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ANIMISM_CLASSICS

                                          August 31, 2022

Do the creations of human
beings have souls?

Some papers in the traditional
anthropological style that answer "yes":


Pottery making considered as a "negotiation" with the clay:

   "The Spirit in the Material: A Case Study of
   Animism in the American Southwest" (2017)

   Christine S. VanPool, Elizabeth Newsome

   https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/spirit-in-the-material-a-case-study-of-animism-in-the-american-southwest/BBD13FDC4F7C532D5C35996ECE4A81E3

     "People often imbue their surroundings, including tools,
      with a 'life essence' that makes them active objects."

     "Puebloan potters consider pots living beings with a
      spiritual essence that is affected by and that impacts
      humans."

     "Pottery manufacture is a mutual negotiation
     between the potter and the clay..."


A good example: the spirit of "infrastructure", i.e. "roads"
(which may not go ever on and on, but we certainly do):

  "Road animism Reflections on the life of infrastructures" (2019)
  Matthäus Rest, Alessandro Rippa

  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706041

    "... a novel framework for the analysis of
    infrastructures. Accordingly, we argue that roads'
    doings cannot be understood as active subjectivity or
    a function of their material resilience. Instead of
    connecting, roads should be understood as growing out
    of connections-- as an 'in-between' in which their
    doing is also their undergoing. We will make this
    argument through ethnographic cases from Pakistan,
    Nepal, China, Myanmar, and Austria."


And here's a-- rather wonky and speculative-- discussion of
the case of megaliths, but it definitely qualifies as an
example for me:

   "Stones with character: animism, agency and megalithic" (2009)
   Chris Scarre

   https://dro.dur.ac.uk/9513/1/9513.pdf


A definite maybe-- the title sounds good, but the abstract isn't tremendously
clear if the "material objects" it talks about include human creations:


    "The Social Agency of Things? Animism and Materiality in the Andes" (2009)
    Bill Sillar

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/abs/social-agency-of-things-animism-and-materiality-in-the-andes/387ACE0534BB053A59958BBB75FBD21A

    "A major focus of inter-disciplinary debate has been
    the need to bridge the Cartesian divide between
    people as active subjects and inert passive objects,
    to better reflect how things provoke and resist human
    actions through their ‘secondary agency’."

    "A consideration of Andean animism emphasizes how
    agency is located in the social relationship people
    have with the material world and how material objects
    can have social identities."


Further, there are a few anthologies linked to, and it's likely there
are a few articles buried in there I'd count as good examples
of human objects with human spirit:

"The Handbook of Contemporary Animism" (edited by the ubiquitous
Graham Harvey), and "Rethinking Relations and Animism":

   https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Handbook_of_Contemporary_Animism/hV1_BAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Animism:+Respecting+the+Living+World&printsec=frontcover

   https://www.google.com/books/edition/Rethinking_Relations_and_Animism/CDdyDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Animism:+Respecting+the+Living+World&printsec=frontcover

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