"Comme si...": des récits de présence

Le « comme si » est souvent utilisé dans les récits de sentiment de présence d'un défunt. Il est un opérateur d’ouverture entre les possibles. Il n’est pas un retrait interprétatif, il n’est pas une mesure de prudence, mais un artifice sémantique qui permet d’affirmer et de maintenir activement plusieurs possibilités, « c’est peut-être moi, c’est peut-être pas ». Le « comme si » fait tenir et communiquer ces possibilités. Ce qui veut dire, puisqu’il assume de faire communiquer, que le « comme si » prend acte des écarts et les connecte par petites approximations. Le « comme si » de ce fait, opère de manière semblable, quoique pas identique, à la « présence de la présence » : il performe la coexistence de deux ontologies ; il explore le passage entre deux mondes en le traversant, toujours à pas presque imperceptibles, il relie en zigzagant de l’un à l’autre deux trajets possibles, deux manières de s’y aventurer, sans sauter, sans grands élans, sans grand écart

Ne pas oublier les talents

Accomplir une œuvre qui réclame achèvement, c’est, je crois, ce que Albert Demaret pourrait aujourd’hui souhaiter : chercher comment elle peut résonner pour nous aujourd’hui, interroger son actualité

Thinking like a rat

peer reviewedIn submitting rats to tests such as running a maze, behaviorist researchers failed to take into account the interest and point of view of the rats. As a result, the research missed important questions and relations at hand. The critiques about experimenter effect and intuitive perception of researchers questions by research subjects can be more fully extended to animals as research subjects and interactants in research who perceive and interpret situations, set-ups, and questions. Taking meaning and biosemiotics into account helps give a better model of animal subjectivity as exercised in the interpretation of situations and the pursuit of interest. © 2015 Taylor & Francis

Faire de James un lecteur anachronique de Von Uexküll : esquisse d’un perspectivisme radical

Faire de James un lecteur anachronique de Von Uexküll, prolonger les ressources de sa pratique en contournant l’alternative subjectivisme-objectivisme : c'est ce que nous avons désigné comme le possible d'un perspectivisme radical. Le perspectivisme radical, au départ, se définit comme un pari : il doit traduire la possibilité d’un monde commun sans qu’il soit nécessaire de recourir ni à un monde objectif, ni à un principe transcendant. Il doit en même temps résister au choix comminatoire entre un monde qui existe « par nous » et un monde qui existe « malgré nous ». Le perspectivisme radical nous propose un monde « avec nous ».Le monde commun se constitue à la fois dans le partage et dans la multiplication des intérêts, pas à pas, ou plutôt, devrions-nous dire, action par action

Pesquisar junto aos mortos

“Os mortos são gente como os outros”. A partir dessa proposição, feita porum de seus intelocutores em campo, a autora se lança numa investigação sobre os dispositivos e agenciamentos que permitem reduzir distâncias entre vivos e mortos e operar a comunicação entre eles. Respeitando as indeterminações aí presentes, incorporando-as à descrição e restituindo a riqueza das operações engendradas pelos atores, inclusive seus próprios modos de investigar o significado das mensagens dos mortos/espíritos, o texto aborda uma variedade de temas que animam o debate antropológico, tais como: antropomorfismo, rituais de possessão, comunicação inteligível e sensível, regimes de verdade, dispositivos terapêuticos, entre outros

Looking for reconciliations between anecdotes and causalities: The stoical model

Our bias in establishing causality ties which attribute to one consequence a unique cause make circular causality difficult as a way of thinking. Philosophy shows many theories about causality which all are ways to reduce anxiety. Our experiences sometimes require us to go farther than the instrumental (causal) level and to discover a place where disorder may be reestablished in the movement and contradiction. The Stoical model of expressive causality gives a different meaning to our work. In practice the anecdote becomes the essential element in a chair of expressive causalities. A clinical example shows how the anecdote can be the intersection between the family and therapist, offering a new dimension to circular causality and helps the therapist to understand and create another way of thinking about disorder and confusion. © 1991 Human Sciences Press, Inc

Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices

Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices is a speculative endeavor asking how we may represent, relay, and read worlds differently by seeing other species as protagonists in their own rights. What other stories are to be invented and told from within those many-tongued chatters of multispecies collectives? Could such stories teach us how to become human otherwise? Often, the human is defined as the sole creature who holds language, and consequently is capable of articulating, representing, and reflecting upon the world. And yet, the world is made and remade by ongoing and many-tongued conversations between various organisms reverberating with sound, movement, gestures, hormones, and electrical signals. Everywhere, life is making itself known, heard, and understood in a wide variety of media and modalities. Some of these registers are available to our human senses, while some are not. Facing a not-so-distant future catastrophe, which in many ways and for many of us is already here, it is becoming painstakingly clear that our imaginaries are in dire need of corrections and replacements. How do we cultivate and share other kinds of stories and visions of the world that may hold promises of modest, yet radical hope? If we keep reproducing the same kind of languages, the same kinds of scientific gatekeeping, the same kinds of stories about “our” place in nature, we remain numb in the face of collapse. Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices offers steps toward a (self)critical multispecies philosophy which interrogates and qualifies the broad and seemingly neutral concept of humanity utilized in and around conversations grounded within Western science and academia. Artists, activists, writers, and scientists give a myriad of different interpretations of how to tell our worlds using different media – and possibly gives hints as to how to change it, too

Culture and Gender do not Dissolve into how Scientists “read” Nature: Thelma Rowell’s Heterodoxy

From her very first descriptions of the baboons (in the sixties), Thelma Rowell’s observations contrasted sharply with those of her colleagues (mostly males) working with similar animals. Numerous observers among primatologists and science studies scholars have suggested that women observed differently. For some, womens’ patience makes them ideal observers. Rowell insisted that her challenging ideas about dominance relationships in primates were a result of her having been trained always to question authority. Roswell’s distinction lay in doing the same sorts of things others scientists were doing but for far longer, which enabled her to see more and different results