David Abram | Harvard University (original) (raw)
Papers by David Abram
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Id... more This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, edited by Tema Milstein and Jose Castro-Sotomayer, Routledge, 2020.
David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). Abram’s work explores, first and foremost, the ecology of perception, the manifold ways that sensory experience binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. This ongoing exploration leads him to engage, ever more deeply, with the ecology of language – the manner in which our ways of speaking profoundly influence and constrain what we see, hear, and even taste of the Earth around us. Through the weave of his own words, David's writing brings the world alive in ways that nourish both sensual and spiritual earthly engagements and identifications. For instance, while writing in the mid-1990s, he found himself frustrated by problematic terminology within environmentalist movements that reinforced the dominant culturally-constructed divide between humankind and what commonly is referred to as ‘nature’ or ‘the environment.’ In response, in 1996 Abram coined the phrase ‘the more-than-human world’ to signify the broad commonwealth of earthly life, a realm that both contains humankind and yet also, necessarily, exceeds humankind and human culture. The term has been gradually adopted by many other scholars and theorists (you will see ‘more-than-human world’ informing the discussion of ecocultural identity throughout this Handbook) and has crossed into the practitioner realm to become a key term within the paradigm-shifting phrasing of activists, theorists, and practitioners within the broad ecological movement.
Abram’s work is deeply resonant with the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity’s intention of understanding and addressing contemporary ecocultures and ecocultural identities, offering alternative ways of thinking and feeling at once ancient and strangely new. As a pivotal contemporary thinker who lectures and teaches around the world, both within and outside academia, we asked Abram to join and help frame the ecocultural identity conversation. The following is a transcript of a conversation with the Handbook’s editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, in Abram’s home in the southern foothills of the North American Rocky Mountains.
Emergence Magazine, 2018
This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the appar... more This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the apparently contrary collective moods that they engender. One is the rapid (and rapidly accelerating) growth in digital technologies, and the forthright optimism that this provokes in many sectors of society. The other is rapidly intensifying ecological breakdown and disarray, and the attendant despondency and gloom felt by many persons in response to the seeming inability of contemporary society to change course. What are the precise relations between these two large-scale trends? Certainly there are a wide range of connections and hidden causal relations that might be drawn between these two collective moods. This essay focuses, in particular, on some of the unnoticed perceptual dynamics at play within and between these two apparently contrary trends.
Emergence Magazine, 2018
This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long dis... more This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long distance migrations of various animal species. Engaging, in particular, with the migratory behavior of wild Pacific salmon (genus Oncorhynchus), of Sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis), and of Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), the essay opens an audacious new angle of approach to understanding the mind-bending navigational feats of these creatures.
Coming To Our (Animal) Senses: a conversation between David Abram and Dougald Hine, 2011
In the Depths of a Breathing Planet, 2010
Gary Snyder and the Renewal of Oral Culture, 2015
Storytelling and Wonder: on the rejuvenation of oral culture, 2005
Between the Body and the Breathing Earth - A Reply to Ted Toadvine, 2005
Animism, Perception and Earthly Craft of the Magician, 2005
Earth in Eclipse: an essay on the philosophy of science and ethics, 2003
Reciprocity and the Salmon , 2001
This paper was also published as: Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is ... more This paper was also published as:
Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is carnal knowledge: A conversation. In Hocking, B., Linds, W., & Haskell, J., eds., Unfolding Bodymind: Exploring Possibility Through Education. Brandon, VT: Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press, 325-333.
The Boundary Keeper - David Abram interviewed by physicist Jeremy Hayward, 1997
Waking Our Animal Senses: Language and the Ecology of Sensory Experience, 1997
The Mechanical and the Organic - On the Impact of Metaphor in Science, 1991
Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth, 1988
The Perceptual Implications of Gaia, 1985
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Id... more This in depth interview comprises the opening chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, edited by Tema Milstein and Jose Castro-Sotomayer, Routledge, 2020.
David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). Abram’s work explores, first and foremost, the ecology of perception, the manifold ways that sensory experience binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. This ongoing exploration leads him to engage, ever more deeply, with the ecology of language – the manner in which our ways of speaking profoundly influence and constrain what we see, hear, and even taste of the Earth around us. Through the weave of his own words, David's writing brings the world alive in ways that nourish both sensual and spiritual earthly engagements and identifications. For instance, while writing in the mid-1990s, he found himself frustrated by problematic terminology within environmentalist movements that reinforced the dominant culturally-constructed divide between humankind and what commonly is referred to as ‘nature’ or ‘the environment.’ In response, in 1996 Abram coined the phrase ‘the more-than-human world’ to signify the broad commonwealth of earthly life, a realm that both contains humankind and yet also, necessarily, exceeds humankind and human culture. The term has been gradually adopted by many other scholars and theorists (you will see ‘more-than-human world’ informing the discussion of ecocultural identity throughout this Handbook) and has crossed into the practitioner realm to become a key term within the paradigm-shifting phrasing of activists, theorists, and practitioners within the broad ecological movement.
Abram’s work is deeply resonant with the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity’s intention of understanding and addressing contemporary ecocultures and ecocultural identities, offering alternative ways of thinking and feeling at once ancient and strangely new. As a pivotal contemporary thinker who lectures and teaches around the world, both within and outside academia, we asked Abram to join and help frame the ecocultural identity conversation. The following is a transcript of a conversation with the Handbook’s editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, in Abram’s home in the southern foothills of the North American Rocky Mountains.
