Download or read book Toward an Animist Reading of Postcolonial Trauma Literature written by Jay Rajiva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses the conceptual framework of animism, the belief in the spiritual qualities of nonhuman matter, to analyze representations of trauma in postcolonial fiction from Nigeria and India. Toward an Animist Reading of Postcolonial Trauma Literature initiates a conversation between contemporary trauma literatures of Nigeria and India on animism. As postcolonial nations move farther away from the event of decolonization in real time, the experience of trauma take place within and is generated by an increasingly precarious environment of resource scarcity, over-accelerated industrialization, and ecological crisis. These factors combine to create mixed environments marked by constantly changing interactions between human and nonhuman matter. Examining novels by authors such as Chinua Achebe, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nnedi Okorafor, and Arundhati Roy, the book considers how animist beliefs shape the aesthetic representation of trauma in postcolonial literature, paying special attention to complex metaphor and narrative structure. These literary texts challenge the conventional wisdom that working through trauma involves achieving physical and psychic integrity in a stable environment. Instead, a type of provisional but substantive healing emerges in an animist relationship between human trauma victims and nonhuman matter. In this context, animism becomes a pivotal way to reframe the process of working through trauma. Offering a rich framework for analyzing trauma in postcolonial literature, this book will be of interest to scholars of postcolonial literature, Nigerian literature and South Asian literature.
Download or read book The Handbook of Contemporary Animism written by Graham Harvey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Contemporary Animism brings together an international team of scholars to examine the full range of animist worldviews and practices. The volume opens with an examination of recent approaches to animism. This is followed by evaluations of ethnographic, cognitive, literary, performative, and material culture approaches, as well as advances in activist and indigenous thinking about animism. This handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars of Religion, Sociology and Anthropology.
Download or read book Radical Animism written by Jemma Deer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reckoning of climate change calls for us to fundamentally rethink our notions of human centrality, superiority and power. Drawing on a wide range of modern writers and thinkers – from Freud and Darwin to Latour and Derrida, from Shakespeare and Carroll to Woolf and Kafka – Radical Animism develops a new theory of life for a planet in crisis. In this original and timely work, Jemma Deer reframes our thinking of the Anthropocene with ideas from anthropology, astronomy, deconstruction, evolutionary biology, psychoanalysis, quantum physics and veganism. Through readings that are both inventive and compelling, this book shows how 'literary animism' – the active and transformative life of literature – can open our thinking to the immense power of the non-human world.
Download or read book Rethinking Relations and Animism written by Miguel Astor-Aguilera and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personhood and relationality have re-animated debate in and between many disciplines. We are in the midst of a simultaneous "ontological turn", a "(re)turn to things" and a "relational turn", and also debating a "new animism". It is increasingly recognised that the boundaries between the "natural" and "social" sciences are of heuristic value but might not adequately describe reality of a multi-species world. Following rich and provocative dialogues between ethnologists and Indigenous experts, relations between the received knowledge of Western Modernity and that of people who dwell and move within different ontologies have shifted. Reflection on human relations with the larger-than-human world can no longer rely on the outdated assumption that "nature" and "cultures" already accurately describe the lineaments of reality. The chapters in this volume advance debates about relations between humans and things, between scholars and others, and between Modern and Indigenous ontologies. They consider how terms in diverse communities might hinder or help express, evidence and explore improved ways of knowing and being in the world. Contributors to this volume bring different perspectives and approaches to bear on questions about animism, personhood, materiality, and relationality. They include anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnographers, and scholars of religion.
Download or read book Animism of the Nilotics and Discourses of Islamic Fundamentalism in Sudan written by Kuel Maluil Jok and published by Sidestone Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Animism as a religion and a culture of the Nilotic peoples of the Upper River Nile in modern "Southern Sudan". It gives an account of how the animistic ritual performances of the divine chief-priests are strategies in conflict management and resolution. For centuries, the Nilotic peoples have been resisting changes to new religious identities and conservatively remained Animists. Their current interactions with the external world, however, have transformed their religious identities. At present, the Nilotics are Animist-Christians or Animist-Muslims. This does not mean that the converted Nilotics relinquish Animism and become completely assimilated to the new religious prophetic dogmas, instead, they develop compatible religious practices of Animism, Christianity and Islam. New Islamic fundamentalism in Sudan which is sweeping Africa into Islamic religious orthodoxy, where Sharia (Islamic law) is the law of the land, rejects this compatibility and categorises the Nilotics as "heathens" and "apostates". Such characterisation engenders opposing religious categories, with one side urging Sharia and the other for what this study calls "gradable" culture. Kuel Jok is a researcher at the Department of World Cultures at the University of Helsinki. In Sudan, Jok obtained a degree in English Linguistics and Literature and diplomas in Philosophy and Translation. He also studied International Law in Egypt. In Europe, Jok acquired an MA in Sociology from the University of Joensuu, Finland and a PhD in the same field from the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Download or read book Animism written by Graham Harvey and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements of their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In his new book, Graham Harvey explores indigenous and environmentalist spiritualities in which people celebrate relationships with other-than-human beings. He examines present and past animistic beliefs and practices of the Ojibwe, the Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans, revealing the diverse ways of being animist and of living respectfully within natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of animist worldviews and lifeways. He argues that animist beliefs can contribute significantly to contemporary debates about consciousness, cosmology, and environmentalism. In addition, he examines the colonialist ideologies and methodologies that have caused many academics to exclude the term "animism" from their critical vocabularies.
Download or read book African Literature Animism and Politics written by Caroline Rooney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-01-14 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book marks an important contribution to colonial and postcolonial studies in its clarification of the African discourse of consciousness and its far-reaching analyses of a literature of animism. It will be of great interest to scholars in many fields including literary and critical theory, philosophy, anthropology, politics and psychoanalysis.
