
Image courtesy of Saffell Gardner.
Tuesdays at 9338 Jos Campau, Hamtramck, MI at 7pm.
This course will present and discuss aspects of Native American worldviews, what have become known as “indigenous ontologies,” from historical and ethnographic accounts. The material will be linked to traditional practices and to the effects of European conquest. We will be looking for the “blind spot” in western post-Enlightenment rationality.
Tuesday, July 8: Bruno Latour (2009) “Perspectivism: ‘Type’ or ‘bomb’?”
Hallowell, A.I. (1960) `Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and World View‘
Tuesday, July 15: Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2004) Exchanging Perspectives:The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.
Tuesday, July 22: “A Circumpolar Night’s Dream,” in: Ingold, Tim (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill.
Tuesday, July 29:Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Peter Skafish (Nov/Dec 2013) “Cannibal metaphysics: Amerindian perspectivism; With an introduction by Peter Skafish“
Tuesday, August 5: We will be continuing our discussion of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Peter Skafish (Nov/Dec 2013) “Cannibal metaphysics: Amerindian perspectivism; With an introduction by Peter Skafish“; now available in a file (LINK)
Tuesday, August 12: Tânia Stolze Lima (1999) The two and its many: Reflections on perspectivism in a Tupi cosmology, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 64:1, 107-131. file: (LINK)
Tuesday, August 19: Aparecida Vilaça (2005); CHRONICALLY UNSTABLE BODIES: REFLECTIONS ON AMAZONIAN CORPORALITIES J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 11, 445-464.
Tuesday, August 26: Ghassan Hage (2012) Critical anthropological thought and the radical political imaginary today. Critique of Anthropology, 32: 285-308. (LINK)
NOTE: The Animism class will continue in September with a two-week excursion into African culture via Richard Farris Thompson’s Flash of the Spirit. Please note the change of time.