Emergence Magazine, 2018
This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the appar... more This essay reflects upon the contemporary juxtaposition of two simultaneous trends, and the apparently contrary collective moods that they engender. One is the rapid (and rapidly accelerating) growth in digital technologies, and the forthright optimism that this provokes in many sectors of society. The other is rapidly intensifying ecological breakdown and disarray, and the attendant despondency and gloom felt by many persons in response to the seeming inability of contemporary society to change course. What are the precise relations between these two large-scale trends? Certainly there are a wide range of connections and hidden causal relations that might be drawn between these two collective moods. This essay focuses, in particular, on some of the unnoticed perceptual dynamics at play within and between these two apparently contrary trends.
Emergence Magazine, 2018
This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long dis... more This essay wades into the remarkable conundrums (scientific and otherwise) regarding the long distance migrations of various animal species. Engaging, in particular, with the migratory behavior of wild Pacific salmon (genus Oncorhynchus), of Sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis), and of Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), the essay opens an audacious new angle of approach to understanding the mind-bending navigational feats of these creatures.
Coming To Our (Animal) Senses: a conversation between David Abram and Dougald Hine, 2011
In the Depths of a Breathing Planet, 2010
Gary Snyder and the Renewal of Oral Culture, 2015
Storytelling and Wonder: on the rejuvenation of oral culture, 2005
Between the Body and the Breathing Earth - A Reply to Ted Toadvine, 2005
Animism, Perception and Earthly Craft of the Magician, 2005
Earth in Eclipse: an essay on the philosophy of science and ethics, 2003
Reciprocity and the Salmon , 2001
This paper was also published as: Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is ... more This paper was also published as:
Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is carnal knowledge: A conversation. In Hocking, B., Linds, W., & Haskell, J., eds., Unfolding Bodymind: Exploring Possibility Through Education. Brandon, VT: Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press, 325-333.
The Boundary Keeper - David Abram interviewed by physicist Jeremy Hayward, 1997
Waking Our Animal Senses: Language and the Ecology of Sensory Experience, 1997
The Mechanical and the Organic - On the Impact of Metaphor in Science, 1991
Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth, 1988
The Perceptual Implications of Gaia, 1985
Pantheon Books/Vintage Books, 2010
As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere m... more As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we’ve ignored the wild intelligence of our bodies, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. Abram’s writing subverts this distance, drawing readers ever closer to their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the human body and the breathing Earth. The shape-shifting of ravens, the erotic nature of gravity, the eloquence of thunder, the pleasures of being edible: all have their place in this book.
Finalist for the inaugural PEN E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing
Pantheon Books/Vintage Books, 1996
Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind ... more Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in a book that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us.
For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and earthly elements (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?
In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. This book is a major work of ecological philosophy, one that startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.
Winner of the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
by Tema Milstein, José Castro-Sotomayor, Laura Bridgeman, David Abram, Melissa M Parks, Mariko O Thomas, Elizabeth Oriel, Toni Frohoff, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Casper G Bendixsen, Jessica Love-Nichols, Emma Frances Bloomfield, Charles Carlin, Eric Karikari, Godfried Asante, Dakota Raynes, Shilpa Dahake, Joe Quick, Gabriela Méndez Cota, Carrie Packwood Freeman, and Rebecca Banham
Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more ... more The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more and more of us awake to our always interconnected selves. The Handbook brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self and group identities, introducing an interdisciplinary, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on ways all identities are ecocultural and on the multiple and unspooling ways identities evolve and transform and, in so doing, may support reciprocal surviving and thriving.
Paperback out June 2022: 20% cost of hardback +20% off w/ code FLE22 ordering through Routledge.
Introduction chapter, table of contents, and endorsements are posted here. More, including editor bios and authors, can be found at this Routledge link: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Ecocultural-Identity/Milstein-Castro-Sotomayor/p/book/9781138478411. Please help share the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity among your networks. And please ask your libraries to purchase the book (or put it on their to-buy lists if budgets have been temporarily frozen due to Covid). The Handbook is an important resource for our times for scholars, teachers, students, protectors, policy-makers, and practitioners. The editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, are available for Q&A, interviews, guest commentary, talks, etc. Thanks for your interest and for helping to spread word!
What has been said about the Handbook:
“Intricately transdisciplinary and cross-geographical, it is the first volume of its kind to caringly craft a gathering concept, that of ecocultural identities, bringing together the social, political, and ecological dimensions of identity. What results is a treasure of insights on the politics of life, broadly speaking, and a novel toolbox for tackling effectively the damages caused by modern capitalist modes of extraction and the urgent task of Earth’s ontological repair and renewal.”
Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Too often mislabelled an ‘issue,’ the environment is in fact integral not just to everything we do but to who we are. This link between our identity and our ecology has long been recognised in many societies, but others seem to have forgotten its signal importance. This superb collection shows why all identities are ecocultural ones, and why full recognition of this is essential to all our political futures.”
Noel Castree, University of Manchester
“A smart, provocative, and original collection, the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity provides a definitive introduction to the constraints upon, and the contexts, formations, and impacts of, our diverse – but often unexamined – ecological selves.”
Robert Cox, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and three-time national president of the Sierra Club
“I am in complete solidarity with this book.”
Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz