stories that have both credibility and authority or efficacy). Lincoln writes that one group’s myth (e.g., scientific materialism), to the extent that it is efficacious, can reduce another group’s once vital myth to the role of fable, legend, or history (e.g., many might understand scientific materialism to render Ifá divination less than efficacious). A new myth (e.g., the multiple-ontology approach defended in these pages) might also be able to reinvest these devitalized forms of discourse with credibility and authority, or bring about completely novel lines of interpretation (1989, 26). In order to approach a similar notion to Lincoln’s myth, Holbraad distinguishes what he calls thinking through from what he terms thinking about and thinking with. I am largely in agreement with Holbraad, with some variations. The point that I wish to address at this juncture regarding Holbraad’s thinking through is threefold. First, his critical engagement with alterity allows for the most “irrational” of “their” “beliefs” to be considered on their own terms. This is good. Secondly, he defends the notion that one can be transformed by an encounter with alterity, another positive point in his favor. Third, and this is where thinking through falters, he turns his back on the empiricism of science and the constructivism of the postmodern. He does not seem to like mystics and their rationalist tests. This is interesting, useful, and should not be easily dismissed. Where Viveiros de Castro and many others tend toward

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shamanic ontologies of bodily becomings, Holbraad offers recursive motile talismanic truths. Both of these are viable options. The first holds up the intrapersonal/vital test of animists. The latter brings to the fore the interpersonal/ cool test of diviners. It has been my stated goal throughout this book to include something like thinking about (modern) and thinking with (postmodern) as I set out to clarify a participatory philosophy as opposed to a nonmodern philosophy. My hope here is to remember the importance of transpersonal/rational tests, that is, naturalist leaning mystic ontologies of objective facts. But in order to do this, I have placed the greatest emphasis on multipersonal/freedom tests of my agential participatory raft. While I default to this multi-ontology approach, Holbraad offers us something else. He defends a talismanic approach to comparative studies, which is good, and yet steps must be taken to discern this talismanic approach from the participatory approach fleshed out in these pages. In order to accomplish this goal, while paying heed to Holbraad’s important work, my multiple-ontology approach (one new myth, ecologies of participation) must be discerned from Holbraad’s thinking through (a new Divinatory myth). This is especially true if we are going to invite the post/modern in. To clarify, I turn once again to Lincoln (2012b), who sets up a three-tiered argument in his recent work. Lincoln begins his argument for myth by considering the phrase “History of Religion.” History, he states, can be seen as the method (a kind of thinking about), while religion can be understood as the object of the study. Arvind Sharma’s (2005, 48) Homo religiosus and Homo academeicus can be stipulated here. Where Homo religiosus seeks his own myth, Homo academeicus finds herself practicing something like thinking about this myth. Lincoln sums up his defense of the former when he writes, “Religion, I submit, is that discourse whose defining characteristic is its desire to speak of things eternal and transcendent with an authority equally transcendent and eternal” (2012a, 1). Lincoln’s discourse on method follows this statement by clarifying that both the methodology (history) and the object (religion) are beholden to a particular context. Religion does not equal history. They are of two different kinds. Here we find Lincoln pointing out the thinking about style assumptions underlying a Homo academeicus–style methodology, but also another trend toward thinking with. To underline this point, he points toward a critical defensiveness that is at play here. Under the rubric of “cultural relativism,” the argument affirms that one should not turn one’s critical eye toward another tradition for fear of affecting an expression of neocolonialism. “Where does the heart of darkness lie,” asks Michael Taussig (1987, 117), “in the fleshy body-tearing rites of the cannibals, or in the photographing eye of the beholder exposing them naked and deformed piece by piece to the world?” I follow Taussig and so many other scholars who have understood

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the colonizing nature of our post/modern stare and the violence that can be inflicted through the practice of thinking about (see also Cottom 2001). Thinking about will no longer do. We do not hold an objective point of view, no more than they are simply objects of our empirical stare. In recognizing the need to discover another way we find ourselves turning toward the practice of thinking with. In an important essay on the topic of thinking about-with-through diverse groups of people, languages, and ontologies, Richard A. Shweder (1989) imagines a contemporary relativist’s lecture, given to a “modern educated audience.” Shweder has his relativist begin her lecture by quoting Kurt ­Vonnegut (the author of Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions), who studied anthropology at the University of Chicago after World War II. Shortly before his death, Vonnegut’s father presses his son to explain the lack of villains in his stories. Vonnegut replied that this is what he learned in school after the war: [t]here are no villains, bad guys, or evil others. ­Shweder’s imaginary relativist begins with this story in order to catch her audience unaware of their own cultural assumptions. This trap is predicated on two assumptions. First, it assumes that the audience has a particular habit of mind called “ethnocentrism,” whereby the members of the audience think their own ways are somehow closer to the good and the true than those of the others, whoever they may be. Second, the lecturer also assumes that these ethnocentric assumptions are more or less hidden from the awareness of her audience members. In order to catch the audience at their assumptions, she begins by asking which language is the proper language for human beings: English, Tamil, Chinese, or French? She goes on to ask about the makeup of the proper human diet, whether it is vegetarian, nonvegetarian, or (if she were speaking today) gluten-free. The lecture continues in this vein, the audience becomes more and more uncomfortable, and in the end the punch line is delivered. The only universally applicable moral principle is that there are no universally applicable moral principles. We cannot think about, and so we must think with. Shweder imagines Vonnegut’s classmates from the University of Chicago “et cetera pondering” all through the night. If there are no universal moral guideposts, then all customary practices and ethical and metaphysical assertions can be considered different and equal. What naturally follows, writes Shweder (1989, 101), is that Vonnegut’s assertion that no one is “‘ridiculous or bad or disgusting,’ or wrong or deluded or confused, et cetera,” holds true (1989, 101). Following this abuse of postcolonial theory, Shweder writes, “That conclusion, of course, is fallacious. Just because there is no single valid mode of artistic expression does not mean that any doodling with paint on canvas is a work of art or is entitled to respect” (1989, 101). Now here is the thrust of Shweder’s article. He writes, “The fallacy can be stated in

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quite general terms: Just because there is no one uniform objective reality. . . does not mean there are no objective realities” (1989, 101). The line between thinking with and thinking through offered by Holbraad follows the line Shweder has demarcated between the University of Chicago anthropology student’s cultural and moral relativism. Holbraad promotes a broadening or challenging of assumptions. Where philosophers and scientists from Aristotle to Newton to Peter van Inwagen start from a basic onto-theo-logical assumption (Nature and some final cause or ultimate quantifier) and begin to collect data, Holbraad’s recursive methodology carries with it the possibility of challenging these assumptions. ­Holbraad requires realists and constructivists alike to associate themselves with oracular revelations. In doing so, he is not just asking these thinkers to wander beyond the clear light of their particular culture, into the vagueness, intensity, and overabundance of cross-cultural lived experience. He is asking them to walk toward this sort of radical diversity, while also keeping the door open for oracular assertions. Holbraad is arguing not just that we should respect the alterity of the other, but that we must also risk asserting something. For his part, Shweder wonders aloud whether Nietzsche was aware that he was “stuck in a prison of positivism.” On Shweder’s account Nietzsche followed a basic positivist dichotomy: Either we can apprehend goddesses, mana, souls, sorcery, and God directly through our sensorial suite, or “God is dead.” Shweder notes that to believe that one can perceive such “supernatural” Natures will likely get one laughed out of the positivist room. The first time I admitted to something like this in an American Philosophy Association (APA) conference it produced quite a stir, including but not limited to disdain, laughter, and nervousness. This was not a positivist or wholly analytic room but rather a group of philosophers defending an ethics of crosscultural inclusion. The general response, once they realized I was both serious and sane, was to associate my position—let’s call it personal knowledge of angels—with the views of sexists and Holocaust deniers. The underlying message of these rather odd associations seems to have at least two layers. On one side the assertion is that in defending the existence of angels I am taking a radical and indefensible stance. The sexist and the Holocaust denier are wrong because the facts clearly indicate a reality that defies their beliefs (genders are equal and the Holocaust happened). The same argument is applied to belief in angels: The facts clearly suggest otherwise. This is arguable from my cross-ecological perspective, but what is interesting is the second emotional layer beneath the associations above. Experiences beyond the limited purview of a post/modern science are morally reprehensible. Knowledge of angels, at least in the context of the APA session mentioned above, was equated, in the heat of the moment, with some of the most abhorrent social stances conceivable.

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At this point I wondered aloud, to a largely African American panel, whether being a West African Ifá diviner was like being a Holocaust denier. The response was tepid and the reply quick—and this is where it gets interesting. I was told, by way of silencing my query, that my views needed to be held to the rigorous standards of philosophy if I meant to engage in the dialogue being held in this particular room. I was, after all, participating as a philosopher in a professional context. What was lost on the room and the panel was Holbraad’s recursive point above. The assumption on which this response is founded is that there is only one reality—post/modern naturalism—and one kind of room, the one that exists as an extension of nature. A cross-ecological approach must include the sensual bodily awareness of animist ecologies, ecologies for which belief (a purely naturalist form of participation) has no ground (literally) to stand on. But this was not a crossecological conversation. It existed largely within the context of a naturalist ecology (angels and theism, mechanism and post/modernism). Shweder (1989, 126) considers the outcome of such a conversation in relation to the orthodox Hindu conceptions of karma and reincarnation with which he is most familiar: a. The other does not view his own ideas as arbitrary, conventional, consensus-based, or as emotive expressions of imagination, desire, or will. b. The other believes his reality-posits express significant insights into what the world is like and that the reality posited can be used to illuminate or interpret the facts of experience. c. The other does not reason irrationally with his ideas (see also Shweder 1986). d. The other remains convinced that his reality-posits are a form of knowledge about the world, even after we explain that he is suffering from a deluded false consciousness or that it is all imaginary or made up. Falling clearly within the general argument articulated by recent scholars from José Ignacio Cabezón to Donald Lopez and Richard King (see introduction), Shweder takes the positivist (Nietzschian) line of argument to task. My colleagues in the APA conference wanted to point out that I was deluded. But this was more than a little problematic, and many of the people in the room (as evidenced by the dozens of people who came up to me after the session) were well aware of it. One problem arose because I was and am one of them as well as one of the alter, a practitioner-scholar. They had not considered the enormous and overwhelming data available regarding viable and distinct ontological assumptions like those considered throughout the ontological turn in anthropology. In fact, they were very suspicious of me because I had done so. Why are you doing this here? they asked. Why not

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practice this kind of theorizing in an anthropology or religious studies conference? My short answer is that if contemporary philosophy is going to be saved from itself, it must venture out, not only across disciplines, but also across cultural and ecological alterities. I am certainly not the first to make the claim that different voices should be included within our philosophical halls (e.g., Yancy 2007), but I do so in my own unique way. By adopting a crossecological approach to philosophy, I am arguing along metaphysical grounds. The long answer must be found throughout the pages of this work. For his part, Shweder opts for his own third path beyond or around the Nietzschian positivist bind that still plagues contemporary philosophy. Following in the footsteps of various postpositivist thinkers (i.e., Kuhn, Hanson, Toulmin, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Hesse, and Goodman), Shweder lays out a relatively new path (for a precursor to Shweder see Friedman n.d.; see also Friedman 2000). In his first step along this road he asserts that there is no particular that can exist independently of our interpretation (or participation). Step two, Shweder tells us, is to recognize the accomplishments of what he terms “normal science.” These are real, and cannot be dismissed. Following Derrida (1977) first and then Robert Horton (1967), Shweder adds a third step. He asserts Derrida’s “metaphysics of presence,” whereby “reality is not something we can do without, [nor is it something that be reached] except by an act of imaginative projection implicating the knower as well as the known” (1989, 60). Horton adds to this metaphysics of presence the important stipulation that is drawn out by Shweder and so many authors referenced throughout this project: namely that step two, whereby the accomplishments of science cannot be denied, must also relate to “the others” with markedly different accomplishments that do not fall within the purview of Euro-American science. In effect, this is a kind of Latourian move, whereby a system of symmetrical anthropology is set up and scientific knowledge of post/modernity is understood to be just as dependent on imaginative projection and participatory knowing as the knowledge of any other group of people. As Latour would have it, we have never been modern, no more than we have ever been barbarian. “A Modern,” writes Latour, “is someone who believes that others believe” (2010, 2). This is where the post/modern denies his or her inherent drive toward conversion of the other, and so fails in our recursive guest protocol. Scientists, positivists, and Nietzsche must all acknowledge the role they play in the enaction of their world. Ferrer and Sherman (2008, 32) write, In its most radical version, a participatory perspective does not contend that there are two, three, or any limited quantity of pregiven spiritual ultimates, but rather that the radical openness, interrelatedness, and creativity of the mystery and/or the cosmos allows for the participatory enaction of an indefinite number

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of possible self-disclosures of reality and corresponding metaphysical or religious worlds.

