{"id":12606,"date":"2022-06-24T02:59:13","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T07:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=12606"},"modified":"2022-06-24T02:59:18","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T07:59:18","slug":"ways-to-inhabit-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/06\/24\/ways-to-inhabit-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Ways to inhabit the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following post elaborates on some comments I made this week at the Ritual Creativity conference<\/a> at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Deep thanks to conference organizers Katri Ratia and Fran\u00e7ois Gauthier for inviting me to what turned out to be an immensely rewarding event, and to my co-panelists Graham Harvey, Sarah Pike, and Susannah Crockford for providing the occasion for these comments. Since this particular line of thinking was resonant among conference participants, I\u2019m sharing it here in an extended form<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Imaginative formations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My approach to understanding the power and impact of ritual — whether religious, political, or other kinds — is shaped by my longstanding interests in the relationship between imagination, place-making<\/a>, and identity-shaping. This relationship features as central to my work over many years, from ethnographic work in Arizona, southwest England<\/a>, and Ukraine<\/a> and Eastern Europe<\/a> (where image, discourse, and embodied practice combined to shape contestations over place and identity) to my analyses of moving images<\/a>, digital media<\/a>, and the imagination writ large (as in this article<\/a> or Part Three of Shadowing the Anthropocene<\/a><\/em>). \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I argued in my recent piece on the religious imagination<\/a>, \u201creligion\u201d may be too restrictive a category for the kind of thing that historian of religions Wouter Hanegraaff has proposed to call \u201cimaginative formations\u201d — that is, the worlds humans create through our imaginative practices. To understand what\u2019s meant by \u201cimaginative practices,\u201d we need a clear definition of imagination. For that I turn to Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei’s recent The Life of Imagination<\/a><\/em>, which defines imagination succinctly, yet coherently, as \u201cthe presentational and transformational activity of human consciousness.\u201d As presentational, imagination presents<\/em> the world to us by configuring perceptual data into the recognizable patterns by which we inhabit it. As transformational, it enables us to reconfigure, play with, respond to, and alter that world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That selective \u201ctaking up\u201d of the world (to use a set of terms introduced by anthropologist Tim Ingold<\/a>) in turn leads to the \u201cbringing forth\u201d of the world to others — a \u201cconsumption\u201d and \u201cproduction\u201d that occurs on a macro level, as in Ingold\u2019s cultural analyses, as much as it constitutes the micro level activity that A. N. Whitehead termed \u201cprehension.\u201d As readers of this blog will likely know, the concept of prehension<\/a> was at the center of Whitehead\u2019s process-relational<\/a> ontology: it is what it means to live, to act, to exist, to be — which always means: to become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To act is to respond to things as given to perception (and imagination; Whitehead’s theory of perception<\/a> is a nuanced one). The things \u201cas given\u201d are the \u201cobjective\u201d to which our response adds its \u201csubjective,\u201d which becomes objective for the next arising subjectivity, with subjectivity and objectivity leading one another like two companion horses taking turns in a DNA strand-like spiraling dance. In events of relational engagement, each of us makes ourselves<\/em> via our relations with those to which we respond. In that way the world is made, moment to moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter creativity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between the perception and the response there is a gap, in which we find the creativity<\/em> at the heart of every action: the gap between what is and what could be, a gap that is traversed in every prehension, every \u201cactual occasion\u201d adding to the “creatively advancing<\/a>” universe. This gap indicates the subjunctive mode, which Katri Ratia references in her framing document<\/a> for this conference. Ratia quotes Jordan Miller (2019:6), for whom the subjunctive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

describes the world, not as it is, but as it might be. This \u2018might be\u2019 is the root of both movements of political resistance which seek to model life differently than the status quo and of religious world-construction through theology, myth and ritual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This \u201cmight be\u201d informs every act of imagination by which we change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a conference on \u201critual creativity,\u201d it\u2019s worth noting (and notable that no one has noted it yet!) that it was Whitehead who in fact coined the term \u201ccreativity\u201d in his 1926 book Religion in the Making<\/em>, and then developed it as the heart of his metaphysics in Process and Reality<\/em>, published three years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Whitehead, creativity is a metaphysical ultimate, the core of his conception of the universe. As Andr\u00e9 Cloots puts it<\/a>, creativity articulates the ways in which \u201cbecoming can be thought in all its possible directions [\u2026 :] the ongoingness as well as the novelty, the ‘that’ of becoming as well as its ‘what,’ its absoluteness as well as its relationality.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this processual, relational, and evental<\/a> metaphysics sees every action as responding to relational prompts, then certain kinds of actions respond so as to actively maintain<\/em> or vary<\/em> relations in particular ways. \u201cRitual\u201d and \u201cplay\u201d make up two broad categories of such kinds of action. Where play loosens the relations of \u201cthe world as it is\u201d in order to try them on in different guises, test them out and query their boundaries and paradoxes, and otherwise vary and have fun with them, ritual\u2019s goals are more formalized and intentional with respect to that world. Ritual works to maintain, <\/strong>calibrate or recalibrate, reset or re-establish (following disruptions or disasters), and otherwise coordinate relations in time and in space in order to maintain a habitable world. Both, however, are inherently creative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ritual as inhabitory practice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, I propose to redefine ritual by building on Hanegraaff\u2019s notion of \u201cimaginative formations.