Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks – all welcome
Description: Entangling environmental studies with philosophy, anthropology, and psychology, this seminar will counter the theoretical abstraction of much climate-related discourse with a range of traditionally oral, place-based, indigenous understandings of earth’s elemental atmosphere. We’ll ponder the animistic quality of sensorial experience, and draw upon some unnoticed sources within the alphabetic tradition as well, catching faint whiffs of a more-than-human story slowly shaping itself, today, through a wild plurality of tongues.
Biography: David Abram – cultural ecologist and geophilosopher – is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Described as “revolutionary” by the Los Angeles Times, as “daring” and “truly original” by the journal Science, David’s work engages the ecological depths of experience, exploring the ways in which sensory perception, language, and imagination inform the relation between the human animal and the animate earth. In his first book David coined the phrase “the more-than-human world,” in order to speak of nature as a realm that thoroughly includes humankind, yet also necessarily exceeds humankind; the phrase has now been taken up worldwide within the broad movement for ecological sanity. David was the first contemporary philosopher to advocate for a reappraisal of “animism” as a complexly nuanced and uniquely viable worldview, catalysing a thorough reassessment now underway in many disciplines. The recipient of numerous fellowships and literary awards, Dr. Abram has held the international Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo, and was recently the Senior Visiting Scholar in Ecology and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. He makes his home in the foothills of the southern Rockies.
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and the Nature Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Nature Network, or its researchers.
