Beyond Nature and Culture
Philippe Descola
(日本語解説版:一部の欧文文字が文字化けしています)
Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 2005 (Proceedings of the British Academy 139, pp.137-155, 2006)
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This exchange of perspectives immediately brings to mind what Viveiros de Castro calls ‘perspectivism’, a concept by which he refers to the positional quality of some Amerindian cosmologies ; in such cosmologies: “humans, in normal conditions, see humans as humans, the animals as animals and the spirits (when they see them) as spirits; the (predatory) animals and the spirits see humans as animals (preys), while the (game) animals see humans as spirits or as (predatory) animals. By contrast, animals and spirits see themselves as humans”12. Is perspectivism the normal epistemic regime of animism or is it a particular case of it? I favour the latter option for a variety of reasons. In, so-to-say, ‘standard’ animism, humans say that non-humans see themselves as humans because, in spite of their different forms, they share a similar interiority. To this, perspectivism adds a clause: humans say that some non-humans do not see humans as humans, but as non-humans. It boils down to a simple matter of logical possibility: if humans see themselves with a human form and see non-humans with a non human form, then non-humans who see themselves with a human form should see humans with a non human form. However this inversion of the points of view which properly characterizes perspectivism is far from being a general feature of all animic systems (it is, for example, conspicuously absent among the Jivaroan Achuar who triggered my initial interest for animism). The most common situation in standard animic regime is one in which humans just say that non-humans see themselves as humans. But how do nonhumans see humans if perspectivism is not operative? The answer that can be inferred from ethnographic accounts is that they see them as humans. This stems from the fact that animals (and the spirits who act as their representatives) generally adopt a human appearance when they want to establish a relationship with humans, an attitude that they certainly would not adopt if they thought that humans were predatory animals. For, if I treat a monkey, whom I think perceives himself as a human, according to the prescribed behaviour between brothersin- law (as the Achuar do), then I have to expect from him that he will treat me in the same manner, that is in ‘human code’, not in ‘jaguar code’ or in ‘anaconda code’. Otherwise they would be no point in pretending that he is a brother-in-law. True, a non-human could possibly see a human under a non human form and nevertheless surmise that this human sees himself as a human; but this would imply, by reflexive conversion, that the non-human is himself conscious of not being human in spite of the human form under which he perceives himself, a rather implausible hypothesis and one which is not warranted by ethnography.
1 A. Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, CUP, 2000), p.73.
2 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society; essays and addresses (London, Cohen & West, 1952), p. 130.
3 Ph. Descola, ‘Societies of nature and the nature of society’, in A. Kuper (ed.) Conceptualizing Society (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 107-126, and ‘Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practice’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 82-102.
4 For instance, T. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London, Routledge, 2000) and E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos e o perspectivismo amer?ndio’, Mana 2 (2) (1996), pp. 115-144.
5 C. L?vi-Strauss, La pens?e sauvage (Paris, Plon, 1962), pp. 154-155, my translation.
6 True, some non-human species also ascribe properties (at least relational and behavioural features) to humans and other non-humans; but before they can be included in a general theory of ontologies, a lot of ground remains to be covered.
7 I am very grateful to Tim Ingold and Peter Marshall for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of the lecture and for their suggestions of stylistic amendments.
8 E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923-1924) II, Theorie der ph?nomenologischen Reduktion (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1959), pp. 61-64.
9 P. Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (New York, Basic Books, 2004).
10 E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 117.
11 J. von Uexku?ll, Streifzu?ge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen ? Bedeutungslehre (Hamburg, Rowohlt Verlag, 1956).
12 E. Viveiros de Castro, 'Os pronomes cosmol?gicos', p. 117 (my translation).
13 Ibid., p. 122.
14 W. B. Spencer et F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, Macmillan & Co, 1899), p. 202.
15 C. G. von Brandenstein, Names and Substance of the Australian Subsection System (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 54.
16 C. G. von Brandenstein, ‘Aboriginal Ecological Order in the South-West of Australia - Meanings and Examples’, Oceania XLVII (3) (1977), pp. 170-186.
17 M. Granet, La pens?e chinoise (Paris, Albin Michel, 1968 (1934)), p. 297.
18 A point which Viveiros de Castro was the first to make, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 129.
19 B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais ?t? modernes. Essai d’anthropologie sym?trique (Paris, La D?couverte, 1991).
20 K. Århem, ‘The Cosmic Food Web: human-nature relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society, pp. 185-204.
21 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘On social structure’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 70 (1940), pp. 1-12, republished in Structure and Function, p. 190.
22 M. Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), p. 13.
Copyright Mitzub'ixi Quq Chi'j, 2010