Shweder posits two basic responses to the postpositivist stance that suggests that physics cannot be isolated from meta-physics. The first, a positivist response, is to bemoan the state of the profession, and to pity physics. F ­ orcing nature and science into a corner with the super-natural and the religious is not really scientific at all. This is what my colleagues assumed during the APA conference mentioned above. The second response is to recognize that science has nothing to fear at all in this postpositivist world. This seems to be in keeping with the pluralist line I draw throughout this work, but there is a difference. Shweder’s postpositivist stance is not lacking in concern for the real. He references the “continental chorus singing with Kuhnian overtones that it is our prejudices and partialities that make it possible for us to see, if not everything, then at least something” (1989, 131). On Shweder’s account, God is not dead; only positivism, monotheism, and exclusivism (scientific, theistic, or otherwise) are dead. He is trying to find a path here between ontological atheism (God is dead, there is one objective world) and ontological polytheism (there are multiple objective worlds). He writes, “Thus spake Zarathustra. . . [and] ontological atheism was born” (1989, 111). ­Following from this atheist stance, if one is to posit the existence of anything that challenges this single Nietzschian positivist reality, then they are surely wandering into vulgar relativism. Ontological polytheism is clearly nonsensical from the positivist-atheist-Nietzschian perspective. Shweder’s is a middle road between these two, and it is at this point that I begin to part ways with his work. There is a slight naturalist tinge to Shweder’s account from this point on that leans toward a single objective reality. Shweder’s reality is one that cannot be articulated, because all perspectives, prejudices, and/or truths are only partial. The real can be clarified from any partial understanding, and yet to try to put all the possible partial truths into a perspective blender is to muddy the waters to such an extent that nothing can be known. On this account, there seems to be a single reality, one that we cannot know in particularity or collectively. Shweder (1989, 134) writes, For if there is no reality without “meta”-physics and each reality-testing metaphysic (i.e. cultural or tradition) is but a partial representation of the multiplicity of the objective world, it becomes possible to transcend tradition by showing how each tradition lights some plane of reality but not all of it. Since each is but a partial representation, it lends itself to a process of rational reconstruction through which it may become an object of respect.

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This is not how I use the words “multiple objective worlds”—the subtitle of Shweder’s essay—throughout these pages. While Shweder is clearly a pluralist willing to risk multiple interiorities, he is not available to the kind of multinaturalist travels I acknowledge as shamanism. He is not willing to risk multiple bodies. I am attempting something far more “other” than Shweder’s self-styled “casuist” stance harkening back in his own words to the Stoic and Sophist precursors of the post/modern worldview. In the end, Shweder holds on too strongly to his single given reality. This, as I show in some detail below, is an expression of a naturalist ontology. It is useful at this point to return to Holbraad’s recursive anthropology, as it seems that while Shweder is aware of the problems both with what Holbraad terms thinking about (modern scholarship that can trend toward colonialism and imperialism) and thinking with (postmodern scholarship that can lean toward relativism), he has not quite allowed himself to think through the alterity available to someone committed to a thoroughgoing symmetrical anthropology of human experience. Regarding the alterity of Ifá divination and similar enactments of truth, Holbraad writes, “Few data on the ethnographic canon could be more theoretically enticing than mana. If ‘alterity’ is a tag for phenomena that do not ‘make sense’ to us, then mana-terms are ‘alter’ in the most literal way” (2007, 190). If this is so, then this is where we must begin to push Shweder’s postpositivist post-Nietzschian scholarship beyond the horizons of a single ontological ground and the Euro-American conceptualization of representational truth. To put this another way, if we are going to move from Shweder’s multiple (perspectives on) objective worlds (scholar as pluralist) to the literal objective worlds I defend in these pages (scholar as shaman), we must begin by considering something far more alter than karma and reincarnation. My cross-ecological point is that we must allow animist ecologies of participation and their emphasis on multiple objective worlds into dialogue with our naturalist ecologies and the assumption of a single ontological given. For Holbraad’s part he considers the ramifications of one particular manaterm, aché, originating from the West African–influenced Ifá divinatory cults of Cuba. He writes that Cuban Ifá diviners refer to the nebulous notion of aché and the “anomalies” that follow in the wake of this mana-term throughout their regular practice of divination. For my present purposes it is important to tease out Holbraad’s thesis regarding the importance of thinking through mana for contemporary philosophy and anthropology (and academia in general), as opposed to either thinking about or thinking with. I follow Holbraad as he proceeds by “pursuing rationalist ends with empirical means [effectually] jeopardizing the foundations of both” (2007, 190). Where positivist thinkers are scared by the possibility of falling into a regress of metameta-meta-physics and Shweder is concerned with multiple metas having to

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do with one physic (pluralism), I propose that we risk the physics altogether. By this I do not mean to reject naturalist sciences, but rather to put them into conversation with multinaturalists from animist ecologies and the motile truths of recursive divinatory ecologies. This turn toward mana-terms (e.g., divination and magic) is not new. French rationalism, writes Holbraad, adopts terms like mana in order to accentuate and challenge philosophical debate. Auguste Comte is given as one early example of a French intellectual who used the idea of “force” (a mana-term) to challenge his own views regarding the origins of thought. Also of interest for my purposes here is the difference between French and British treatment of such terms. Where the French can often be seen attempting at least a thinking with if not a thinking through of mana-terms like aché, the British can just as often be seen to emphasize a thinking about. Holbraad asserts that while certain British intellectuals like Edward B. Tylor, James G. Frazer, and Robert R. Marett did consider mana-terms, especially with regard to their debates about “magic” and “religion,” the ethnographical work of Anglican missionary Robert Henry Codrington is more in keeping with the tradition of British empiricism. On numerous occasions, Codrington documents the use of the term “mana” among the Melanesian people in his text The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore, published in 1891. Nowhere in this work does he consider the philosophical ramifications of such a term; instead he simply documents its use. Where British thought tends to think about mana, the French attempt to wrestle with the term. By way of further underlining this point about British empiricism Holbraad quotes Malinowski (1954, 78), who writes: The theory of mana as the essence of primitive magic and religion has been so brilliantly advocated and so recklessly handled that it must be realized first that our knowledge of the mana, notably in Melanesia, is somewhat contradictory, and especially that we have hardly any data at all showing just how this conception enters into religious or magical cult and belief.

Following the work of Marett, Mauss and Hubert, and Durkheim, Malinowski recognizes the lack of knowledge regarding mana in the academic literature. In keeping with the British tradition, he calls for more data. As I show below, Mauss, writing in the French tradition, struggles with this material in the face of lack of understanding (risking his own assumptions), while Malinowski (writing in the British tradition) sees a need for more data whereby the idiosyncratic emic understandings of the Melanesian people can be explained away. In the pages that follow the quotation above, Malinowski lays out his own theory of magic, wherein he explains it away as an emotional or

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psychological reaction to a lack of understanding and rationality on the part of a hunter (whether “savage” or “civilized”). Magic becomes an emotional overflowing that is just poorly understood. The magician or the hunter is not lacking in logic. He is capable of understanding that magical rites are fallible. In order to accommodate this fact, the savage introduces the idea of countermagic to manage the failures of her explanatory schema. When failure occurs, which it must do unless the person just happens to be lucky enough to align her emotional outburst with an outcome that resembles her intention, two explanations are possible. Either the person did not perform the magical rite well, or someone or something has blocked the person’s magic by way of a counter-spell. Malinowski writes, “In Melanesia, where I have studied this problem firsthand, there is not a single magical act which is not firmly believed to possess a counter-act, which when stronger, can completely annihilate its effects” (1954, 76). Throughout Magic, Science, Religion, and Other Essays, Malinowski fails to engage emic understandings of what he terms magic, and thereby the recursive guest protocol that I seek to establish for comparative work going forward. Malinowski is not interested in how such self-understanding of the Melanesian people might be coherent and logical within their own ontological framework. He is not thinking with (in a relativist sense), and certainly not risking his own assumptions about what is possible, true, and natural (the pluralist step toward thinking through). In his defense, it must be said that Malinowski did not simply relegate all magical thinking to “savage” populations. He allowed that both magical and scientific ways of knowing are available to Melanesian fisherman as well as city-dwelling Londoners. But he subsumes the magical thought by imagining it as a temporary and/or lesser (prelogical) alternative where scientific knowledge is not available. Here he falls into relativizing and conversion. Magic is just a functional response to the anxiety of not having a scientific explanation. Through all of this speculation, Malinowski simply continues to do the work he is so well known for: he collects ethnographic data. He observes and collects accounts about magic, without ever allowing the alterity of mana to challenge his own beliefs. In Magic, Science and Religion, and Other Essays, Malinowski underlines this point when he writes that “all theories which lay mana and similar conceptions at the basis of magic are pointing all together in the wrong direction” (Malinowski 1954, 85). Malinowski understands magic as a ritual act, an emotional overflowing, while he reserves terms like mana for primitive metaphysical categories. It also appears that Malinowski did not conflate magic and mana, as Holbraad seems to suggest. Referencing the Malinowski quotation above, Holbraad writes that it is not a lack of ethnographical data that led to contradictions regarding our knowledge of mana. The collection of more data will not solve the contradictions,

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because mana-terms are contradictory by their nature. Holbraad traces a long lineage of British thinkers (Hocart, Hogbin, Firth, and Keesing) who continue to collect data in order to subsume mana-terms within their own ontological framework, ending most recently with the work of Bradd Shore. It is worth noting, if only in passing, that Holbraad cites an early article written by Shore (1989). Shore’s more recent work (1996) breaks with the empiricist tradition he has inherited, and attempts to follow the rationalist tradition equated here with the French. In the end, what is important is not so much who falls into which camp. Rather it is crucial to consider Holbraad’s point that there is a very different way of approaching the challenges offered by mana-terminology than the practice of collecting ethnographic data in parallel with the maintenance of established worldviews. Holbraad writes that the French understood this point, while the British continued to try to wrangle mana into coherence with established Western assumptions regarding rationality and ontology. If you are still not convinced of this point, writes Holbraad, “consider the sting in characterizing the style of a piece of intellectual work as ‘oracular’ [truth is what the oracle says it is], as self-consciously Anglo-Saxon intellectuals often do for the writings of ‘Continentals.’” Holbraad continues, “In effect ‘oracular’ points to an absence of argument in the text: it presumes truth, failing to display a sufficient concern with it; in other words, it states truth rather than establishing it” (2012, 241–42). Returning to my own experiences at APA conferences, after I introduce myself and the general direction of my work, my colleagues tend to frame (and thereby explain away) what I have said by responding, “Oh, you must be working in the Continental tradition.” ­Following Holbraad’s argument, we should invite the challenges offered by mana and aché into our philosophical and scientific considerations, rather than containing them by referring to primitive, savage, or magical mentalities. We should be aware of our British-American tendencies to rely too heavily on “data” and to safely limit the work of others by thinking of it as oracular. It is worth considering Holbraad’s treatment of the French tradition to further underline this point. He cites the publication in 1902 of Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert’s A General Theory of Magic as a first important step along the path toward what he terms thinking through. Referencing this work, Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote, “Magical thinking offers other [as compared to science], different methods of channeling and containment, with different results, and all these methods can very well coexist” (1987, 63). Holbraad writes that the excessive quality of mana is deemed transgressive from the very start; a viable challenge to accepted axiomatic norms. He suggests that rather than assuming that axioms are axiomatic, and that mana should somehow fit within these established laws and principles, we should consider the very interesting possibility that mana points us toward something altogether alter

