A mistake, says Routledge

It was all a mistake, it turns out.

See also:

Book review "Discourses gone astray" (not) featured in "Education and multilingualism"

Book review "Discourses gone astray" (not) featured in "Education and multilingualism"

Routledge (Taylor & Francis) wrote me notifying me that my article (book review) "Discourses gone astray: restoring animality, humanity, and language" is featured in their Education and Multilingualism collection. However, I don´t see it there.

Full reference for book review "Discourses gone astray"

During my recent reporting of academic activities in 2013 including publications, I came across the print pagination of my double book review "Discourses gone astray: Restoring animality, humanity, and language". Full reference:

Tønnessen, Morten 2013. Discourses gone astray: Restoring animality, humanity, and language. Book review. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 8(3): 255-259 (published online July 1st 2013, DOI: 10.1080/17447143.2013.810631).

See also:

Book review (Abram and Stibbe) finished; accepted; proof-read

Book review on animals and discourse published online

Book review on animals and discourse published online

My book review "Discourses gone astray: restoring animality, humanity, and language" (a review of David Abram's Becoming animal and Arran Stibbe's Animals erased) was published online in Journal of Multicultural Discourses on July 1st. See it here (login required to see all, but first page preview available to all).

Book review (Abram and Stibbe) finished; accepted; proof-read

Towards the end of May I finished a book review for Journal of Multicultural Discourses (published by Taylor & Francis), which had been commissioned by Sune Vork Steffensen, who were a review editor at the time. The review is titled "Discourses gone astray: Restoring animality, humanity, and language", and reviews the following two books:

Becoming animal: an earthly cosmology, by David Abram, New York, Pantheon Books, 2010, xi + 313 pp., US$26.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-375-42171-6 

Animals erased: discourse, ecology, and reconnection with the natural world, by Arran Stibbe, Middletown – Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 2012, viii + 209 pp., US$24.95/£22.50 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8195-7232-5

My review was accepted a few days later, and a couple of days ago I proof-read it. The text will soon appear online, and then, either late in 2013 or early in 2014, in print.

Article to be written to special issue of Agora: How unique/distinctive is the human kind?

In February I was contacted by Roar Høstaker, guest editor of a forthcoming Special Issue of the Norwegian academic journal Agora (Ragnar Myklebust, the guest editor of another forthcoming Special Issue of the same journal, had contacted me a couple of weeks earlier, and communicated my name to Høstaker). The theme of the Special Issue is "livspolitikk" (politics of life - something akin to yet narrower than Foucalt's 'biopolitics').

The theme of my contribution, which is due February 1st 2014, will be the question of how unique/distinctive the human kind is in comparison with other animals/creatures, based on Umwelt theory (and secondarily - or in parallel - Jakob von Uexküll's own view in this context). It is further likely that I willl touch upon David Abram's book Becoming Animal and Dominique Lestel's claim that the animal is the future of Man. The Special Issue will appear as Agora no. 3/2014.

CFP: Panel on Eco-phenomenology at NoSP 2012

I am hoping to gather a group of scholars/graduate students for a joint panel on the theme "Eco-phenomenology: Phenomenology and the life sciences" for the 10th annual conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP), which is to be arranged at the University of Oslo, Norway, June 7-9 2012. The general theme of the NoSP conference is "The Varieties of Phenomenology".

This panel will likely include presentation of the book Environment, Embodiment and Gender (eds. Johannes Servan and Ane Faugstad Aarø; Bergen: Hermes Text, 2011), where Charles Brown, David Abram, Ted Toadvine, Monika Langer and others contribute with chapters. Topics of the panel will further include Uexküllian phenomenology and animal subjectivity. Further proposals from various angles are welcome.

If accepted by the organizers, this proposed panel will envelop papers presented in parallel with other sessions. The maximum length of each talk is 20 minutes, and there will be 10 minutes for discussion. Please submit your proposal to me as the panel convenor in the form of a suggested title and an abstract of maximum 200 words.

