How should humans view other species in this world? What is the difference between humans and other living things? In his book How Forests Think, anthropologist Eduardo Kohn challenges pre-existing perceptions of these issues.
Cohen notes that the title "How the Forest Thinks" resonates with anthropologist Levi Strauss's The Savage Mind. He argues that Lévi-Strauss had the idea of being both domesticated by humans and freed from this domestication. Cohen's further "ambition" is to explore "anthropology beyond humans" (which is also the book's subtitle: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human).
Cohen's theory was based on semiotics and linguistics. From 1996 to 2000, he lived for four years in a village called Avila in the Amazon basin of South America, conducting fieldwork and continuing periodic return visits.
He uses ethnographic methods to examine in depth how the Runa people living there relate their own experience to that of other species of creatures. They share cross-species habits: they have the perspective of a jaguar, they can understand the language of the grey-bellied cuckoo, they enter the dreams of dogs, they observe the communication between the fluff monkey and the "spirit" of the forest...
As a modern person, it is very difficult to get rid of the anthropocentric perspective, like pulling your hair off the ground. Cohen argues that the various forms of sociocultural anthropology we practice today naturally embrace those attributes that are unique to human beings—language, culture, society, and history—and use them to shape the tools for understanding people. We are in a closed cycle: trying to understand the uniqueness of human beings through their uniqueness. Therefore, it is very necessary to open the horizon. We need to see how humanity is connected to the wider world. The life of the Runa people shows the possibility of cross-species integration.
At the foot of Mount Sumako, the Luna people will warn you: sleep on your back. If a jaguar comes, seeing that you can turn your head to look at "him", "he" will not bother you. In this way, the jaguar will treat you as an existence like "him", a self; If you sleep on your tummy, "he" will consider you prey.
In this human-non-human interaction, Cohen emphasizes that "all things have animism", and that seeing, representation, cognition, thinking, and language are not the exclusive abilities of human beings. The definition of "person" needs to be reopened.
"When this world begins, human beings do not exist, and when this world ends, human beings will not exist." Lévi Strauss wrote in his masterpiece "The Melancholic Tropics". When we can let go of arrogance and understand other creatures equally, new possibilities for human beings will also open.
How the Forest Thinks: An Anthropology Beyond Humans, by Eduardo Cohen, translated by Mao Zhu, New Thinking / Art and Literature Eons, April 2023.
People who live in busy cities can easily feel the healing power of nature in country parks or virgin forests, and marvel at the wonder and generosity of nature. People who have pets such as cats and dogs have a deep understanding of animals. A friend who studies anthropology told me that African elephants are very afraid of bees, so some villages in Yunnan raise bees for the whole village, so that African elephants will not come close to the village, effectively avoiding human-elephant conflicts.
These stories about people and nature made me curious about the book "How the Forest Thinks - An Anthropology Beyond Man". In this foundational work of ecological anthropology, Cohen goes deep into the rainforest peoples of the upper Amazon River in Ecuador in South America to do fieldwork, deeply explores the "itself" of the forest itself, and the complex relationship between humans and forests, and proposes an anthropological perspective that transcends humans, viewing those non-human creatures as beings with the same consciousness and subjectivity as human beings.
Cross-species communication and the "spirit" of the forest
Cohen's observations and analysis of the ecology of the Amazon's primeval forests are highly insightful. He is trying to tell us that the vigorous life in this world is created by all living beings. Different beings need to influence each other, and human beings cannot trample on other lives and live alone.
A still from the documentary The Green Planet (2022).
In Avila's culture, animals, plants and forests have their own intelligence and thinking abilities, and are able to express and transmit information through language, symbols, and cultural exchange. Many primitive tribes had this belief, but it is often considered uncivilized, ignorant, and contrary to science by modern civilization. Cohen, as an anthropologist, opens himself completely up and immerses himself in this strange culture until he becomes familiar with its logic, meaning, and emotions, rather than judging it.
For Cohen, anthropology should be self-reflective critically. Ethnographic fieldwork is a good means of reflection to delve into the way of life (language, customs, culture) of an alien society. This process can feel painful and disorienting, but it is ultimately liberating. Anthropology allows us to transcend our culture and take for granted.
The Runa also self-reflect, but they do not do this by experiencing different cultures, they need to rely on the bodies of other species. The body becomes multiple and variable, and the human body is only one of the things that the self may inhabit. This method of alienating human beings has provided new stimuli to anthropology.