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or novel. What if, he wonders, the association of mystical (used in a derogatory sense) thought with so-called primitive minds is nothing more than an anthropological projection on a perfectly coherent ontology or framework. According to Holbraad, Mauss and Hubert could not quite go this far. Their positivist leanings would not allow a real “thinking through” of mana. LéviStrauss, for all his defense of the “insoluble anomalies attaching themselves to the notion of mana,” could not meet mana on its own terms either (1987, 63–64). He contained mana in a similar fashion to the well-documented ways whereby he subsumed totemic thought into algebraic logic. Lévi-Strauss (1963) critiqued anthropologists for writing that totems can be understood by considering the connection between totem and totemic clan (signifier and signified). Following Lévi-Strauss, Holbraad writes that signifiers (totems) do not gain meaning by reference to a signified (clan). They have meaning in relation to other signifiers. So dog means something in relation not to the animal that it points to, but to other signifiers like gray wolf (Canis lupus), the Canidae family, mammal, cat, or ball. Holbraad writes, “Meaning is a function, in the algebraic sense (Lévi-Strauss 1987:42–3), of a signifier’s position within a structured series” (2007, 195). Lévi-Straus writes, “Mauss’ suggestion that the ambiguity of mana is what makes it ‘magical’ since magic is itself an inherently ambiguous phenomenon. . . paradoxically places limits on the ambiguity of mana by tying it to magic as signifier to signified” (1987, 52–53). As signifiers, mana-terms do not stay within a recognizable categorical pattern. Without this order, they seem to reference something rather ambiguous, and therefore seem to lack meaning in some fundamental way. This point cuts right to the center of my project here. Mana falls within the realm of overabundant becomings that philosophers such as Whitehead, William James, and others understand to be more rather than less concrete. Holbraad seems to smile as he writes, “Whatever mana may be, it certainly isn’t a thingamajig or a whatyoumay-callit to those who are concerned with it” (2007, 195). Mana-terms, which are vague by Euro-American accounts, are the epitome of efficacy for emic practitioners. At the same time, by contrast, the efficacy of modern medicine is highly suspect and clearly lacking for many etic observers (see Sax 2010). If our path is to think through rather than about mana, Lévi-Strauss has fallen short in a telling way. It is important to mention Durkheim as well within this French tradition, as his work paves the way for later social constructivist movements that have become so important in academic thought. Holbraad quotes Durkheim who writes, “[Robert R. Marett] traces the origins of religious representations to the notion of a ‘sort of diffuse power that permeates things’” (1995, 201). Durkheim follows Marett’s argument (coming out of the British tradition) that notions like mana, wakan (Sioux), and orenda (Iroquois) are examples of impersonal forces that lie at the very heart of elementary forms of religious

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life. Durkheim allows that these “forces” are real, but not in the way understood by either the Sioux or Iroquois. Mana (as well as wakan and orenda) can be seen as referencing a very real force—the force society imposes on its members. Holbraad explains Durkheim’s theory as a reference to native projections onto something they do not fully understand. He goes on, “The only illusion on the part of the religious is that of mistaking social origins for sacred ones. Thus, effectively, the transgression of mana is absorbed into sociological theory in the form of its central concept, that of society” (2007, 198). It can be argued that within Durkheim’s theoretical reimagining of mana found here, there lies the beginnings of social constructivism—a move from thinking about, to thinking with. Where moderns, on Latour’s account, believe that others believe, postmoderns could be understood to believe that everyone believes—period. So as not to get stalled in this constructivist turn, Holbraad calls for another step along the path. He points out that “the fact that mana was invariably relegated all the way back, to the beginning of whatever was at issue for each theorist (as we’ll see, religion and magic for Mauss, society too for Durkheim, knowledge for Lévi-Strauss and Sperber), just proves my earlier point about its maximum alterity” (2007, 193). It is this “maximum alterity” that most interests Holbraad, as well as the French intellectual in whom he observes the clearest attempt to think through mana, magic, and the radically alter. As he continues to look to this French tradition Holbraad turns to Lévy-Bruhl, a scholar whose work is so pivotal to the participatory approach articulated in these pages (see chapter 1). If we are truly committed to the use of the term mana we might be forced to step beyond our own axiomatic thought. In seriously considering mana on its own terms, we are asked to face a complexity beyond post/modern theoretical frameworks (they believe/we all believe). On Holbraad’s point, it is not enough to think with mana-terminology and “go native.” To simply adopt the framework of the alter as if it were our own does a disservice to both. Herein lie the roots of appropriation, and what Philip Deloria among so many others has ruefully seen as playing Indian. He writes, By placing actual Indian people as well as imagined Indians into a disjunctive past, Morgan pointed toward a sea change in the ways Americans imagined their identities using Indianness. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, Americans’ fascination with playing Indian would shift from the tradition founded during the Revolution to a new, modernist tradition characterized by an obsessive desire for authentic Indians outside the temporal bounds of modern society. Ethnography could point toward one such authenticity, and early twentieth-century Americans swirled that together with tourism and a new primitivism in order to address deep-seated social and cultural anxieties.

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The result was yet another reinvention and dramatic appropriation of I­ ndianness. (1998, 94)

Contemporary academics and people in general are cannibals and missionaries out to maintain their particular version of eros and curiosities, overcoming diversity by co-opting the other. Following the work of Bado-Fralick, Harvey, and West, I argue along the lines of Holbraad that we cannot help but cannibalize and convert the other. If we are going to bump into one another due to our planetary predicament, we must consume and engage that which is not us, and we will certainly be changed or transformed by the experience. The early French tradition (including Mauss, Hubert, Durkheim, and Lévi-Strauss) allowed itself to be challenged by mana, but only to a degree. This is better than what we have inherited from the British tradition, but not enough. Rather than thinking through, allowing mana to stand on its own and transform the scholarship of others, these authors stopped short, thinking with (postmodern scholarship), at times, and more often than not, about (modern scholarship) mana and other alterities. Holbraad asks us to invite such alterities into our lives, in effect risking the transgression of our own comfortable frameworks and ontologies. This does not mean that we can ignore the very real efficacy of Durkheimian social facts. The ecological approach defended in these pages adopts Holbraad and company’s recursive methodology as a guest protocol similar to that of the Maori. Such a protocol asks us to consider our own cannibalistic and missionary proclivities, as well as theirs. It asks us to invite the other in, especially that which seems beholden to some radical alterity, not because they are right and we are wrong, or because we are all equally right. Holbraad’s recursive guest protocol is subtle on this point. Holbraad looks to the work of Lévy-Bruhl when he writes, “The closest French mana-theory came to this tack was with Lévy-Bruhl’s argument about the primitive ‘law of participation’ (1926)” (2007, 200). Holbraad qualifies this assertion by referencing the important critical assessments offered by Evans-Pritchard and others (see chapter 5). He then continues, “Nevertheless, in substance Lévy-Bruhl’s approach is much more interesting than it is in this aspect of its form. For what does Lévy-Bruhl’s law of participation amount to other than an attempt on his part to elaborate an analytical frame in which notions like mana no longer appear transgressive” (2007, 199). What is so interesting about the approach of Lévy-Bruhl (who was trained as a philosopher, not an anthropologist) is that he allowed himself to be challenged by mana-terminology in such a way that he invited the possibility of distinct coherent logical systems and their subsequent ontological frameworks— multiple objective worlds, not in Shweder’s postpositivist sense of multiple

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representations, but rather in Holbraad’s recursive anthropology, wherein different ecologies can coexist simultaneously. Lévy-Bruhl broke ranks with the Durkheimian school of which he was a member early in his career and began to think through mana in such a way that it began to transform his understanding of logic and philosophy. He did not place mana as an earlier precursor to contemporary science and logic but rather recognized the inherent coherency and independence of a different way of knowing and living: one that was not located in some deep past, but rather could be found in groups of hunter-gatherers and city-dwellers alike. It is this kind of thinking through that this text aims to achieve. But we must remember Holbraad’s own characterization of his work. He sees it first as post-Kantian insofar as it is in keeping with the critical tradition inherited from Kant. It is non-Kantian in that it assumes something more than Kant’s own reliance on Newtonian physics. In this way, says Holbraad, his work is a “critique of the Critique.” Holbraad then characterizes his work as non-, anti-, or post-recursivity, limiting his work out of the understanding that his recursive move is just one of many. He considers post/modernist ecologies recursively in light of Cuban Ifá divination. He has challenged this post/ modern ecology on the grounds of one particular alterity, but obviously there could be more radically other ecologies. So he has posited a non-Kantian critique by questioning the validity of a single ontological world, but he is aware that this same critique borders on a kind of infinitely recursive potential, whereby no matter how many recursive ethnographies are considered, there will always be more. This is an important methodological approach, an ecology of its own in many ways. It is not an act of Cuban Ifá but rather an ecologizing of Ifá, post/modernity, with an almost agential twist. In the end, it is more talismanic than other, but we do not need to pursue anything so pure. Where Holbraad’s work turns toward talismanic ecologies, I turn to Descola because he underlines the point that there are multiple ecological realities available. I take this to be more of agential and participatory approach. He makes his own case based on a survey of the available ethnographical data at his disposal. What is interesting, however, is that Descola finds a limited number of ecological starting points, thus overcoming the non- or post-recursivity that Holbraad brings to our awareness. Yes, there are multiple recursive ethnographical sets that one could bring to bear on any given conversation, but following Descola, these are actually quite limited. There is an obvious point of contention at this point: Why and, maybe more importantly, how can we limit the field of potential ecological starting points to four, as Descola does? Is this just an arbitrary and/or ethnocentric assumption? Descola argues that it is not. He begins with a basic starting assumption that all ecologies are related to physical and internal experiences. This is a simple and viable starting point that leads Descola to posit four basic

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frames of reference, or ways of relating to interiority and physicality. As I have argued in some detail above, Descola’s fourfold way is not without its own flaws. I have offered a critical reassessment of his work. But am I right in all of this? The obvious answer is no. How could I possibly have the answer? No, I have not figured it all out, but I have added my own little piece to our crossecological puzzle, ecologizing philosophy in the anthropocene. I of course find this necessary, the work of comparative commuters that requires some version of the ecologies of participation that I have presented here. It is highly likely that there are other ways to articulate a diversity of ecologies, as well as a multiplicity of protocols we can abide by to ensure that we do no egregious harm. We cannot help but be cannibals and missionaries, but as shamans, diviners, and mystics, with clear guest protocols, we are likely to engage our cross-ecological commutes in more participatory ways.