Proposals should be sent to mortentoennessen[at]gmail.com by November 30th.

David Abram paper online

David Abram's 'The discourse of the birds' is now available on the webpage of the journal Biosemiotics (full access for subscribers only - alternatively, you can pay 34 Euro to get access to the electronic article. Cheapest subscription rate is 35 Euro, for members of International Society for Biosemiotic Studies). The article is a slightly altered version of a book chapter from Abram's new book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, which is currently the bestselling book at Amazon within 'phenomenology' and 'epistemology'.

Abstract:

Modern humans spend much of their time deploying a very rarefied form of intelligence, manipulating abstract symbols while their muscled body is mostly inert. Other animals, in a constant and largely unmediated relation with their earthly surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies. This kind of distributed sentience, this intelligence in the limbs, is especially keen in the case of birds of flight. Unlike most creatures of the ground, who must traverse an opaque surface of only two-plus dimensions as we make our way through the world, a soaring bird continually adjusts minute muscles in its wings to navigate an omnidimensional plenum of currents and interference patterns that alter from moment to moment. Flight itself may usefully be considered as a kind of thinking—as a sort of gliding within the mind. Moreover, since birds are commonly the most mobile inhabitants of any woodland, able to fly over and scan numerous events occurring on the ground, their varied utterances provide a crucial source of information for many other animals. This paper, written as a philosophic essay, explores avian cognition from a phenomenological standpoint. It then reflects upon the vocalizations of birds—noting the major role that such avian calls, cries, and songs have played in the development of human culture.

Keywords

Phenomenology — Cognition — Birds — Flight — Avian language — Interspecies communication — Animal intelligence

Abram's article is part of the special issue 'Semiotics of Perception', which I am guest-editing along with Kati Lindström. The print edition is due for publication in December, as Biosemiotics 3(3). All papers in the special issue are somehow connected to the Feb. 2009 Phenomenology meets Semiotics (where Culture meets Nature) events in Tartu, Estonia.

Acknowledged in David Abram's 'Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology'

Today I received my copy of David Abram's long awaited Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. At Amazon it has now climbed to no. 2.801 of the millions of books on offer - it is right now ranked as no. 1 in 'Phenomenology', no. 3 in 'Epistemology' and no. 7 in 'Ecology'.

I am honored to be mentioned in the book's "Acknowledgments" (p. 312). Excerpt:

A couple of warm dialogues with physicist Brian Swimme helped hone certain reflections, as did conversations with a broad range of luminous souls, among them Jay Griffiths, Kalevi Kull, Wendell Berry, David Cayley, Patrick Curry, Donna House, Omar Zubaedi, Georg Glazner, Eva Simms, Tom Jay, Will Adams, Niel Thiese, Morten Tonnessen, Stefan Lang-Gilliatt, Maya Ward, Jan van Boekel, Deborah Bird Rose, Ed Casey, Bill Plotkin, Keren Abrams, Steve Talbott, Craig Holdrege, Eileen Crist, the late and much missed Briagn Goodwin, Peter Adams, Chris Wells, Jennifer Sahn, Jon Young, Peter Manchester, and Arthur Zajonc.

Other Norwegians mentioned: Arne Naess, Per Ingvar Haukeland and Per Espen Stoknes.

Academic news in brief VII

1. The last couple of weeks I have conducted two work papers (6-8pp) reviewing The tacit dimension and chapters of a forthcoming Polanyi-reader, as course work in the course "The philosophy of Michael Polanyi", which I am taking as a reading course. I have established contact with Phil Mullins, who has - along with my course teacher Walter Gulick - suggested Polanyi's article "Sense-giving and sense-reading" as a link to my interests. A further three work papers on Polanyi's work are in process.