Download or read book Animism in Southeast Asia written by Kaj Arhem and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.
Download or read book Animals Animality and Literature written by Bruce Boehrer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 775 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals, Animality, and Literature offers readers a one-volume survey of the field of literary animal studies in both its theoretical and applied dimensions. Focusing on English literary history, with scrupulous attention to the interplay between English and foreign influences, this collection gathers together the work of nineteen internationally noted specialists in this growing discipline. Offering discussion of English literary works from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond, this book explores the ways human/animal difference has been historically activated within the literary context: in devotional works, in philosophical and zoological treatises, in plays and poems and novels, and more recently within emerging narrative genres such as cinema and animation. With an introductory overview of the historical development of animal studies and afterword looking to the field's future possibilities, Animals, Animality, and Literature provides a wide-ranging survey of where this discipline currently stands.
Download or read book Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan written by Fabio Rambelli and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws attention to a striking aspect of contemporary Japanese culture: the prevalence of discussions and representations of “spirits” (tama or tamashii). Ancestor cults have played a central role in Japanese culture and religion for many centuries; in recent decades, however, other phenomena have expanded and diversified the realm of Japanese animism. For example, many manga, anime, TV shows, literature, and art works deal with spirits, ghosts, or with an invisible dimension of reality. International contributors ask to what extent these are cultural forms created by the media for consumption, rather than manifestations of “traditional” ancestral spirituality in their adaptations to contemporary society. Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan considers the modes of representations and the possible cultural meanings of spirits, as well as the metaphysical implications of contemporary Japanese ideas about spirits. The chapters offer analyses of specific cases of “animistic attitudes” in which the presence of spirits and spiritual forces is alleged, and attempt to trace cultural genealogies of those attitudes. In particular, they present various modes of representation of spirits (in contemporary art, architecture, visual culture, cinema, literature, diffuse spirituality) while at the same time addressing their underlying intellectual and religious assumptions.
Download or read book Animism written by George William Gilmore and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Before Humanity written by Stefan Herbrechter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current crisis in thinking the “human” raises questions not only about who or what may come after the human, but also about what happened before. What dark secrets lie in our ancestral past that may be stopping us from becoming human “otherwise”?
Download or read book Animism in Art and Performance written by Christopher Braddock and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Māori indigenous and non-indigenous scholarship corresponding with the term ‘animism’. In addressing visual, media and performance art, it explores the dualisms of people and things, as well as 'who' or 'what' is credited with 'animacy'. It comprises a diverse array of essays divided into four sections: Indigenous Animacies, Atmospheric Animations, Animacy Hierarchies and Sensational Animisms. Cassandra Barnett discusses artists Terri Te Tau and Bridget Reweti and how personhood and hau (life breath) traverse art-taonga. Artist Natalie Robertson addresses kōrero (talk) with ancestors through photography. Janine Randerson and sound artist Rachel Shearer consider the sun as animate with mauri (life force), while Anna Gibb explores life in the algorithm. Rebecca Schneider and Amelia Jones discuss animacy in queered and raced formations. Stephen Zepke explores Deleuze and Guattari's animist hylozoism and Amelia Barikin examines a mineral ontology of art. This book will appeal to readers interested in indigenous and non-indigenous entanglements and those who seek different approaches to new materialism, the post-human and the anthropocene.
Download or read book Primitive Culture written by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Wakeful World written by Emma Restall Orr and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few hundred years, animism has been dismissed as a primitive, naive and irrational perspective, relevant perhaps amongst tribal peoples but not within the intellectual arenas of the civilized West. In this book, the author argues that this is based on the misrepresentation that each tree and stone has its own immortal soul.
Download or read book Aesthetic Animism written by David Jhave Johnston and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poetics appropriate to the digital era that connects digital poetry to traditional poetry's concerns with being. This book offers a decoder for some of the new forms of poetry enabled by digital technology. Examining many of the strange technological vectors converging on language, it proposes a poetics appropriate to the digital era while connecting digital poetry to traditional poetry's concerns with being (a.k.a. ontological implications). Digital poetry, in this context, is not simply a descendent of the book. Digital poems are not necessarily “poems” or written by “poets”; they are found in ads, conceptual art, interactive displays, performative projects, games, or apps. Poetic tools include algorithms, browsers, social media, and data. Code blossoms into poetic objects and poetic proto-organisms. Introducing the terms TAVs (Textual-Audio-Visuals) and TAVITS (Textual-Audio-Visual-Interactive), Aesthetic Animism theorizes a relation between scientific method and literary analysis; considers the temporal implications of animation software; and links software studies to creative writing. Above all it introduces many examples of digital poetry within a playful yet considered flexible taxonomy. In the future imagined here, digital poets program, sculpt, and nourish immense immersive interfaces of semi-autonomous word ecosystems. Poetry, enhanced by code and animated by sensors, reengages themes active at the origin of poetry: animism, agency, consciousness. Digital poetry will be perceived as living, because it is living.
Download or read book Religion and Faith in Africa written by A. E. Orobator and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before his conversion to Christianity, A E Orobator was raised in the practice of traditional African religion - animism. This repository of African religion, he maintains - at its heart a deep belief in the livingness of creation - is the soil in which Christianity and Islam have taken root. Drawn from his "Duffy Lectures" delivered at Boston College, Orobator examines the living interplay between African religion, Christianity, and Islam in Africa, and argues that the religious experience and spiritual imagination of Africa offers a genius capable of renewing the global community of believers. Among these gifts: a deep conscience of transcendence in day-to-day living; reverence towards human and natural ecologies; and a holistic understanding of creation and shared responsibility of stewardship for the universe.