Conclusion A Guest Protocol

We are all, every one of us, ethnocentric. Our very presence is a violence for those that are different from us. And we have a habit of predation. We tend to move in packs, in-groups and out-groups, and we maintain these boundaries through predatory-like means. It might sound strange to conclude this book on such a note, but it is crucial that we acknowledge these issues if we are ever going to participate with one another. I have argued throughout these pages that we need to encourage cross-ecological participation. A form of commuting between and with seemingly disparate worlds, people, places, and, yes, things. The critique of this work comes too easily to the lips. There will be those who ask, How dare I write of comparative things, and crosscultural things, and metaphysical things? As Kripal has written so eloquently, “Knowledge has in effect become a form of evil, a sin, and the petty god of Genesis is now joined by the petty gods of every other religion and culture in a desperate attempt to keep us all locked with a thousand pre-modern gardens of imagined ethnic, religious, and political purity. I can think of few worlds more dangerous than this one” (2007, 10). The dangerous world of sin described by Kripal is a post/modern flatland world, where all speculation must prostrate before the “abuses of postcolonial theory” or face the charge of epistemological imperialism and colonization. The multi-ontology approach that you hold in your hands is an unabashedly speculative work. A method for comparison that will be charged with universalist and essentialist assumptions, yet it is a decolonial work. Predicated on a post/modern flatland, academia’s own ethnocentrisms police the boundaries of what can be said. And they have become too rigid. I argue below that these in-group boundaries are born of out of an overabundance of pride, anger, and hope; and that they have become too hot. And these same rigid ethnocentrisms are on the move throughout our larger communities. 293

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One way forward is to recognize how we, as in all of us, not they, as in those in the out-group, are prone to violence, self-indulgent boundary policing, and overt predatory displays. There is a two-fold point to be made. First, we should be careful of those that deny all attempts at speculation. To do so is to become too rigid. S ­ econd, there is an important critique to be made. This project leans toward abstraction. The point is not to deny one or the other. Attempts at dwelling can become self-absorbed and narcissistic. Works of crossing tread a fine line that can turn into dissociation. Every good book must fail, and this one certainly has. But that does not mean we should not read it. Rather, we must read it in parallel with others. Where this text is prone to crossing, we should find others that develop dwelling. The speculative work found in these pages is as interesting and it is lopsided. And that is ok, but with a caveat. We must own the violence and ethnocentrisms of our ways. Not just those found in this book, but in all books, in all communities. I cannot find another way. WE ARE ALL ETHNOCENTRIC In an interesting book that follows a similar neostructuralist trajectory to this project, Martin Ehala details how social identities are formed through symbolic means. His work is worth considering in these closing pages, as it offers an insight into the forms and functions of ethnocentrisms that undergird all ecologies. I adopt this term because it is useful. While technically, following Ehala, it is neutral, it still carries a bite. We must practice a level of selfreflexivity here, that assumes a self-centeredness, an ethnocentrism, is at the center of every position, including, and especially, our own. Ehala’s work focuses on the ways that identities are created by inhabiting different social spaces. He argues that people take on these social spaces to reduce uncertainty and/or assert power. In any given community, these spaces have social functions that have been agreed upon. Ehala (2018, 88) calls these collectively agreed-upon identities sign systems. It is important to note, as I have done throughout these pages, that these sign systems are not essential structures but rather functional markers of agential becomings. ­Structuralism when pushed past its naturalist beginnings, becomes participatory and agential. Functions are asserted over and above substances, Nature, and/or Culture. A person, for example, who inhabits a symbol of power, is not inherently powerful. Rather, they embody a powerful function. “Social space,” writes Ehala, “is the grammar of an identity language that exists in the minds of the speakers” (2018, 91). I would push Ehala here, and say that these grammar spaces create ecologies, worlds, inhabited by these speakers. While these variable functions are not essentialist categories or

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biological necessities, they can be more or less stable. Ehala locates a spectrum of signs that range from inherited, entrenched, to elected signs. Every community, every ecology, is predicated on these signs. We cannot simply say them away. Inherited signs are those that are hard to hide or change. We cannot, for example, easily change the languages that we speak, the biological markers of gender, or the color of our skin. Entrenched signs are those that are socially constructed. What we have been taught to relate to different linguistic groups, enact cultural genders, and relate to skin tones can be very deeply entrenched. A third level of signs can be elected. They can be more easily shown and/or hidden. I cannot change the color of my skin or my biological sex, and it would be hard to change your thoughts on either of these. But I can choose to show you my musical inclinations, my habits of reading, or my political leanings. The first point is that the symbols we inherit, become entrenched, and/or that we elect help us to categorize in-groups and out-groups (2018, 95). The second, more interesting point, is that we all participate in these categorizations. Even attempts to do away with stereotyping and judgments are a way of forming such in-groups. Calls for equality, diversity, and inclusiveness are just as self-centered as the ethnocentrisms they wish to dismiss. I teach several freshman courses on religion every year. In most of these I ask my students to invent their own religion, and throughout the years there is one tradition that is attempted over and again. It is alternatively called something like equalism or inclusivism. The iterations of the name and nuances of the tradition change, but the overall ideology remains. We should reject all the old traditions and start anew. We need to include everyone. We should champion equality and diversity above all other things. As my students congregate in little groups, they note the style of speech and the mode of dress of the others. They are jockeying for position. They are creating in-groups and out-groups in every aspect of their lives. Their intense focus on equality is a mostly unexamined ethnocentrism. It is undergirded by a hierarchy of values that says hierarchies are simply bad. Ehala details six characteristics that are foundational to this in-group/ out-group behavior. There is a basic favoritism for one’s in-group that is paralleled by a striving for group cohesion and loyalty. This basic selfcenteredness is motivated through a sense of superiority, a constant checking for in-group purity, and a willingness to exploit out-groups (2018, 27). My students are more than happy to defend their value system along these six lines. They tend to see themselves as the enlightened ones, who are finally overcoming all past wrongs through their unwavering belief in equality and inclusivism. They are set on dismantling all value systems. I highlight this point because these same unexamined assumptions—equalism and inclusivism—are entrenched within academia. Jonathan Haidt (2012)

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has written that the basic moral values of modern liberals are care and liberty. We can see these as parallel to the basic moral intuition of Whitehead in previous chapters. Where liberty points to an agential emphasis on individual freedoms, this individuality should be tempered by care or concern for the freedoms of other individuals. But Haidt does not see this emphasis as a positive. Societal chaos, for Haidt, requires us to bow to authority. Our values must include loyalty to stable institutions. But Haidt pushes this point too far. He places naturalist values of authority and truth over and above agential values like freedom and care. In making a similar critique of Haidt’s work, William Weston writes that every community has a bedrock value system, a groupish core. He finds Haidt’s traditional groupish core with its emphasis on authority, loyalty, and fairness competing with a new “modern sacred”: “Liberals propose a new universal sacred: Care of the most vulnerable” (Weston 2014, 688). The modern sacred, freedom and concern, seem at times to be at war, with more traditional sacreds like authority and fairness. “Morality evolved to enable cooperation,” writes Joshua Greene, “but this conclusion comes with an important caveat. Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people” (2013, 23). Our morality, Greene continues, did not evolve to work between groups. We do well with what Greene calls Me vs. Us, but not as well with Me vs. Them. We move, following Greene, as moral tribes. “What this suggests,” he writes, “is that our moral intutions concerning other tribes are likely to be unreliable” (2017, 73). What highly intelligent people living among climate science deniers might “glean is that, around here, believing in climate change (or doubting its reality) is not very rewarding” (2017, 73). This insight should be turned in both ways. Liberal-leaning tribes are as prone to group think as right-leaning tribes. The very notion that there is a right and left is indicative of this fact. But where Greene’s solution to moral tribalism is to turn toward more scientific study, I add to this cross-ecological participation. We need to go deeper and examine our ontological commitments. This moral group-think is evidenced by my students, and so it is helpful to return to them. They are becoming entrenched within our larger communities as well. This is not a bad thing, but it should be helped up to a level of selfreflection. These are ethnocentrisms as well. Tracing a similar line of thought, Ehala writes, “As the principle of equality prohibits us from forming stereotypes and passing judgement on people having different identities where all possible combinations of core values are equally acceptable and valued, which in practice means that we have tacitly denied the existence of value scales altogether” (2018, 127). Ehala’s thesis parallels Haidt’s above. There is a strong movement away from naturalist values like authority and fairness, and a movement toward agential values of freedom and concern. And there is

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a problem here. The stated goal of my students, and so many others, is to do away with in-groups. They want to get rid of all stereotypes and judgements. They see them as simply wrong. Ehala argues that we make in-groups to create a sense of belonging. Through inherited signs we assume distinct places of belonging. By creating entrenched assumptions, we create healthy bonds. Our different ethnocentrisms are crucial if we are to remain socially and psychologically healthy. And, of course, this is what defenders of equalism are doing. They are defending their sacred values over and above those of others. What is dangerous, is when they miss this point. They are not getting rid of in-groups. They are making new ones. They are creating new avenues toward healthy bonds. But an overemphasis on equality is dangerous. Inclusivism can be sneaky. Both enact a violence that we must be wary of. Ehala looks to current trends in feminist theory as well as toward studies on intersectionality. He finds a new scale of values, where purity is associated with vulnerability and past wrongs, and those that are polluted are the ones with privilege. The more intersecting vulnerabilities a person has, the greater the oppression they have endured. There is of course truth here. Many people do find themselves in a socially invisible position. And we should encourage the theorists of intersectionality to promote these voices and bodies. But, we cannot forget that while critical calls for equality, diversity, and inclusivity are important, they are ethnocentrisms themselves. “According to the classic definition by Sumner (1906, 13),” writes Ehala, “‘ethnocentrism, is the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it’” (2018, 126). All attempts to change the ways that we relate are built on a hierarchical schema, a sacred value system, that is prone to all the in-group/out-group ethnocentrisms mentioned above. This is not a bad thing. As suffering, historical traumas, and grievances are turned in social capital new pathways to power are asserted. A new violence is also at play. We live in a changing world. We find ourselves interacting at multiple levels, thrust into a global economy, a shared techno-sphere, all against the backdrop of climate change, and looming devastations. We do need novel ways of interacting, but we must be careful how we proceed. Ehala ends his consideration of identity and belonging by highlighting a distinction between hot and cold ways of forming identities. Following the distinctions outlined in earlier chapters, we can see where practices of dwelling can become too rigid and narcissistic—that is, too hot. We can see how practices of crossing can become too abstract and dissociated—that is, too cold. Ehala tells us that where hot emotions can evoke strong group identity, colder emotions tend to loosen these bonds. To help flesh out this point, he traces a series of four contrasting emotions. Security loosens social bonds,

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while fear drives us together. Majority populations tend toward emotions of security, and so have a more relaxed social identification. Fear creates the opposite—closed borders. Immigration to stable countries is more common, because the social identity is more malleable. As security fades, new faces become scary. Ehala goes on to contrast hope is with despair. Positive goals that seem to be obtainable can create bonds. Hot hopes like radical equality may bring certain communities even closer together. But these are utopian stories that can cause as much harm as good. Ehala also contrasts hot anger and pride with cold guilt and shame. There are few issues so polarizing in our contemporary settings as issues of gender and race. In an interesting paper on the consideration and/or expression of white shame, South African philosopher Samantha Vice writes that the appropriate response for white people in this moment is to adopt a countenance of humility and silence. For Vice, the potential for harm that is created when people speak out of their “whitely” privilege is too fraught. It should not be undertaken. Instead, she writes, “recognizing their damaging presence, whites [should] try, in a significantly different way to the normal workings of whiteliness, to make themselves invisible and unheard, concentrating rather on those damaged selves” (2010, 335). This is her way forward. Those who have done and/or received the benefits of past harms must remain silent to prevent future injuries. This is not an uncommon sentiment, but where would it leave us? How long of a list could we make? And who would be left in the end? The problem here is that every community is rife with ethnocentrisms. We all move in moral tribes. We cannot simply say these away. We will not find some utopian place of equality where the sort of self-centeredness of white folks and all folks finally goes away. There is no end to our ethnocentrisms. There are no neutral spaces, no places of security and inclusiveness for all. Ehala’s thesis is that we must be wary of communities that become too hot. Too much hope, pride, or anger become problematic. We can see our critical theories and our decolonial methods through this lens. But, we could as easily point to the dangers of becoming too cold as well. Where Vice wants white people to be silent, Eusebius McKaiser (2011, 458) responds that both whites and men should live in reflective self-awareness. We should not be consumed by the cold lack of belonging created by shame. But a little shame is good, for reflecting on our pride. We should not get lost in the flames of anger, but an amount of heat is required if we are going to overcome our despair. Feeling a certain level of cold emotion is good. It helps to break apart rigid ecologies that have become too proud. But we should be careful not to push communities into silence. For Ehala, pride is a hot emotion that builds strong bonds, while shame has a cooling

