How Forests Think. Eduardo Kohn

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

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      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Kohn, Eduardo.

      How forests think : toward an anthropology beyond the human / Eduardo Kohn.

      p.cm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-520-27610-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

      ISBN 978-0-520-27611-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      eISBN 9780520956865

      1. Quichua Indians.2. Quechua Indians—Social life and customs.3. Quechua mythology.4. Indigenous peoples—Ecology—Amazon River Region.5. Human-animal relationships—Amazon River Region.6. Human-plant relationships—Amazon River Region.7. Philosophy of nature—Amazon River Region.8. Semiotics—Amazon River Region.9. Social sciences—Amazon River Region—Philosophy.I. Title

      F2230.2.K4+

      986.6—dc232013003750

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

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      In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

      In memory of my grandmother Costanza Di Capua, who, borrowing her words from Gabriele D’Annunzio, would say to me

      Io ho quel che ho donato

      [I have what I have given]

      And for Lisa, who helps me learn how to give this gift

      CONTENTS

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction: Runa Puma

      1.The Open Whole

      2.The Living Thought

      3.Soul Blindness

      4.Trans-Species Pidgins

      5.Form’s Effortless Efficacy

      6.The Living Future (and the Imponderable Weight of the Dead)

      Epilogue: Beyond

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Index

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      How Forests Think has been gestating for some time, and I have many to thank for the life it has taken. I am indebted foremost to the people of Ávila. The times I spent in Ávila have been some of the happiest, most stimulating, and also most tranquil I have known. I hope that the sylvan thinking I learned to recognize there can continue to grow through this book. Pagarachu.

      Before I even went to Ávila, my grandparents the late Alberto and Costanza Di Capua had already prepared the way. Italian Jewish refugees settled in Quito, they brought their curiosity to everything around them. In the 1940s and 1950s my grandfather, a pharmaceutical chemist, participated in several scientific expeditions to the Amazon forests in search of plant remedies. My grandmother, a student of art history and literature in Rome, the city of her birth, turned to archaeology and anthropology in Quito as a way of understanding better the world into which she had been thrown and which she would eventually call home. Nonetheless, when I returned from my trips to Ávila she would insist I read to her from Dante’s Divine Comedy while she finished her evening soup. Literature and anthropology were never far removed for her or for me.

      I was twelve years old when I met Frank Salomon in my grandmother’s study. Salomon, a scholar like no other, and the person who would eventually direct my PhD research at Wisconsin, taught me to see poetry as ethnography by other means and so opened the space for writing about things as strange and real as thinking forests and dreaming dogs. The University of Wisconsin–Madison was a wonderful environment for thinking about the Upper Amazon in its cultural, historical, and ecological contexts. I owe a great debt also to Carmen Chuquín, Bill Denevan, Hugh Iltis, Joe McCann, Steve Stern, and Karl Zimmerer.

      I had the good fortune to write my dissertation—the first stab at what I’m trying to do in this book—at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, thanks to a Weatherhead Resident Scholar Fellowship. There I am indebted to James Brooks, Nancy Owen Lewis, and Doug Schwartz. I am also grateful to the other resident scholars in my cohort: Brian Klopotek, David Nugent, Steve Plog, Barbara Tedlock and Dennis Tedlock, and especially Katie Stewart, who was always ready to talk about ideas as we hiked through the Santa Fe hills.

      It was as a Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Townsend Center for the Humanities, Berkeley, that I began to develop the conceptual framework for thinking anthropologically beyond the human. I wish especially to acknowledge Candace Slater, as well as Tom Laqueur and Louise Fortmann, for this opportunity. I am also most grateful to my anthropology mentors at Berkeley. Bill Hanks made me part of the anthropological community and sagely guided me, Lawrence Cohen believed in me even when I didn’t, and Terry Deacon, in large part through his “pirates” seminar (with participants Ty Cashman, James Haag, Julie Hui, Jay Ogilvy, and Jeremy Sherman), created the most intellectually stimulating environment I have ever been in and forever changed the way I think. Four friends and colleagues from those Berkeley days deserve a special mention: Liz Roberts, who taught me so much about anthropology (and who also introduced me to all the right people), Cristiana Giordano, Pete Skafish, and Alexei Yurchak. The members of the anthropology department were extremely kind and supportive. Thanks especially to Stanley Brandes, Meg Conkey, Mariane Ferme, Rosemary Joyce, Nelson Graburn, Christine Hastorf, Cori Hayden, Charles Hirschkind, Don Moore, Stefania Pandolfo, Paul Rabinow, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.

      At the Michigan Society of Fellows, I wish to thank the former director Jim White and the fellows, especially Paul Fine, Stella Nair, Neil Safier, and Daniel Stolzenberg, with whom I spent two wonderful years. At the University of Michigan’s Department of Anthropology, I am indebted to Ruth Behar, the late Fernando Coronil, Webb Keane, Stuart Kirsch, Conrad Kottak, Alaina Lemon, Bruce Mannheim, Jennifer Robertson, Gayle Rubin, Julie Skurski, and Katherine Verdery, as well as the members of my writing group, Rebecca Hardin, Nadine Naber, Julia Paley, Damani Partridge, and Miriam Ticktin.

      I also wish to express gratitude to my former Cornell colleagues, especially to Stacey Langwick, Michael Ralph, Nerissa Russell, Terry Turner, Marina Welker, Andrew Wilford, and, above all, Hiro Miyazaki and Annelise Riles, who generously organized (with the participation of Tim Choy, Tony Crook, Adam Reed, and Audra Simpson) a workshop on my book manuscript.

      In Montreal I have found a stimulating place to think, teach, and live. My colleagues at McGill have supported me in countless ways. I especially wish to thank the following people for reading portions of