"What, for instance, could our notion of the “supernatural” mean for peoples who have no such sense of a “natural” realm composed of mindless, nonhuman realia subject only to their own laws?”
(Shalins, Forword in Descola 2013, Beyond Nature and Culture, xiii)
Welcome to the Reading Group on Descola's Ontolgies
Philippe Descola Descola, held the Chair in the Anthropology of Nature at the Collège de France (2000-2019), has built on his ethnographic research with the Achuar of the Upper Amazon to contribute to the comparative study of human-nonhuman relations. His most widely known contribution has been the development of a framework that displaces the assumed universality of the Western nature/culture dichotomy by providing models of four possible ontological modes of structural relations through which humans and nonhumans form viable collectives. This research takes the form of a book Beyond Nature and Culture (2013 [2005]) showing how the differences between the four ontological modes are made evident in the investigation of processes of iconic figuration.
Our reading group aims at reading the for 5 chapters constituing the theroretical basis of Descola's four ontologies (animism, totemism, analogism, and naturalism)
Tentative schedule and readings (TBC)
We aim at meeting every two weeks for five meetings. Meetings will take place Monday from 14:00-16:00, Seminarraum, Institute für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums (Arnimallee 10)
| Date | Reading |
|---|---|
| Chapter 1: Configurations of Continuity | |
| Chapter 2: The Wild and the Domesticated | |
| Chapter 3: The Great Divide | |
| Chapter 4: The Schemas of Practice | |
| Chapter 5: Relations with the Self and Relations with Others |
Additional References
Audouze, F. (2002). Leroi-Gourhan, a Philosopher of Technique and Evolution. Journal of Archaeological Research, 10(4), 277–306. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41053189
Hildebrandt, T (2011): Bild, Geste und Hand. Leroi-Gourhans paläontologische Bildtheorie. In: IMAGE. Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Bildwissenschaft. Heft 14, Jg. 7, Nr. 2, S. 76–88. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/16576.
Ingold, T. (1999). `Tools for the hand, language for the face’: An appreciation of Leroi-Gourhan’s gesture and speech. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 30 (4):411-453.
Ingold, T. (2021). Posthuman Prehistory, Nature and Culture, 16(1), 83-103 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2020.160106
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1993 [1964]) Gesture and Speech, trans. A. Bostock Berger, intro. R. White (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press).
Mauss M. (1973 [1936]) ‘Techniques of the body’, translated by Ben Brewster, Economy and Society 2: 70–88.
Bar‐Yosef O. and P. Van Peer (2009): The Chaîne Opératoire Approach in Middle Paleolithic Archaeology Current Anthropology 2009 50:1, 103-131
Schüttpelz E., Körpertechniken, Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung 1/2010: “Kulturtechnik” DOI: https://doi.org/10.28937/1000106303
Tresch J. (2019): Leroi-Gourhan’s Hall of Gestures. In Douglas Kahn, ed. Energies in the Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 193-238.
Contact
Néhémie Strupler
Freie Universität Berlin
Fachbereichs Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften
Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums
Arnimallee 10
14195 Berlin (Germany)
nehemie.strupler@fu-berlin.de
