Peace, the impossible concept (or ‘the spirit and the letter’): A more-than-species story.

Dr. Luci Attala, UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition will be attending the Annual MESH symposium, University of Cologne | October 17–19, 2024, in her role as Deputy Executive Director, for the exciting launch of the BRIDGES Hub for Planetary Wellbeing.

Dr Attala will also be on Panel I, from 2:30 - 4:00, on 17 October, presenting her paper titled: “Peace, the impossible concept (or ‘the spirit and the letter’): A more-than-species story.”

ABSTRACT

According to Kohn (2013), to be true to the world, forms of being that go ‘beyond the human’ need to be attended to. For Kohn (Ibid), spirituality is a one of those forms and a mode of expression that needs more attention. Correspondingly, when Latour (1991) claimed we had never been modern he showed how the divide between science and spirituality was artificial and that dealings with spirit beings and their powers should be taken seriously. Multispecies ethnographies and new materialisms are being used to rethink anthropology but in efforts to appreciate the agency of living creatures and the vitality of matter, they discount the spirits, risking reinforcing the dualisms they claim to oppose (Schaeffer 2018). Likewise, in the context of today’s climate emergency, advocates of multispecies justice and ecocide use Indigenous perspectives to make their case but edit out the spirits that Indigenous peoples know animate the physical world.

This presentation starts with a mountain and a snake and tells a more-than-species spirit-inclusive story that zigzags (or snakes) through time. It brings in breathing, screaming, family, balance, water, wasps, machine guns and circles to think about peace, the impossible concept (Taussig 2019).

For further information on the Annual MESH Symposium: https://mesh.uni-koeln.de/events/meshworks/mesh-symposium-2024