\u201d Ritual, I suggest, is best thought of as an embodied relational practice of imaginative formations<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is embodied<\/em> in being intimately performed by and through material bodies, objects, and landscapes. It takes place in space and in place and it makes<\/em> place and space, shaping the grooves and patterns of space for its performers and participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is relational<\/em> in that it both constitutes and is constituted by relations among different entities, perceived and imagined, human and nonhuman. In this it always involves some form of negotiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is practice<\/em> in that its performance takes place temporally with an eye toward the future. It takes place in time, but also shapes time, following and funneling it into grooves and patterns for its practitioners. Ritual bears repetition, unfolding within parameters set by relational negotiations, which have their regularities, their rhythms, their comings and goings, successes and failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And ritual contributes to the constitution of imaginative formations<\/em>, that is, to the worlds we come to live in and by, worlds made up of relational webs incorporating us (those we recognize as co-subjects), others (who might be nonhuman, other-than-human, transhuman), and things in-between (whose subjectness and otherness may be negotiable).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ritual is the embodied, performative practice of imagination by which worlds are created and maintained for their dwellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ritual is in this sense an inhabitory <\/em>practice. (It is sometimes inhi<\/em>bitory, even prohibitory, and often ex<\/em>hibitory, especially in its more ceremonial and festive forms. But that\u2019s not what I mean here.) It is inhabitory because it enables its practitioners and participants to better inhabit the real and imagined worlds in which they (wish to) dwell. To inhabit (as I’ve noted before<\/a> in relation to C. S. Peirce’s arguments in defense of habit<\/a>) means both to make habitual and to shape into a habitus — a “co-(in)habited” environment that is comfortable and suitable to our continuance and flourishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinhabiting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s a resonance here with the bioregional movement’s<\/a> call to \u201creinhabit<\/a>\u201d our bioregions<\/a> — to effectively learn to \u201creindigenize<\/a>\u201d our relationships with the land, waters, animal worlds, and ecologies around us — that resonance, for me, is quite intentional. With its impending climate crisis and related challenges, today\u2019s world calls for reinhabitation<\/a> on multiple levels — which should lead those of us who study ritual (or play, for that matter) to ask: what kinds of reinhabitory practices<\/a> are appropriate for people and places today? How might we contribute to them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are normative questions, not the kinds of questions scholars are typically required to answer. (They\u2019re also questions I\u2019ve been asking<\/a> since the heyday of the bioregional movement a few decades ago.) But that makes them no less important than empirical or “scholarly” questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my teaching and writing on “environmental culture,” I consider the virtues, paradoxes, motivations, and impacts of a variety of reinhabitory practices, from conservation, restoration, and rewilding projects, local food and farm-to-table networks, and “creative placemaking<\/a>,” to eco-spiritualities of one kind or another. Almost all of these fall somewhere in the muddled middle between<\/em> the categories that shape the modern world\u2019s understanding of itself (what Latour calls<\/a> the “modern constitution<\/a>“): Religion, Science, Art(s), Politics, Economy, and so on. That distribution of powers, or \u201cdistribution of the sensible<\/a>,\u201d tends to relegate \u201ccreativity\u201d to the artists whose job it is to be creative but not<\/em> political, or religious, or scientific, et al.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whitehead\u2019s argument dispels any such distribution, and I would suggest that the inhabitory practices we need today ought to draw from all<\/em> of these categories at once. Reinhabiting means bringing together the work of the arts, of science, of politics and policy, and of religion and spirituality (among other things). It requires utilizing all the tools at our disposal including ritual, play, inventiveness, and protest alongside planning, media campaigns, and rational argument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eco-humanities<\/a> have been moving toward this kind of perspective for years (see here<\/a> for a recent rendition), but sometimes the movement has seemed all too haphazard. And to be fair, the structure of academe, with its publishing expectations, granting systems, review and compliance boards, and so on, hasn’t exactly supported that shift. So we keep tweaking and muddling our way forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it goes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following post elaborates on some comments I made this week at the Ritual Creativity conference at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Deep thanks to conference organizers Katri Ratia and Fran\u00e7ois Gauthier for inviting me to what turned out to be an immensely rewarding event, and to my co-panelists Graham Harvey, Sarah Pike, and Susannah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4415,4422],"tags":[455030,710291,710296,710295,354,710292,710294,455029,710293,417,692707,17836,710290,710289,423],"class_list":["post-12606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecophilosophy","category-process-relational-thought","tag-bioregionalism","tag-fribourg","tag-hanegraaff","tag-imaginal-practices","tag-imagination","tag-inhabitory-practices","tag-placemaking","tag-prehension","tag-reinhabitation","tag-religion","tag-religious-imagination","tag-ritual","tag-ritual-creativity","tag-ritual-studies","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3hk","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9066,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/12\/06\/reassembling-democracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":12606,"position":0},"title":"Reassembling democracy?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the abstract I've just sent in for the keynote I'll be giving at the Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource conference in Oslo in February: Reassembling A Broken World: Toward Practices of Anthropocenic Mindfulness If democracy is to be reassembled, with the aid of ritualized practices, how is it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9559,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/01\/21\/comparative-practicology-philosophy-as-a-way-of-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":12606,"position":1},"title":"Comparative ‘practicology’: Philosophy as a way of life","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This course (an Honors College course I'm happy to be to teaching this year) is already in progress, but I'd be curious to hear any comments on it. 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