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2. Yesterday I finally finished reworking and rewriting my article 'I, wolf: The ecology of existence', with revisions prompted by the critique of David Abram and others. To appear in an anthology this year.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION
Judging by appearances, this article is divided into five parts – under the headings ‘The politics of wolves and sheep’, ‘Estranged, endangered, extinct’, ‘Human beings qua living beings – distinctive being vs. communal being’, ‘Man is not a sign’ and ‘In search of the wolf’s perspective’. But the reader could rightfully claim that but two topics are to be identified in the matrix of this text: The nature of the wolf, and the nature of man.3 These two topics are methodologically problematic for two different reasons: Man’s nature because we are the topic to be investigated, and can thus not judge it without bias; the wolf’s nature because we are not wolves and can thus not know firsthand what it is like to be a wolf.

3. My paper 'The legality and ethical legitimacy of wolf hunting in Scandinavia' has been scheduled for presentation in group 1 (one out of three in 'green criminology'), at 12.30, Tuesday May 11th at the 52nd research seminar of the Scandinavian Reseach Council for Criminology.

4. Two days ago, Wednesday May 5th, I went back and forth to Oslo in one day, and spent a couple of hours researching at the National Library (Nasjonalbiblioteket) in the process, logged in through their license for using LovData, a Norwegian database of laws and regulations.

5. Yesterday I was interviewed in the regional daily newspaper Fædrelandsvennen, in connection with three readings I will be doing today and tomorrow. Will be published tomorrow.

6. One of the readings is philosophical and will take place in a fair trade-shop in Kristiansand, as part of the event Kulturnatta. My theme: 'Frigjøring' [liberation] - May 8th happens to be both the day of liberation (WW2) and the international fair trade-day.

7. Meanwhile, we, the guest editors of Hortos Semioticus' special issue Semiotics of Nature, have been receiving full-length papers from contributors.

Contribution to the conference "Bodily Phenomenology"

I have just submitted my contribution to the conference Bodily Phenomenology, to be arranged in Sweden in May.

MORTEN TØNNESSEN
INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY AND SEMIOTICS, UNIVERSITY OF TARTU, ESTONIA

INTERCORPORALITY AND RELATIONAL BEING
NATURE CONSIDERED AS AN INTERCORPORAL BODY (THE BODY OF ALL BODIES)

ABSTRACT SUBMITTED TO THE CONFERENCE BODILY PHENOMENOLOGY
TO BE ARRANGED BY THE CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE
MAY 19-21, 2010
AT SÖDERTÖRN UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN.

The body and the world are obviously related. Not only is the body the immediate centre of the physical world for any given perceiving (and acting) subject. Not only is any perception of ‘the world’ necessarily mediated by the body (organism) of the perceiver. We can further observe that the living world (nature) is in actual fact constituted intercorporally, in other words by the numerous relations that exist between the countless bodies about which we have come to learn.

For me, as a biosemiotician, embodiment is perhaps the most central general topic possible. Consciousness is but the top of the iceberg – mind, in the elemental sense of awareness of something, is everywhere in nature, since every living being is capable of, and dependent on, interpreting, understanding and acting upon its relevant surroundings. Mind, then, is more-than-human, even more-than-animal, and embodied mind must in its most general sense be taken to signify the embodiment not necessarily of an anthropoid, more or less articulate consciousness, but of a highly diverse repertoire of oftentimes diffuse awarenesses.

This is nature. An intercorporal body – a global web of bodies attuned to each other and routinely in conflict with each other – the body of bodies. This is nature – where body relates to body, as partner, as predator, as prey – a world built on bodies all partaking in relational being, a kind of existence wherein the particular beings (you, me, Muki) are constituted in and by their relationships with others.

In the course of this talk, I will allude to elements of the philosophy of embodiment in the work of Jakob von Uexküll, David Abram, Gabriel Marcel and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My broader project is that of contributing to the development of an Uexküllian phenomenology worthy of the designation semiotics of being.

David Abram release date(s)

David Abram's follow-up to The Spell of the Sensuous, entitled Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, is scheduled for publication August 24th, cf. Random House.

A chapter from Becoming Animal, "The discourse of the birds" (which I can testify is good reading), will appear in the special issue of the journal Biosemiotics "The semiotics of perception", that very same month.