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effect. It is good for white people to feel shame, to start to lessen the bonds of those they have shared privilege with, but no one should stay here. Without belonging, those who have inherited what Vice calls whiteliness would be adrift—silenced—and this is not good. This is too cold. Ehala contrasts anger with despair, and highlights the important point that anger requires a certain level of stability. There must be some sort of bond, some sense of belonging, for anger to be there. And this is good. There are many places where anger can help unite those who have been adrift—invisible and silenced—lost in despair. But we should be careful that these in-groups do not become too hot. Every community rotates around basic ethnocentrisms. Each has certain self-centered assumptions. These can become too hot, too rigid, too narcissistic. As outlined in chapter 7, every ontology is prone to extremes in this way. Shamanic ecologies can form overly rigid bodies, where mystic ecologies can have narcissistic ideas. The ethnocentrisms of ecologies can also be too dissociated, too abstract, or too cold. Without these, there can be no identity, no sense of belonging. Divinatory ecologies can become arbitrary and cold in their correlations, while agential ecologies can lose themselves to abstract freedoms. The book that you hold in your hand tends toward the cold. It is born out of dissociation. Critics will mark it as overly abstract. And while this point should be honored, it should not be the final say. The futures of our communities require us to walk the twin edges of rigidity and dissociation. We must risk both hot and cold if our identities are to remain fluid. Moral tribes revolve around a common groupish core, some set of sacred values. We should continue to encourage this. We need strong communities and a sense of belonging. And, we also need those that travel, those that wander outside the tribal norms. This book leans toward crossings and the cold, which is an important counterpoint to the dwellings of in-groups and their boundary making. There is a paradox of sorts at the core of the sacred modern, freedom and concern, individual rights, and care for the most vulnerable. When pushed too far, when expressed too hot, this value system denies the freedoms of everyone who cannot lay claim to pain and suffering. It can become a race to the bottom. An agential value system must honor both, freedom and concern, in equal measures. But this will never fully work. A perfectly balanced agential ethics is still tribal at its core. For a truly participatory ethics, we need to practice crossings between moralities, ecologies in the plural. We need both warm dwellings that can tend toward the hot, and cool crossings that can inhabit the cold. But, to inhabit these places, we need a clearer understanding of the dangers our ethnocentrisms hold for others. We need to discover the predatory tendencies that exist in the hopes and fears of each.

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PREDATION AND COMPARATIVE COMMUTERS In considering what he calls the forms of attachment, Descola (2013, 309–35; see also 2012) offers six distinct modes of relationality that work to maintain connections between self and other within any given ecology. There are those relational styles that are characterized by different ways of dwelling: exchange, predation, and gift. The second group is characterized by more itinerant and diverse crossings: production, protection, and transmission. A longer book would attempt to deal with all six; here I engage the first three. Before offering Descola’s own definitions of these terms, I consider these issues through the work of various authors working within comparative studies. In response to Owen’s important critique of neo-shamanic and New Age appropriations, I assert once again that we cannot help but bump into one another. This point is driven home by the ethnographic work of Harry G. West (2007). In working closely with Muedan sorcerers and others local to Mueda in Northern Mozambique, West walks away with a challenge to post/ modern thought. At the end of one long period with his Muedan compatriots, West gives a talk wherein he asserts that the common practice of turning from sorcerer into lion should be understood metaphorically, rather than literally. He sees himself as having pointed out the “made” quality of the Muedan reality. In effect, he hopes his work can be seen as a kind of uwavi wa etinogalafia, or “ethnographic sorcery.” Where, according to West, the post/modern critic might see his work as “silencing” the Muedan people, West himself sees it quite differently. West writes, “I dare say the Muedans with whom I worked expected me—like anyone else—to speak assertively and authoritatively, articulating as convincingly as I was able my vision of the world we shared.” To be an anthropologist is to have a vision or interpretation. Within the Muedan context, persons who do not engage others with their visions “are often said, to sit at home and pick fleas from their feet” (2007, 84). A good Muedan sorcerer knows that every attempt to manipulate, create, or influence actuality is liable to face a counter maneuver. The world is not given in the Muedan context (similar to the animist ecologies of the Amerindian and Dagara), and so must be visioned and (re)visioned over and over again. We cannot help but eat one another, and thus be transformed. This shared creation is not without its dangers. Viveiros de Castro (1998, 481) writes, “If solipsism is the phantom that continuously threatens our [participatory agential] cosmology . . . then the possibility of metamorphosis [through cannibalism] expresses the opposite fear . . . the fear of seeing the human who lurks within the body of the animal one eats.” As we experience the human in the other, we cannot help but experience the human-like everywhere. West (2007, 85) is also aware of the dangers. He concludes his consideration of ethnographic sorcery thus:

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“To the extent that I have (re)made the world I shared with Muedans, I have done so with great ambivalence, having learned from them the valuable lesson that, even as we necessarily (re)make the world in which we live, we do so at great risk to ourselves and to others. It is best, in such matters, to proceed cautiously, and with great humility.” It is my assertion in these pages that we (who have eaten and been clothed in the garb of the post/moderns) have distanced ourselves from our dangerous natures through the process of modernization. We have made them the cannibals—which in a naturalist ecology speaks to a kind of relativizing of their interiority—while dislocating and ignoring the cannibals that we ourselves are. Such acts fall under the relational style of predation, which in a naturalist ecology looks like conversion (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 481). This distancing has allowed us to follow our imperialist, colonialist, and paternalistic impulses—all tools of predation and conversion—to the determent and horror of not only our fellow humans, but also the environment and the rest of the more-than-human and non-human worlds. In her attempts to decolonize contemporary academic methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith has written that one should start out by not identifying as a traveler. There are two important points to consider here. First, Smith’s critical stance is inherently a naturalist one. She is critical of imperialist, colonialist, and paternalistic interiorities, not physicalities. To the extent that she encourages the practices of critical theory, her work remains within an ecology of naturalism. To this end we might ask, what is critical theory if not an attempt to convert the colonialist, the imperialist, and the patriarchal other? But Smith’s work is not limited to conversations around interiorities. Her indigenous (largely Maori) methodology requires the consideration of whanau. Whanau is understood as the core social unit, the shared interiority, of the Maori, and is offered as a contrast to naturalist relativity. “All Maori initiatives,” writes Smith (1999, 187), “have attempted to organize the basic decision making and participation within and around the concept of whanau.” It is around whanau that non-Maori can be invited to participate. In this way, participation begins within an animist ecology. Shamans practice a self-determination that is not predicated on individuality (the diverse outsides and insides necessary for agency), an assumed cosmos of relations (the shared insides and outsides necessary for divinatory truths), or on the possibility of objectivity (predicated on the shared nature of naturalist mystics). These Maori animists constellated their intrapersonal sense of self around a shared interiority (whanau). But this leads us toward an animist version of predation, namely cannibalism. For my second point, we must determine how naturalist and animist forms of interaction are different from one another. Naturalists assume a shared physicality (Nature) and can cause bodily harm for sure, but it is really the act

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of conversion that is most harmful. Naturalists relativize the interior of others, something that Viveiros de Castro calls multiculturalism. Smith (1999, 25) underlines this point when she writes, “One of the supposed characteristics of primitive peoples was that we could not use our minds or intellects . . . Imperialism provided the means through which concepts of what could be counted as human could be applied systematically.” In this case, people who have assumed a naturalist ontology have denigrated the interiority of the other in their attempts at conversion. Smith goes on to offer the examples of hierarchies based on differences in interiority like race and culture, which only works to buttress the point. The danger of hanging out with a naturalist is that they might relativize and/or primitivize your culture, that is, your interior subjectivity. But this does not mean that animists do no harm, while naturalists rape and colonize. ­Pointing us in this direction, Aparecida Vilaça writes, “Carneiro da Cunha’s observation (1998, 12) on the importance of journeys for the shaman’s training in western Amazonia provides an interesting example of this idea. According to Carneiro da Cunha, today’s Western-style journeys, involving distant travel and stays in different cities, are seen to be equivalent to the soul’s journeys [in animist traditions]” (2010, 312). Both animists and naturalist travel, and both can do harm. There is a subtle difference at play here, and I argue that we should recognize both forms of travel: animists travel via a shared interiority (the people) across worlds-physicalities (multinaturalism) and risk cannibalism. Naturalists travel via a shared physicality (nature) across interiorities (multiculturalism) and risk relativism. This does not take away from Smith’s (1999, 78) point regarding the violence of the latter. She writes, There has been recent theorizing of the significance of travel, and of location, on shaping Western understanding of the Other and producing more critical understandings of the nature of theory. bell hooks, in describing black representations of whiteness, writes of these journeys as being acts of terror which have become part of our memory. While travelling theory may focus on the location of those who travel, the attention here is on the people whose bodies, territories, beliefs and values have been travelled through.

I have been in enough countries with a backpack on to know that my fellow “travelers” do not want to be identified as such. There is a common bond among many of these people (naturalists mostly), held together by the insistence that we are not tourists. They are tourists, those other travelers—the ones that keep a safe distance from the locals, whoever they may be. And yet I have brought home pictures and stories of the people and places I have seen. I have changed the landscape through my clumsy travels. I have

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relativized and even tried to convert the other, most often through ignorance of my naturalist tendency to privilege my own interiority over that of the other. I have been, and continue to catch myself being, a traveler in exactly the sense that Smith is referencing above, including, but not limited to, my comparative scholarly work. Many if not most of my peers (both in and outside of academia) have done the same. At worst, I am a colonizing traveler, the kind that Smith and hooks point out. At best I am a commuter, practicing shamanic and mystic crossings, bumping into the seemingly alter while bringing awareness to the dangers we pose for one another and the necessity we all face with communication across ecologies. I use the term commuter in place of Smith’s traveler in recognition of the work of Nikki Bado-Fralick, who tells us that the idea of a commuter is an especially productive way of referencing the practices of a scholar-practitioner in academia. She writes, “As commuters, we can begin to encounter and explore the plurality of perspectives within the diverse spectrum of both scholarly and religious communities” (Bado-Fralick 2005, 13; see also Tweed 2006). Commuters, like travelers, are in motion, but unlike travelers they are not visiting far-off and exotic places. Commuting suggests itinerant crossings that do not venture too far away from the intimacy of dwellings. Commuters strike a balance between crossings and dwellings. They have a certain fluency regarding the variety of experiences they engage. They are willing to risk being cannibalized (animism), converted (naturalism), and/or subsumed within some other cosmos (divinatory) or self/enjoyment (participatory). To the extent that they nurture the stance of a commuter, they may communicate with the “other” by putting on their bodies (animist dwellings), developing their selves (agential dwellings), enacting a cosmos (talismanic dwellings), and/or inhabiting their truths (naturalist dwellings). In each case, these ecologies mean to lessen their anxieties regarding the discontinuities they feel in relation to physicalities and interiorities. Each ecology has those wise homebodies that nurture their dwellings, while certain others risk this stability by pushing against precariousness and arbitrary instances of common sense. We must recognize the potential for violence found within both roles, but first we must normalize the idea of crossing. There is a kind of ho-hum aspect to the crossings Bado-Fralick demarcates as commuting, a mundaneness not unlike the gardening mentioned in earlier chapters. Following Bado-Fralick, scholar-practitioners who understand themselves as commuters have a facility for moving between ecologies, thereby rendering commonplace journeys that might seem radically other. There is a wisdom in this, underlined by a hope that the recognition of the other as not so dissimilar from oneself might open new avenues of communication necessary for comparative studies and cross-ecological participation.

