Objects(*) are the product of multiple relations – or, rather, their crystalizations. They form at the intersection of relational nodes. Where things touch each other and get enmeshed, new objects appear. As Jeffrey Cohen writes, “medieval writers […] described thunderstones that drop with fire from the sky, rocks that emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of…
Category: Animism
On Nishitani’s Notion of Nothingness (Sūnyatā) // S&C
Nishitani on Nothingness // Sofya What Keiji Nishitani intends to think in his famous essay Shūkyō to wa Nanika (What is Religion?), originally published in 1961 and translated into English in 1982 as Religion and Nothingness, is beautiful in a way. Firstly, he proposes that all life and non-life form oneself’s being. Nishitani quotes Miso Kokushi:…
A Pure Body – Artaud’s Dream // Carlos
Trees do not exist: nobody has ever seen one. We see something we identify and name as “a tree,” but what we call a tree is always something else than what we assume. Suppose we touch the tree instead of staring at it: free from its twofold visual enclosure – from its numeric and objectual…
Animism as a Question of Bodies and Logical Paradoxes // Carlos
There are two possible definitions of animism. The most widespread one turns around notions of projection and belief. Briefly, it states that we project onto animals, plants, rocks, and natural phenomena human qualities which these things lack like, for example, consciousness, intentionality, and agency. According to this definition, set forth by Hume and popularised by…