The previous volume of this book ended the chapter on hunting, and the volume, with the epigraph that introduces the present volume. It also stated that the experiential dimension of San cosmology is the present volumeâs central concern, specifically its ontological component, on the intersubjective human-animal relationship and the porous species divide.âAttentivenessâ, âattunednessâ, âsubjective identification with the preyâ, âextension of peopleâs sensesâ, âtapping into sense perceptions of other speciesâ: the language of the last two paragraphs of this chapter, which also reverberated throughout the entire discussion of hunting, as it did through that of ritual and ludic dancing, is the language of the body, of perception and experience. The effect of the reiterations of this experience of cross-species intersubjectivity and its transforming effects on the human beingâs being within these different domains of San culture, and of thought, imagination and action, is that the central theme of San cosmology, ontological mutability, is both mutually corroborated within the peopleâs thought world and grounded, at times bodily, in experience.
Before proceeding, a brief synopsis of the book as a whole (i.e. Vol. I and II) is provided, as a broad background and context for the matters dealt with in the present volume.
Synopsis of Book
The two volumes of this book are complementary, the first being primarily descriptive in tone and substance, the second discursive. The ethnographic information of Vol. I is presented in anticipation of the arguments of Vol. II, which in turn refers back to the preceding volume, grounding analysis here in the description there. Ideally, the two volumes should thus both be read.
However, each volume also to some extent stands on its own; the first as an ethnographic monograph on San cosmology and ontology, and the second as an anthropological study of ontological ambiguity or, as I refer to it because of the inherent dynamic element of transformation, ontological mutability. It does so in terms of what in the discipline is a standard, tried-and-tested, two-pronged modus operandi for anthropological analysis. The one mode is an in-depth study of a certain matter in one culture, the one visited by and known to the writer on the basis of intensive and protracted ethnographic fieldwork that strives toward an understanding of the visited people in terms of their culture. The other is comparison, in an attempt to broaden the understanding gained on the researched matter by the first study. In this book, the latter endeavor, dealt with in Vol. II, inherently, through its epistemological operation, refers to the San ethnography in Vol. I; however, in presenting new ethnographic information on other cultures and peoples this part of the book also tells its own story.
Volume I deals with how ontological mutability is manifested, through hybridity and transformation, via the imagination, in myth and lore, conveyed by storytellers as well as, more concretely and starkly, through images produced by past and present-day San artists on rock surfaces or canvas and paper. Also considered is how ontological mutability enters peopleâs awareness not virtually, via the imagination, by means of stories and images, but actually, through experience, in the lived world, specifically the real-life contexts of ritual, play and hunting. Each of these events provides the principals and participants involved in themâtrance dancers, intiands, play dancers, huntersâmoments at which being-change may be experienced, either mentally (âfeeling elandâ) or bodily (âbeing elandâ).
How ontological mutability is experienced, as well as the impacts of this inherently disjunctive and potentially disorienting experience on human and personal identity and integrity, is elaborated on in Vol. II, as that volumeâs primary concern. This is examined in the context of the San and with reference throughout to the ethnographic information presented in the other volume, in terms of epistemological, experiential and environmental parameters, through which awareness of ontological mutability is conveyed to and through the mind and the body and through being-in-the-world groundedness.
After this discussion, the ethnographic ground and analytical scope shift and expand, to how other people and cultures think about, perceive and experience ontological mutability. This is done within a loosely comparative framework referenced to the San. It considers three cultural contexts, each broader in scope than the next, expanding the number and kind of factorsâstructural, acculturational, historical, ecological onesâthat impinge on how people in different cultures engage with animals. The first is the Bantu-speaking neighbors of the San with whom some San groups have had contact for centuries, with mutual influences on one anotherâs cosmologies, mythologies and ritual practices and their human-animal aspects. The second comparative context is another hunting society, in another, remote and ecologically radically different part of the world (Inuit of Canadaâs eastern Arctic).
The third context, the one broadest in scope and vision, is Western cosmology, especially its post-Cartesian, posthumanist take on the human-animal nexus and animalsâ personhood, being and umwelt. All this is quite a new and little-charted cosmological territory for anthropocentric, species-solipsistic Westerners and outside their epistemological and ontological mainstream, raising fundamental questions and issues, about species identity and autonomy and, more generally, human beings and being human. For the San, and other hunter-gatherers, such matters lie in their intellectual and cosmological mainstream and within well-charted terrain. Thus a study of their view of human-animal relationsâof the kind here presentedâmay provide Westerners, specifically the recent researchers, cognitive ethologists and other Western âanthrozoologistsâ who have jettisoned the Cartesian perspective, with helpful clues and insights in their new and novel, intellectually recalibrated take on the age-old and universal question of what is human.