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Commuters, following Descola, take on obligations-cum-gifts to the other, and may engage in sharing-cum-exchange. Descola (2013, 347) writes, “For the Desana [animist], the relation between the hunter and his prey is above all of an erotic nature.” For the Desana, to hunt is rendered as “to make love to animals.” The erotic nature of this interaction assumes certain obligations between both parties. There is a kind of complementary exchange that occurs in such a situation. Descola turns to another Amazonian group to clarify what he means by sharing. The Campa assume a dualistic principle that distinguishes between those who share a common essence (referred to as “our people”), and those others who are not of “our people.” Physicalities (bodies, skin, clothing) are shared among the people. A bird offers its skin to the body of the arrow, something the hunter has asked for. But no harm comes to the bird. No obligation is owed. Among the people, sharing of bodies is assumed. Those outside the people (Campa) are seen in a more problematic light and are avoided. Every attempt is made not to engage these others in forms of body swapping and intermingling. While these examples are clearly taken from animist ecologies, we can imagine similar forms of interaction in naturalist ecologies. Christians might easily share interiority with other Christians, and be perfectly capable, for example, of entering obligatory relations with non-Christians. While obligation and sharing are ideals of interaction to be sought, I find that we must place greater emphasis on our tendencies toward predation, in effect calling into question any assumptions we might have that our interactions are innocuous and/or in line with notions of obligations and gifts, as well as sharing and exchange, as described by Descola. For all the efforts of West, Smith, and Bado-Fralick to note the dangers of commuting and/or traveling (comparative studies in general), I find it necessary to place even greater emphasis on the predation that is innate to our interactions. It is for this reason that I emphasize not only commuting but cannibalism and conversion as well. The notion of nonviolent interactions is too easily held out as a possibility. It is in fact impossible. Though important, it is not enough to locate violence and the predatory instinct in the colonizer and the traveler. VIOLENCE BEFORE GUESTHOOD (GIFT AND EXCHANGE) In a telling example, Graham Harvey takes Smith’s critique seriously, while also pointing in the direction of animist forms of violence and cannibalism: “That the ancestor/house also eats/receives visitors either by consuming or embracing them is also made clear in door carvings that more-than-represent mouths and/or vaginas” (2003, 134). In struggling

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with the problems of contemporary scholarship, Harvey offers a largely animist framework of guesthood for comparative studies that means to accommodate and recognize the violent transformations inherent to interactions between others. In particular, Harvey tells us, the gifts offered by and learned from the Maori take the form of hospitality. The Maori’s gift can be seen in their invitation to Harvey to enter the community whare (meeting house or ancestor house). The whare is located within marae atea, sacred land or space, where a guest is generally received. Harvey writes of the different “guest-making” protocols, and of the sense that upon entering the whare, the stranger or guest has “entered the community in some way” (Harvey 2003, 134). This “in some way” is important, says Harvey, for a person who enters the whare as a guest does so in a different way than the local person who is intimately related to the ancestral lineage of the place. According to Harvey, it is crucial that the Maori have identified themselves in the past as cannibals. “It is significant,” he writes, “[that] strangers who became guests ate with their hosts, [while] strangers who insisted on being enemies might either eat or be eaten by the locals” (2003, 134). Following Harvey, there is a distinct difference between locals and guests. Local persons are already part of the body of the place. Remember that while animist ecologies assume a shared interiority (the people), they experience discontinuities of physicalities or bodies. Perspective, for the animist, is lost and gained based upon the body that is inhabited. Everyone identified by reference to the people (as in the Maori, where Maori is equivalent to the people who share a Maori body) shares a body. Harvey (2003, 134) writes, “[Locals] are already members of the body of the ancestor from whom they are descended and who they enter by right. Guests cannot become descendants. Even if they reside for a long time in a place, their relationships to the ancestor(s) are different.” To become a guest, both parties must risk cannibalism. A person cannot enter into the ancestral whare of a community without being consumed by the house, the ancestral line, and the persons local to the whare. Strangers who insist on maintaining an oppositional outside stance are either cannibals (as they eat the locals) or cannibalized (eaten by the locals). In the end, there is no way out of the cannibalistic contortions of Maori society. You will be eaten, and you will eat, like it or not. This is the way of the land. There are of course different ways to go about it, as guest and host, enemy and stranger, or different shades of gray in between. Harvey characterizes his own methodological choices with the term guesthood. When Harvey (the scholar) visits the whare of a Maori community, a local warrior meets him before he enters the marae atea and lays a taki in front of him. Harvey (2003, 135) writes,

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This symbolizes the God of war, and thereby symbolizes conflict. This and the performance of haka, warrior posture songs, honor the visitors as potentially worthy enemies. However, the visitors are expected to pick up the taki and face the challenge of haka without reciprocating violence. By this means, locals and visitors initiate the process of accepting the roles and responsibilities of hostand guesthood (the alternative would be indicated by attacking the warrior who offers the challenge).

He goes on to clarify that his operating assumption as a scholar is that guesthood is the only viable path by which the researcher might proceed to interact with persons outside of his or her local community. He continues: By the time guests enter the whare they have established a level of intimacy. This does not mean that harmony reigns inside. The new intimacy allows hosts and guests to speak freely of concerns and needs, sometimes quite strongly, but always (or so it is intended) on the foundational understanding that a resolution is sought that will not completely diminish either side. Furthermore, guests can seek knowledge or offer skills—both of which might entail change for one side or other, or both. Since this takes place within the ancestor’s body (see Harvey 2000) and therefore inside the “body politic,” there is strong encouragement to respect the prestige, priority, needs and desires of the hosts. It is, after all, their turangawaewae, “standing place,” and when they stand they can lean against the ribs or point to the heart and spine of the ancestor who generated them. They can make explicit that which is locally normative. (2003, 136)

During the dialogue that naturally ensues, the guests and the hosts literally sit on opposite sides of the whare—a fundamental step, according to Harvey. The differences between them are made explicit from the beginning and are prerequisites for any form of relationship that might unfold. The guest is invited to bring both knowledge and gifts. Both sides want something. The hosts, as all of these interactions are taking place within their whare, are free to accept or reject whatever is offered. There is no guarantee that the researcher will be allowed status as a guest. He may be seen as a visitor, a shade of gray, or an enemy. It is to the customs of the locals that the conversation defaults, meaning that the researcher does not decide their role. Any invitation extended to the scholar (or anyone else) as a guest is a gift, not a right. Harvey (2003, 140–41) writes, My argument is not that noble savages could teach us a thing or two about being gracious and long-suffering hosts. It is not that Maori are unique in having methods for converting strangers into more acceptable kinds of role players, and that these roles are emblematic of new research relationships. The precise point is that marae protocols and structures were elaborated in the encounter with visitors whose motives and knowledges were often thoroughly colonialist

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. . . [where colonial is] defined as the refusal to accede to the authority of locals in defining guesthood, kinship, normality, the application of new technologies, and so much more.

The point, as it were, is not that the Maori have cornered the market on how to be a gracious host. The point is that the Maori have an overt protocol whereby one’s motivations are not assumed but rather discovered through the process of guest-making. A colonizer is someone unwilling to accept such protocols, while a commuter is potentially a guest. Of course, this is dependent upon their facility for engaging the guesthood protocol to the satisfaction of the locals. The assumption is not that we are harmless commuters or travelers bumping into one another, but that we are cannibals, both you and I. We are all dangerous, not just the Euro-Americans, the colonizers, or the post/moderns. Every one of us must be eaten to engage. Harvey adopts the metaphor of guesthood for his research, a commendable goal to be sure. For myself, I feel it necessary to remind my potential host that I (like them) am a cannibal. I cannot be trusted unless we bring awareness to the fact that difference and strangers can be more than a little disruptive within the context of any communal setting. As hooks and Smith point out above, it is all too easy to “travel through.” Yet, following the Maori guest-making protocol and West’s invitation to ethnographic sorcery, as well as my own line of comparative thought, we do travel, think, and consume through. To interact is to risk the stability of our dwellings, those places that we assume, our common sense. As commuters, we face novelty and transformation. To be a comparative scholar, a passenger on the 22 Fillmore line in San Francisco, or an Achuar hunter walking along a small tributary of the Amazon is to be a cannibal, at least to some degree. This is what an animist ethic teaches us. But we also need to look beyond animist protocols of guesthood, toward naturalist, divinatory, and agential ones as well. I have just argued that in the context of an ecology of animism, when one finds oneself in a unique physicality/world and seeking to be considered a guest there, one must first recognize the violence and/or danger that is present for those already inhabiting this local physicality; one’s presence as a new body and a unique perspective threatens to destabilize the coherence of the people’s physicality/world. What goes for them holds true for you; to the extent that you are not from this world, you inhabit a different world/body and so belong to a different enactment of the People. The avenue offered by the Maori toward guesthood requires that both parties honor this inherent danger by recognizing the potential for cannibalism within themselves. Cannibalism, on this account, honors both the univocity (the people) and

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the equivocity (multinaturalism) that is foundational to an animist ecology. Descola characterizes naturalism as the polar-opposite of animism, and so some similar path toward guesthood must exist within naturalist ecologies. Where animists fear cannibalism and metamorphosis, naturalists (following Descola and Viveiros de Castro) fear relativism and conversion. It could be argued at this point that certain Christian values like “love thy neighbor” and “thou shalt not kill” are of a similar flavor to the Maori protocols mentioned here. It could also be argued that certain aspects of the Hippocratic Oath championed by scientists offer another version of naturalist protocols. This is true, and yet there is a long and well-documented history of colonization, conversion, and warfare that can be traced through the history of religious and modern-scientific traditions. Violence exists within the history of Christianity and post/modernity. Conversion, which I relate to Descola’s relational style of predation, maintains the social fabric of many naturalist ecologies. This is arguably as true for Christian traditions as it is for atheists, Neo-Darwinists (see Plantinga 2012), and capitalist democratic states (see Agamben and McCuaig 2011; Mouffe 2000). The comparative stance taken here argues that, like the Christians, one should love one’s neighbor as well as love and pray for one’s enemies (Mathew 5:43–48), but also recognize the animist tendency toward cannibalism in relation to the fear of metamorphosis, as well as the tendency toward conversion (in relation to the specter of relativity) engaged by neo-­ Darwinians, Christians, and other naturalists. Diviners, following West above, sometimes practice sorcery. To maintain the cool-ness of one’s talismanic performances, it is sometimes appropriate to adapt and include the revelations of others. In this way, diviners risk chaos. For moments of self/ enjoyment to be felt fully, there is always a possibility lurking that the act ends in solipsistic narcissism. Born out of each ontology is the possibility for a different form of violence. A fine line exists between enacting healthy traditions, and falling into rigid narcissisms and/or abstract dissociations. To this end, I do not mean to dismiss all attempts at comparative work born out of naturalist ecologies. This would include most of our scholarly academy. Rather, I seek to locate the practice of comparative studies, which currently occurs largely within a naturalist ecology, within an animist, divinatory, and participatory contexts as well. Sticking to our animist example, these ecologies are not free from violence. They appropriate other bodies. The appropriations of other bodies by the Jivaro, for example, was seen through the lens of war. For missionaries in the mid-twentieth century, the Jivaro lived in an anarchic state that needed to be “pacified”. Descola (2013, 337–38) objects to this reading. In contrast to war mongering and a lust for violence, he clarifies the role body-swapping plays within the context of animist communities. “[It] constituted the principal

