For this class, we explored the philosophical implications of the Anthropocene, the recommended designation for the present geological epoch we inhabit. In the Anthropocene, no place on earth is left untouched by human hands.

“Re-story-ation”

One thing we learn from the Anthropocene is the extent to which we humans are interrelated with our environments. One of the thinkers we engaged in this regard was Robin Kimmerer. Kimmerer encourages us to reimagine our relationship to our environments through stories. But not just any stories, the stories of the particular lands we inhabit: here, in the particularities of Nłʔay, those stories are Séliš-Ql̓ispé stories. Kimnmerer has a beautiful term for this practice of learning the stories of particular lands as a practice of healing the land: “re-story-ation.”

"Decolonization as Translation"

But, as Sol Neely has put it, “encountering wisdom in its place risks reinscribing coloniality”—that is, how could those of us who are positioned as settlers on Séliš-Ql̓ispé land learn Séliš-Ql̓ispé stories in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the violence of colonization through the colonization of Indigenous knowledge and culture? Neely suggests that a kind of translation is required—what he calls, “decolonization as translation.” This is a kind of translation that is attentive to the violent colonial strategies such as boarding schools that constitute the reasons why many Indigenous cultures and languages are fragmented in the first place.

Midrash

I think there’s resources in Jewish traditions to aid in Neely's project here: midrash. Emmanuel Levinas describes midrash as “the fruit of centuries of spiritual life forming a chain of tradition in which thought is at once transmitted and renewed.” Midrash is a hermeneutic or interpretive practice in rabbinic Judaism that has to do with making sense of the gaps in Jewish texts generally through telling stories. Midrash is an act of translation to make sense of traditional stories in one’s current temporal and spatial context.

The limits of translation and Indigenous language revitalization

Finally, translation has its limits. And, in the end, says Neely, “we will forever remain tone deaf to wisdom in its place if we do not commit ourselves to the study of indigenous languages in those place.” We must learn the Indigenous languages of the particular lands we inhabit for the sake of becoming environmentally responsible as well as, one might add, in order to contribute to the growing movement of Indigenous language revitalization.

Thoreau’s new sensing and critique of the eye

In her book, Bird Relics, Branka Arsić argues that a major part of Henry David Thoreau’s project was to conceive of how we might have access to the literal world through developing an “intense empiricism” that “abandons the traditional philosophical belief that human access to nature must always be mediated by concepts.” On the way to an unmediated access to our surroundings, Thoreau critiques what he calls “ideation,” which refers to one theory of perception such that when we physically sense something in the world, our brain makes a picture of it in our mind and what we are directly experiencing is that picture, but not the real world.  

The eye, for Thoreau, is the metaphorical epitome of ideation. If you think about it, many of our metaphors for knowledge are indeed visual metaphors: I see what you mean; Kaleb's CEP is very illuminating. Instead of the eye, Thoreau suggests we use the ear as the metaphorical epitome of perception.

A Jewish "consciousness of hearing"

Emmanuel Levinas, whose project has been described as a translation of “Jewish sources into Greek,” develops a similar critique. But Levinas’s constructive account of perception is quite different from Thoreau’s. Returning to Sol Neely is really helpful here. Neely explains that, instead of a consciousness of seeing, Levinas develops a consciousness of hearing. A consciousness of hearing is a radical openness to the world.

In a consciousness of hearing, perception doesn’t begin with “ideation,” or perhaps what one might also call intentionality, but inspiration, which Levinas connects to the literalness of respiration. In this move, Levinas appeals to his “Jewish source material” which are the oral traditions of Judaism, or the oral Torah, which also helps to reveal the significance of oral traditions generally. It is an openness to encountering the breath of the other (inspiration), or as Neely puts it so well: through the connected duality of inspiration and respiration, “we breathe in into vitality and breathe out into vulnerability.”

Encountering wisdom in its place

Neely reads Levinas through an Indigenous “inspired eco-phenomenology” to argue that a consciousness of hearing is attuned to the land “which is always already storied and ecological in ways that cultures of usurpation are historically tone deaf toward.” We can learn to become attuned, in this fundamentally different modality of consciousness, to the histories of violence against the land and the Indigenous peoples who have inhabited this land since time immemorial as well as the stories from these lands that teach us how to live well in the particularities of these lands.

Deborah Bird Rose's Shimmer

This course explored a wide range of philosophical topics relevant to non-human animals, such as animal cognition, animal ethics, and intersectionality (of justice issues for non-human animals and for humans). I spent most of the semester reflecting on ethics and wildlife policy—in particular, wolves in Montana and flying-foxes in Australia. My CEP is informed by what I learned from Deborah Bird Rose and her flying-fox teachers in her book, Shimmer.

This quote, I think, captures the ethos of Rose's book: “The story is bleak, but it is not only about death. Flying-foxes interact with humans in networks focused on kinship, care, rescue, advocacy and research. Human beings offer love and commitment; they bring assistance, bear witness and, through their actions, testify to an interspecies ethic that responds to suffering and, at the same time, praises the gifts that flying-foxes bring to the world.”

Yes!

“Yes!,” according to Rose, “is the great powerhouse of life on earth.” Yes!, “asserts the value of life over the powers of destruction, and flows through living creatures in all their fidelity to their own way of life, their new generations, their mutualisms, and their flamboyance.” And, for humans, “saying yes to life is a profound ethical choice. It is an embrace of the living world, a grateful response to the gifts of life, a pledge of solidarity with Earth’s way of becoming, and a commitment to witness the work of life.”

Yes! as הננ

I think that it is reasonable that we might think of Rose’s “Yes!” as her own translation of the Hebrew word הננ (hineni), which, in Jewish traditions, is the ultimate affirmation and acceptance of responsibility. Yes! and הננ are affirmations of the goodness of creatures and creation in general and an acceptance of the responsibility to bear witness to both suffering and joy.

ברכה

In Jewish traditions, one great example of הננ as affirmation of the goodness of creation and responding to this goodness is ברכה (brakha), or the making of a blessing, which is a praise of the goodness of others, or, following James Hatley’s formulation, a praising of the praise of creation. In making the connection to my CEP explicit here, ברכות (brakhot, plural of brakha) are a central feature of Tu BiShvat. According to Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, for “the kabbalists, the point of the [Tu BiShvat] seder is to repair the world”: “The more fruit you eat and the more wine you drink, the more blessings you’re required to say, the more the earth is healed.” 

What do I mean by "decolonial"?

Decolonial is meant to signal the larger movement of decolonization. Decolonization, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang tell us, is not metaphorical, but is literally about “the repatriation of Indigenous land and life.” I think of my project as decolonial because I understand it—from the position of a white settler occupying stolen Séliš-Ql̓ispé land—as first and foremost a promotion of the repatriation of Indigenous lands. Though my project isn’t literally giving land back to Indigenous peoples, I still think of it as decolonial, i.e. promoting land back, because I am attempting to enact ways of inhabiting land that ultimately recognize Indigenous sovereignty over their homelands and facilitate a consciousness in (especially Jewish) settler inhabitants of Indigenous lands that might lead to literal land back.