How Forests Think

282 Pages·2013·2.9 MB·English

by  Kohn, Eduardo

HOW FORESTS THINK
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HOW FORESTS THINK
toward an anthropology
beyond the human
Eduardo Kohn
university of california press
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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University of California Press
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University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2013 by Th e 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)
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—dc23 2013003750
Manufactured in the United States of America
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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 fi ber that contains 30
post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of
ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
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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
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Runa Puma 1
1. Th e Open Whole 27
2. Th e Living Th ought 71
3. Soul Blindness 103
4. Trans-Species Pidgins 131
5. Form’s Eff ortless Effi cacy 153
6. Th e Living Future (and the Imponderable Weight of the Dead) 191
Epilogue: Beyond 221
Notes 229
Bibliography 243
Index 259
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
How Forests Th ink 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. Th e
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
scientifi c 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 under-
standing 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
fi nished 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. Th e University of Wisconsin–
Madison was a wonderful environment for thinking about the Upper Amazon
viii
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acknowledgments ix
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 fi rst 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. Th ere 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 frame-
work 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 for-
ever 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 Skafi sh, and Alexei Yurchak. Th e members of the anthropol-
ogy department were extremely kind and supportive. Th anks 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 Safi er, 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 Kather-
ine Verdery, as well as the members of my writing group, Rebecca Hardin,
Nadine Naber, Julia Paley, Damani Partridge, and Miriam Ticktin.
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