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mechanism for structuring individual destinies and links of solidarity and also the most visible expression of one key value: namely the obligation to acquire from other the individuals, substances, and principles of identity that were reputed to be necessary for the perpetuation of the self.” We cannot sustain the life of the village without violence. Loving one’s neighbors or one’s enemies is not enough. Violence happens. Bodies come and go, but the underlying shared interiority is always there. They are like me, says the animist, and if I am not careful I may end up eating myself. Descola continues, “Both vendettas and head-hunting were carried out against persons that the Jivaros classified as [in-laws]” (2013, 338–39). Headhunting (one might call this a form of cannibalism) is necessary for the maintenance of the social fabric. To maintain the stability of the physicality of the People, Jivaros engage a practice that we might call animist conversion. Through intricate rituals they transform the body of the other into the body of the Jivaro People. Both the Christian and the Neo-Darwinist might balk at such a wild idea, but remember Viveiros de Castro’s assertion: cannibalism is to the animist as conversion is to the naturalist. Why do the Jivaro engage in endless warfare? For the same reason that naturalists do, but rather than attempt to maintain the integrity of the interiority of the chosen subjectivity (Christianity/Neo-Darwinism/capitalist democracy), animists are at pains to maintain the cohesion of their chosen physicality. While the multinaturalist in an animist ecology cannibalizes bodies (natures), the multiculturalist (e.g., a Christian, capitalist, or neo-Darwinian) finds it necessary to convert souls (interiorities/cultures). Rather than disparage either one, the way forward that I propose is that we accept and bring awareness to our tendencies toward cannibalism and conversion. We must realize guest protocols that highlight our ethnocentrisms rather than attempting to say them away. Animism is not the corrective, and should not replace naturalism. Divinatory ecologies can help mediate overly abstract freedoms of agential individuality, and the opposite is also true. We need multiple ontologies, to inhabit diverse ecologies, if we are going to face the challenges of the day. Lessons offered by the specter of cannibalism have much to offer naturalist traditions, just as lessons offered by the specter of relativism have much to offer animist ecologies. If we lean too heavily on animist or talismanic trends, we will lose the naturalist’s interest in a diversity of interiorities. I hope that in this closing chapter I have shined a light on the violence in which we unconsciously engage every day. These acts will have to be brought to the fore to develop a viable comparative methodology going forward. We need each other if we are going to participate in any meaningful way.

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Index

Abram, David, 3-5, 60, 76-77, 156 absolute linguistic frameworks. See neo-Whorfian linguistic frameworks abyssal thinking. See Santos, Boaventura de Sousa affect as talismanic/divinatory, 238 affect theory, 160–65, 166–75, 220 agency, 7, 25 agential cuts. See Barad, Karen agential participation, 36, 39, 62–70, 127, 136, 146–47, 149–190, 195–208, 225–29, 242, 252–55 agential realism, 6–7, 27, 35–39, 41–47, 50, 62, 68–71, 127, 147, 155, 165–88, 214–20, 227, 240, 251–56; Barad, Karen, 6, 39, 50; Petrarch’s individuality as precursor to, 47 agents. See agency Al Qaeda, 1–2 American Indian Philosophy, 2–3 Amerindian perspectivism. See perspectivism analogism, 35, 140–147 Andrade, Oswald de, 32 animacies. See Chen, Mel Y. animism, 6, 13 animism defined: Descola, 35; BirdDavid, Nurit, 13, 88–89; Harvey, Graham, 13; Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 13, 35, 89

anthropocene. See planetary predicament Aristotle: Aristotle’s naturalism in decay, 48; as naturalist mystic, 6, 42–43, 54–69, 141–44; final cause, God, singular cosmos, 70–72, 109, 167, 280; substance philosophy, 28; use of labels and categorical logic, 43, 118, 161–64, 170, 177, 186, 248–65 atomism: as naturalist and superficial, 49, 72, 141, 166; as agential, primary, ontological, 49, 61, 67, 73, 109, 166, 173–76, 266; history of, 90, 159, 169 Augustine, 47, 144, 155 Bacon, Francis, 193; as nominalist, 56; as Protestant, 173 Bado-Fralick, Nikki, 16–19, 290, 304–04 Barad, Karen, 39, 50, 68–72, 160, 164–184; agential cuts, 6–7, 147, 238 Bennet, Jane, 11, 64–66, 117, 127, 133, 149, 162, 182–85, 205, 213–14, 237, 252 Berkeley, George, 55, 58–59, 113 binary distinctions, 28, 41, 96–104, 124–27, 141, 181 Bohr, Neils, 21, 50, 68–72, 165, 170–72 331

332

Index

Bradley, F. H., 64–66, 166–169, 253–54, 263 Brandenstein, Carl G., 135–145 Butler, Judith, 28–29, 121, 158, 212; as shaman, 39, 60, 100–03 Cabezón, José Ignacio, 11–19, 244, 276, 281 Candomblé, 24–26 cannibalism, cannibalismo, 32, 117, 133, 268, 300–09 Cartesian dualism, 6–7, 23, 40, 47, 53–63, 79, 96, 109, 161; mind-body split, 25 Cassirer, Ernst, 6, 21, 26–27, 39, 50–64, 77, 82, 94, 99, 113–16, 135, 147, 156, 160, 177, 251 Chen, Mel Y., 3, 127, 149, 213–214, 252 Chomsky, Noam, 98; Chomskian universalism, 37, 59, 160 climate change. See planetary predicament cognitive justice, 45 colonialism, 32; epistemological colonialism, 16; West Africa, 9 colonization. See colonialism commuter (as comparative practice), 19 concrescence, 62, 129, 135, 176–89 constructivism, 9, 22–23, 131–33, 164, 218, 225–26, 256–60, 276–77, 289; as naturalism in decay, 48 cool, as ethic, 17 copresence, 34, 41, 48, 77 Cordova, Viola F., 11–12, 77, 81–87 creative participation. See participation. See also agential participation Creativity, 33, 41, 57, 62–70, 101, 109–13, 134, 146, 160, 172, 177, 188–89, 204, 264, 282; Creative, 27, 35 crossing, 150–55 culture 93–104, 109–112; assumed by postmoderns, 21–22, 27; shamans assume shared People, 35, 49–50; mystics assume discontinuity of natures, 63–72, 88–89; NatureCulture assumed by diviners, 105

Cusa, Nicholas, 34, 54, 67, 70–77, 172 Danziger, Eve, 102–109, 123, 127 decolonial: decolonial philosophy of religions, 46; methods, 31–50 Deist, 23–26, 127 Deleuze, Gilles, 60, 71, 122–47, 171, 251–68 Democritus, 53, 166 Derrida, Jacques, 18, 64, 99–101, 121–25, 180, 212, 251–52, 282 Descola, Philip, 6, 20, 35, 41, 62–63, 82–91, 93–97, 114–19, 121–47, 160, 194, 219–29, 247–68, 273–75, 291–92; analogism, animism, naturalism, totemism, 94–95; predation, 300–09 Descartes, René, 23, 55–63, 159, 168–69, 265; beginning of agential ecology, 107–13, 247; post/modern dilemma, 155 Desmond, William, 128–35, 189–90 diviners, 17–18, 39–46, 60; Descola’s analogism, 95; diviners defined, ix–x, 34–35; Holbraad’s oracular, 275–84; Iamblichus as diviner, 43–44; Kripal’s co-authorship, 231–36; Levinson’s absolute frames, 99, 112–16; Plato as mystic and diviner, 42; Plotinus as mystic and diviner, 44; Sedgwick, Eve as diviner, 39; West’s sorcery, 308 dialogue, 4, 29, 32–34; Bauman’s planetary ethic, 19; diverse forms of knowledge, 34; importance of, xi; inter-species, 27; not enough, 10 diaphaneity, 44–46, 132, 231; diaphanon, 45 Donald, Merlin, 36–37 Dubos, René, 206–208 Durkheim, Émile, 79, 87, 273, 285–91 dwelling, 150–55

Index

Eckhart, Meister, 46–47 ecologies, 6, 10, 13, 19, 114–119; compared to ontologies, 36, 107; Whitehead and ecologies, 117–19 ecologies of knowledge, Santos, 31 ecologies of participation, x, 5, 7–9, 16–17, 27, 38, 116; Gebser’s mutations, 93; Lévy-Bruhl and, 78–87 effect as animist/shamanic, 70, 160–66, 166–75 Ehala, Martin, 294–299 Einstein, Albert, 21, 50, 65–68, 170 emic. See practitioner-scholar empiricism, radical: Berkeley, 59; James, 71–73 enaction, enactive approach, 6, 38, 75–77, 194–201 epistemology, x, 20, 34, 89, 131 ethnocentrism, 96, 124, 209, 279; academic, 293–94; animist/shamanic, 125–27, 147; anthropomorphic, 37; modern, ix, 13; scientific materialist, 14; we are all ethnocentric, 294–98 etic. See practitioner-scholar Eurocentric, 18–19, 106, 127, 151, 177 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 80–85, 290 evolution of consciousness. See Donald, Merlin; Gebser, Jean. factishes, 23–27, 56–57 Ferrer, Jorge N., 6–7, 108, 134, 276; Lévy-Bruhl and multiple modes participation, 78–92; many shores, 251, 282; participatory ethics and tests, 201–05, 239–40; participatory enaction, 189, 264; participatory knowing, 191–214; participatory predicament, 190, 262, 265; participatory turn, religious studies, 55–77; personal transformation, 262; sacralization of language, 232 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 109, 220–36, 249–50

333

flatland, 20; Abbot, Edwin, 29; modern folk tradition, 40; post/moderns as flatlanders, 21, 47; scientific materialism, 14, 40 Foucault, Michel, 18, 126, 158, 212 Frege, Gottlob, 21, 50 functions (symbolic), 27–29, 50–51, 54-64, 77, 94–116, 126–47; rather than substance, 6–7 Gadamer, Hans-George, 67–71, 78–82; incarnation, 69 Gebser, Jean, 39–49, 93, 146, 172; compared to Merlin, Donald, 41–42; integral mutation as agential, creative, 41; magic, mythic, mental mutation as shamans, diviners, mystics, 42; on Petrarch, 47; post/modern as decadent mental mutation, 42 globalization. See planetary predicament Gnostic/Gnosticism, 26, 44; gnostic-cumnominalist, 47 God, God crossed out, introduced, 23, 49 Gödel, Kurt, 21, 50, 61 Gorgias, 53–54 Greene, Joshua, 296 Haidt, Jonathan, 295–96 Harding, Susan, 151–53, 164, 177 Harvey, Graham, 13, 290, 304–07 Hegel, George W. F., 77, 113, 142, 166–70, 220, 233–35 Heidegger, Martin, 113, 122–29, 156–61 Heisenberg, Werner, 39, 50, 68, 170–72 Hobbes, Thomas, 23, 55–59, 90, 142, 159 Holbraad, Martin 81, 130, 215–16, 259–68, 271–91; oracular truth, 13; recursive methodology, 9 Hountondji, Paulin J., 83 Humanism, 48–49; humanist turn, 47, 219, 266; Kripal’s humanism, 220–30 Hume, David, 23, 57, 113, 131–32, 142, 189

