Breaking convention

BREAKING CONVENTION

An up and coming conference in which I will be presenting a talk

Abstract:

How perspectivist encounters can help reconstruct Neolithic worlds

Amerindian perspectivism refers to a specific type of worldview that forces us to take as a starting point an extended notion of the human: a notion that comprises a series of beings, including various types of animals, spirits and materials. In this paper I will follow the lead of anthropologists such as Phillipe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and archaeologists like the late Andrew Sherratt. In particular, I will highlight some of the ways in which people may have engaged with their worlds, practices which I believe may have shaped the development and expression of worldview in the Neolithic. To develop these ideas, I will be referring to an ayahuasca ceremony which I witnessed in the Amazon jungle, and consider how these events inform and create ontological understanding. Perspectivist systems of thought provide powerful worldview schemes in which close identification is made between different kinds of people and other types of being, be it animal, object or thing. It has helped, and continues to help dissolve the nature: culture, subject: object, human: non-human dichotomies which continue to shape Western thought, and through this may provide us with new ways of reconstructing Neolithic worlds – worlds in which Western polarities were almost certainly absent.

http://breakingconvention.co.uk/