From the Analysis of Animism to The Practice of Animacy As Politics

Abstract

This article takes cognisance of the growing awareness of the ineluctable connectedness of planetary existence, contrasting this with a persistent tendency to reflect upon political agency in ways that separate the non-human world out from human political actors. How can we overcome this persistent separatism? The article turns to contemporary animist thought to seek a solution to this dilemma. The article begins by acknowledging the difficulty of the problem, demonstrating how, paradoxically, separatist thought contaminates even the very impulse to integrate animism into a politicised version of the humanities. It then seeks resolutions of such powerful containments of animist thought by proposing a number of tentative resolutions of the aporia that dog the task of developing a more inclusive politics from the respective fields of the new materialism, vitalism or animism.