334

Index

Husserl, Edmund, 96, 113, 122, 156–61, 252 incommensurability, 8, 45, 80, 135, 196. See also relativism individuality, 35; as primary ontological atomism, 47–49 Ingold, Tim, 37–40, 267 integral, 95; Gebser, 41–49; Wilber, 45 intrinsic linguistic frameworks. See neo-Whorfian linguistic frameworks Irigaray, Luce, 100–01, 108 James, William, 70–73, 171–80, 288 Jung, Carl, 39 Kant, Immanuel, 10, 77, 93, 109, 113, 168–72, 189, 197, 220, 245, 250, 266, 291; enactive approach, 197–99; haunting these pages, 271–77; limits on metaphysics, 231–35; metaphysica naturalis, 21 Kripal, Jeffery J., 15–19, 108, 216–45, 247–48, 293 label camp, 11, 43, 123–24; Aristotle, naturalism and, 54–69. See also Peter Struck Langer, Susanne, 27, 50–51, 59–61, 177, 251 language as key to ontologies, x, 36–37, 51, 59, 112 Latour, Bruno, 31, 39, 57, 76–77, 101, 107, 114, 119, 146, 227, 251–64, 271–76, 282, 289; modern constitution, 20–25; fabrication, 24, 26 lazy reasoning. See Santos, Boaventura de Sousa Leibniz, Gottfried, 23, 33, 49, 55–58, 66–67, 95, 118, 144, 159, 166, 207–08, 254, 263 Levinas, Emmanuel, 19–20 Levinson, Stephen. See neo-Whorfian linguistic frameworks

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 35, 121–47, 160, 259–63, 287–90 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 3, 33, 77–92, 261, 289–91 Lloyd, G. E. R., 9, 98–99, 105–106, 116–17, 140–42, 251 Locke, John, 28, 55–61, 113, 144, 260, 286, 293 magic, 21. See also Gebser, Jean McGilchrist, Iain, 96–97 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 3, 113, 159–72 mestizaje, 32, 150 metaphysics, 5, 129–35; anti-metaphysics, 28; naïve metaphysics, 27 mind-body dualism. See Cartesian dualism modern constitution. See Latour, Bruno modern, as in Latour’s moderns. See Latour, Bruno monism, 63–66, 70–73, 111, 149, 196, 201, 217–18, 233–40, 252–53, 260–63; critique of, 161–71; sensuous monism, 3; Spinoza, 128, 133 moral tribes, 296–99; hot and cold identity formation, 297 Morton, Timothy, 19–20, 182 multinaturalism, 91, 256–66, 269, 302–08. See also perspectivism multi-ontology approach, x, 6–7, 24–29, 41, 83, 93–98, 113–16, 126–27, 147, 155, 166, 250; ontologies, useful paradox, 10 mutations of consciousness, 33–39, 241–42. See also Gebser, Jean mystics, 8, 29, 34–35, 60–68, 69, 76, 92–101, 109–16, 134, 146, 160–70, 183, 188, 200–06, 216–25; Aristotle as mystic, 42–44; defined, x, 10, 35; Descola and Viveiros de Castro, 247–50; Eckhart, 46; Kripal’s mystics, 225–36, 242–45; naturalism and objectivity, 6, 46, 58, 80, 88, 276–77, 301; Ockham as mystic, 47; Plato as mystic and diviner, 42;

Index

Plotinus as mystic and diviner, 43–44; relativized, decadent, 48–49; relative linguistic frames, 238. See also naturalism mysticism, 6, 8, 42–49, 85, 91, 112-13, 156, 160, 166, 203, 216, 224–33, 254, 267. See also mystics mythic mutation of consciousness. See Donald, Merlin; Gebser, Jean naturalism, 6, 61–64, 67–70, 85–88, 91–95, 99–113, 117–19, 123–31, 135–40, 140–47, 163–76, 192–201, 204, 216–47, 268, 271–81, 301–09; Aristotle’s naturalism, 54; defined, 9–10, 35; Descola, 250–52, 255–266; post/modern, 23; turned decadent, Cartesian dualism, 42–49; Viveiros de Castro, 248–50, 255–266. See also mystics nature, 5–10; assumed by moderns, 20–22 neo-Darwinian, 37–40, 90, 149, 199–201, 259, 308–09 Neoplatonic, 35–36, 47, 223 neostructuralism, 35, 121–26, 147 neo-Whorfian linguistic frameworks, 35, 41, 193; Descola, Philip, 35, 93–97; language before worlds, 11, 114; Levinson, Stephen, 6, 97–107, 142–47, 150–51, 181–84, 209–10; Whorf, Benjamin, 82 new animism, 13, 35, 88, 111, 127, 156, 163, 240, 249. See also animism new materialism, 155–67, 240, 253 Newtonian. See Newton, Isaac Newton, Isaac, 21–28, 48–72, 90, 95, 109–13, 142, 159, 165–69, 173, 188–89, 197–99, 207–08, 266, 272–80, 291 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 108–114, 123–24, 280–82 nihilism, 35, 49, 62, 139–46 nominalism, 6, 46–49, 67, 95, 144–46, 214

335

nonmoderns, 23, 277 Norton-Smith, Timothy, 2–5 Ockham, William of, 46–47, 56, 95 ontological turn. See ontology ontology, 7, 19, 129; defined, 5, 98, 107, 117; breeds conflict, 10; never pure, 29; ontological justice, 45; ontological turn, 20, 82–83, 98, 106–10, 196, 210, 261–62, 271–81; plural, useful paradox, x, 5, 8–10, 19, 27–28, 34, 83, 114, 222–26, 230–45 oracular, 8–9, 13, 17, 60, 117, 161, 185, 190, 205, 210–11, 223–24, 240–42, 261, 273–75 Oruka, Henry Odera, 83, 90 participation, 10–11, 28, 75; Abram, David, 3–5; Bird-David, 88; Cassirer’s symbolic, 55; creative participation, 39, 46, 71, 76–78, 95, 108, 126, 149, 155, 165–66, 172; Descola, 96–99; Desmond, 133–35; defined, 75–76; Ferrer’s modes/ cocreative, 78–79, 265; Lévy-Bruhl, 82–87; Platonic, 47, 53–54; Tambiah and Hanegraaff, 87, 91–92; through human language, x, 59, 61, 112. See also agential participation; ecologies of participation participation mystique, 78 participatory ethics, 201–09; participatory tests, 202–03 participatory events, 3–7, 39, 46, 50, 62, 76-77, 147–56, 188–97, 208, 218–29, 237–40, 251–53 participatory knowing, 76, 191–214 participatory philosophia, 4, 9–10, 59–62, 154–77, 253; King, Richard, on philosophia, 18–19; philosophical raft, 5–7 participatory turn, 4, 27, 73–78, 225, 262 Peirce, C. S., 69–71, 170–71

336

Index

perspectivism: Nietzsche, 159; Petrarch’s, 48; Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism, 13, 82, 194, 219–21, 228, 237, 248–68 Petrarch, Francesco, 46–50, 77, 95, 108–10, 214; precursor to agency, 47 phenomenology, 122, 156, 161 Picasso, Pablo, 39 planetary predicament, 1, 9, 26; anthropocene, 1, 17–18 plant thinking, 36 Plato, 6, 26, 42–43, 44, 47–56, 59, 66, 70, 75, 78, 142–44, 160; as both talismanic and naturalist, diviner and mystic, 42, 47 Plotinus, 43–47, 144, 166–67, 223, 250; as mystic, 43–44; rejecting shamans, 44 posthuman, 25–28, 164, 180, 217–20, 257 post/modern, 21, 24–25, 31–32; as decadent mental mutation, 45, 47; birth of, 49; flatland trap, 45 post/modern constitution. See post/ modern postplural, 259–61 poststructuralism, 121–26, 253 practitioner-scholar, 11–18 Prechtel, Martín, 26–27, 104 progress: dangers of, 34; linear thought, 33–34 quasi-physicalism, 94 racism, 12, 152, 163 Radin, Paul, 83 Ramakrishna, 220–36 relational ontology, 25 relative linguistic frameworks. See neo-Whorfian linguistic frameworks relativism, 27; incommensurability, 8, 45; vulgar relativism, 45, 49, 118 religion as problematic term, 16–22, 38 Russell, Bertrand, 50, 61–64, 169, 192–93, 253–55, 263

Sage Philosophy. See Oruka, Henry Odera. Santayana, George, 169–70 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 31–34, 38, 45, 81–93, 210; ecologies, ecologies of knowledge, 31, 33–34; Gebser and, 50, 77–78 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 122–26, 252 Schaefer, Donovan, 160–75 Schelling, Friedrich, 78, 166–70, 231 scholar-practitioner 9, 16–18, 219, 303. See also practitioner-scholar scientific materialism, 13–14, 20, 47, 63, 173, 188; as decadent mystic, 49 secularism, 21 Sedgwick, Eve, 28–29, 162–65, 211–13; as diviner, 39 self/enjoyment, 7, 25, 61–62 shamanism, ix, 6–8, 13, 19, 85–88. See also animism, shamans shamans, ix–x, 60, 92, 113; Butler, Judith as shaman, 39, 60; defined, 35; Deleuze and Spinoza, 60; Iamblichus and Plotinus rejecting shamans, 44; scientific materialists as, 224 Sherman, Jacob, 78. See also Ferrer, Jorge, N. sixth mass extinction. See planetary predicament Smith, Jonathan Z., 82 Somé, Malidoma, 13–15 Sophists, 53 speculative philosophy, x, 5, 51 Spinoza, Baruch, 60, 142–44, 159, 161–69 Stengers, Isabella, 117–119, 263 Struck, Peter, 43 substance philosophy, 28, 42–43 superstitious, superstition, 21–22 symbolic forms, 37, 56–57 talismanic, x, 42, 94, 100, 102–05, 137-48, 194; affects and affect theory, 238; Aquinas, Lao Tse, Plato, Sedgewick, 60; defined, 35;

Index

Descola as, 229; Iamblichus and Neoplatonism, 43–44, 160; Lévi-Strauss, 124, 136; MerleauPonty, 161–65; Ramakrishna, 231; talisman camp, 43, 54. See also diviners Tambiah, Stanley J., 87–91 telos/teleology as mystic/naturalist, 70, 166–75 theurgy, 43–44 Thompson, Evan. See enactive approach. time-freedom, anacrhonon, 43, 45 totemism, 6, 35. See also diviners and absolute frames of reference transcend and include, 44–45 Tweed, Thomas, 150–52, 183–90, 205 Vásquez, Manuel A., 64–72, 149–80 verition, 44, 46 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 13, 19–20, 35, 64–66, 82–83, 89–91, 98, 102–16, 125–28, 132–34, 145–47, 194, 205, 209, 216–21, 227–29, 237, 247–69, 271–77, 300–01 Wagner, Roy, 82–83, 110–113, 256–61 Western: hegemonic, 39; too Western, 25–26 Western as abyssal thinking, lazy reason. See Santos, Boaventura de Sousa

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Whitehead, Alfred North, 7, 19–27, 39, 54–74, 78, 117–19, 129–35, 147–55, 166, 251–52; actual occasions and/or participatory events, 6, 50, 174–75, 253; atomism, epochalism and problem internal relations, 65–68, 266; Cassirer, 135, 147, 156, 160; concern, 7; Deleuze, 135, 260–63; ecologies and nexus, 117–19, 130; feelings, 174; freedom and agency, 145, 149, 155, 166; Hegel, 166–70; higher phases of concrescence, 176–90, 254; Hume, 132; metaphysics/speculative philosophy, 231; novelty, 166, 253; perfection, problem of, 39, 61–62; post-Platonic speculative philosophia, 54; prehensions, 73, 173–79, 237–38; quantum theory and epochalism, 68–73, 131, 171–73; scientific materialism, 20, 191–94, 210, 237; subject-superject (reformed subjectivist principle), 174–76, 254 whiteness, 25, 302; whiteliness, 298 Wilber, Ken, 45 Wiredu, Kwasi, 94 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 50, 114, 131, 160, world-making, 3, 27, 50, 141 Xenophanes, 42

About the Author

Zayin Cabot is lecturer of philosophy and religion at California State ­University, East Bay.

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