The bookâs conclusion discusses critically the impact of the relational ontology paradigm on San studies and considers epistemological and ontological implications of the San (and hunter-gatherer) perception of the human-animal relationship for Western ideas on the same matter.
Outline of Chapters
Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 consider the experiential implications of a cosmology in which ontological mutabilityâambiguity and inconstancyâholds sway. The central issue considered is how people experience ontological mutability and deal with this profound identity issue mentally and affectively. The matter is dealt with in general terms in Chap. 2, which lays out three avenues followed in this phenomenological consideration of transformation: a general receptiveness to ontological ambiguity; the experiential impact, on the mind and senses, of transformation; an intersection of the myth and spirit world with reality. They are the topics for the subsequent three chapters.
The first (Chap. 3) chapter is about what might be deemed a âtolerance for ambiguityâ in Sanâs world view and mindset. I considered this sort of tolerance in my previous book, at the level of social-structural and conceptual ambiguity (Guenther 1999: 226â37), and I ask here whether such tolerance is found also at the more fundamental level, of ontologyâbeing, being-in-the-word and species identityâthan of social organization and epistemology. Does tolerance for ontological ambiguity underlie the other type of ambiguity, the same way ontology constitutes, as argued by Tim Ingold, the foundation for epistemology, the former concerned with life and being, the latter with thought and knowing (2006: 19)? How do people whose human identity at times merges with that of animals deal with the matter of monsters, the prototypal embodiment of which is heldâby Westernersâto be a being that confounds ontological categories (Cohen 1996: 6; Weinstock 2014: 1)? And how do they deal with what is perhaps the profoundest of existential issues for humans, the basic contradiction, conundrum and moral dilemma, over eating the flesh of animal-persons?
Chapter 4, on the impact of the experience of transformation, considers this impact from two perspectives, one virtual and vicarious, through myth via the imagination or as witnessed by someone watching a shamanâs lion transformation, the other actual and direct, through the personâs body and the senses.
Chapter 5 deals with the at-times hovering closeness of myth and spirit beings and presences in the natural and social world of the San that brings some of the myth and spirit worldâs ontological inchoateness and inconstancy to this world. The San foragerâs being-in-the-world place and space is the natural environment, in particular the hunting ground, the arena within which animals are encountered most directly, eye-to-eye and cheek-to-jowl. This in itself keeps humans constantly aware of ontological ambiguity and mutability, their samenessâas and othernessâfrom animals whose identity they may assume mentally and bodily at certain moments in the hunt. That awareness is intensified by the presence, in the same landscape, and, at times on hunting ground, in the form of a lion- or jackal-shaman or a trickster-eland, of the ontologically uber-fluid beings or states from the mythical and preternatural domains. This presence potentially transforms their being-state, from virtual, imagined or thought-out myth and spirit beings to actual ones, seen, encountered or even âbecomeâ by people.
Given that the conceptual and expressive arena wherein ontological mutability is played out most extravagantly and explicitly is myth, and given its evident intersection with reality, on the hunting ground and its doings, a number of phenomenological questions are raised: How does an umwelt that contains mythic beings and mystical happenings affect peopleâs lives, as they walk, gather and hunt, instrumentally and prosaically as they must in marginal environments? Do mythic and mystic presences enhance or diminish their âbeing-in-the-worldâ experience, over which, Ingold, one of the leading voices of the New Animism, would fly a flag bearing âthe insignia of lifeâ (2013: 248)? How do so âprosaicâ a hunter-gatherer folk as the San are by some researchers alleged to be square their prosaicism with enchantment? Or do they? Is the latter something from the past, more or less remote and situated not within the Sanâs imagination but instead within the analystâs âpre-colonial imaginaryâ, all of it superseded by a more disenchanted present? The last question is dealt with in the last section of Chap. 4; the other questions, intimated in the chapter, are returned to in the conclusion.
Chapter 6 considers San animistic cosmology, in terms of the New Animism paradigm of relational ontology cross-culturally by comparing â(S)animismâ to other animisms. Each of the two sets of people and cultures focused on in this comparative exercise is linked to the San, one in terms of geographic contiguity and the other in terms of cultural similarity. The first are neighboring Bantu-speakers with whom some San groups have had close and long-standing contact and whose culture contains mytho-magical notions and practices about animal hybridity and transformation, inviting speculation on inter-acculturative influences The second are other hunter-gatherer cultures in other regions of the world (specifically the Inuit of Canadaâs eastern Arctic, which I have selected for this cross-cultural exercise as it sheds light on certain cultural-ecological aspects of San and hunter-gatherer cosmology and ontology).
In accordance with anthropologyâs predilection for âthemâââusâ comparison, I also include a section on animistic elements, in relational-ontological terms, in Western cosmologyâwhich are, and have always been there, notwithstanding Cartesian and Christian anthrocentrismâI include a few remarks about recent trends toward a âpostâ- or âtransâ-humanist perspective that ...