{"id":1301,"date":"2010-06-23T10:46:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-23T15:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/23\/signatures\/"},"modified":"2010-06-23T10:46:30","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T15:46:30","slug":"signatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/23\/signatures\/","title":{"rendered":"signatures"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Chapter Eight of Vibrant Matter<\/em>, Jane Bennett asks: “Are there more everyday tactics for cultivating an ability to discern the vitality of matter?” and, in response, mentions allowing oneself<\/p>\n

\n

to anthropomorphize, to relax into resemblances discerned across ontological divides: you (mis)take the wind outside at night for your father’s wheezy breathing in the next room; you get up too fast and see stars; a plastic topographical map reminds you of the veins on the back of your hand; the rhythm of the cicada’s [sic] reminds you of the wailing of an infant; the falling stone seems to express a conative desire to persevere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What I like about this is not so much the argument for anthropomorphism (specifically) as the implied and more general argument for ‘morphism’, that is, for allowing one’s imaginative capacities — the capacities to take on and think with images — to build the forms of one’s perceptions and conceptions of the world. We’ve lost this ability somewhat since the decline of the epistemologies of resemblance that characterized the pre-modern and Renaissance imagination (according to Foucault and others). The ability to read the “signatures” of the world is something poets, of course, have not forgotten, but it’s also something that semiotics (of the Peircian variant) holds, or should hold, as central to the ways sense is made of things.<\/p>\n

As for anthropomorphism, as John Livingston<\/a> taught me, there’s nothing unusual about it. Dogs canomorphize, birds avimorphize, humans anthropomorphize. All of these morphic practices can be tested by trial and error for their validity in specific circumstances. The idea that something that looks <\/em>somewhat like me and acts <\/em>in some ways like me is<\/b><\/em> like me is a reasonable starting hypothesis for a relational epistemology and ethic.<\/p>\n

(See here<\/a> for more on theorizing imagination.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Chapter Eight of Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett asks: “Are there more everyday tactics for cultivating an ability to discern the vitality of matter?” and, in response, mentions allowing oneself to anthropomorphize, to relax into resemblances discerned across ontological divides: you (mis)take the wind outside at night for your father’s wheezy breathing in the next […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977],"tags":[16907,16787,354],"class_list":["post-1301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-bennett","tag-imagination"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-kZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1911,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/29\/on-anthropomorphism-making-humans-pencils-souls\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":0},"title":"On anthropomorphism: making humans, pencils, & souls","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Tim Morton has recently been suggesting that just as humans anthropomorph (that's a verb), so pencils pencilmorph. I love this idea, though I'm not sure about its implications, which I want to think through here. Anthropomorphism #1 (traditional, & its extensions) The traditional definition of anthropomorphism is something like \"the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/12\/lead-pencil-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1173,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/03\/secret-language-of-scientists-going-public\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":1},"title":"secret language (of scientists) going public","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At a time when so many social mammal species are in crisis, it's at least heartening to see news like tonight's 60 Minutes segment on \"The Secret Language of Elephants\" or today's Times Online article \"Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'.\" The scientific taboo on anthropomorphism is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5083,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/07\/22\/moving-environments-day-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":2},"title":"Moving Environments, Day 1","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"What follows are notes from the first day of Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, and Ecocinema. These are, needless to say, my own hastily drawn up notes (and I'm still a little jet-lagged from my arrival yesterday). Forgive the point form and abbreviation inconsistencies. Any errors are my own; any wonderful\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1294,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/18\/half-way-house\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":3},"title":"half-way house","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The further I have gotten into Vibrant Matter, the more I have been thinking of it as a kind of half-way house on the route to a process-relational ontology. (I'll admit I've read the whole book now, but I'm trying to defer my comments on the final chapter till next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1298,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/20\/partitions-of-the-sensible\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":4},"title":"partitions of the sensible","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The following began as a summary of the final chapter of Vibrant Matter, but it somehow mutated into something more like a position statement (which I hope doesn't sound like too much of a rant). But I'll let it go as it is, running the risk of speaking too loudly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7952,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/12\/29\/emis-cinematic-materialism-a-response-to-reviews\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":5},"title":"EMI’s cinematic materialism (a response to reviews)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest issue\u00a0of the open-access\u00a0Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, an issue devoted to \"Gilles Deleuze and Moving Images,\" includes a review by Niall Flynn of my book Ecologies of the Moving Image. Another recent review of EMI can be found in the The Journal of Ecocriticism. 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