From a human point of view, for example, treating insects as snacks and rotten things as sweets would have been something other species (monkeys and vultures) would have done. So when the Luna people eat leaf-cutting ants, they can feel the monkey perspective of eating crickets; Eating a decaying fruit that a legume plant falls to the ground in real time, you can feel like a vulture. It's worth noting that this isn't the kind we generally understand to learn from other animals and acquire new food types. They really have the perspective and thinking of other animals. This can be seen in their language.
In the fourth chapter, "Mixed Languages Across Species," Cohen also focuses on how the Runa communicate and understand each other with their dogs. Postmodernist anthropologist Donna Haraway argues that multispecies interaction is an important way to transcend the limits of human morality.
The dog is a "species that has a compulsory, structural, historical, and ever-changing relationship with humans." The relationship between man and dog is "full of waste, boredom, indifference, ignorance and loss, but also joy, invention, labor, intellect and entertainment." The dog must be seen as both a subject and an object. In the Luna culture, talking to dogs is necessary, but also dangerous because they don't want to become dogs in the process.
A still from the documentary The Green Planet (2022).
In addition to language, another important means of communication is dreams. The Runa people say that "dreams are the product of a walk of the soul". Dreaming is extremely important in cross-species communication, and Cohen believes that "through the soul, dreaming makes contact between completely different kinds of beings possible".
The Luna people observe the dog dreaming, and if it barks "hua hua" in its sleep, this indicates that it is dreaming of chasing animals, and the next day it will do the same in the forest. But if it's called "cuai" that night, it would be a sure sign that the jaguar would kill it the next day, because that's the call a dog makes when attacked by a feline.
Cohen wondered: Why do the Runa people take a dog's dream literally (make an attack in a dream, be attacked the next day), but most of the time, explain their dreams metaphorically?
He found that because in the culture of the Luna, their own dreams reflected the way of perception of the animal spirits who dominated the forest, they could not see through it, but could only understand it through metaphors. But they can see firsthand how the dog's soul experiences the appearance of events.
This involves the hidden realms of the forest—supernatural realms, such as the spirit domain of animal spirits, and the spirit domain of demons and ayahuascen. These spiritual realms cannot be reduced only to nature or culture, it is a realm that is "above humans".
A still from the documentary The Green Planet (2022).
Cohen mentioned a personal experience that gave him a revelation about "transcendence." He was on his way to the field when he encountered a landslide and a rock hit the roof of the bus he was riding. He was terrified, but the tourists in his car were calm and even joking, not feeling that they were in danger. Cohen felt that his mind was out of touch with those around him, as if he was no longer a member of society. Until he arrived safely at his destination, anxiety about danger still gripped him. He still feels isolated from those around him.
Miraculously, his anxiety suddenly disappeared when he saw a black Donner finches by the river with a telescope. The sense of isolation also disappeared, and he returned to the world of life. He understood this way that in the small human society of the carriage, he suddenly became disconnected from the people around him, which caused him to be anxious and even began to doubt the existence of the self (I think therefore I doubt that I am). And seeing the Donner Sparrow, his sense of separation is in the wider world "beyond" human society, and he feels that he is a member of nature, thus restoring his sanity.
"My mind returned to a part of a larger mind, and my mind to the world once again belonged. Anthropology beyond humans strives to grasp the importance of these connections and understand why we humans overlook them so easily. ”
We can certainly see this as a simple epiphany, and the encounter with Blackbird was a chance opportunity. But who can guarantee that this is not the revelation that Cohen and the animal wizard met?
The mind of the forest is alive
Cohen's grandparents were Italian Jewish immigrants who settled in Ecuador in the forties and fifties, his grandfather was a medicinal chemist in search of phytotherapy in the Amazon forest, and his grandmother loved art, literature, anthropology and archaeology. Influenced by his family, Cohen has always been very concerned about how the primitive tribes of the South American rainforest understand themselves and the world. This process of exploration can help him think about the classic philosophy of "who am I". The closeness to the primitive tribes also made him always want to justify these alien races in the eyes of Western civilization.
A still from the documentary The Green Planet (2022).
The book's greatest contribution to anthropology is its attempt to subvert the role of human language in exploring the outside world, arguing that thinking is not owned by humans. (The English version, which won the 2014 Gregory Bateson Award for Best Book in Anthropology, can also be seen as an affirmation from academia.) ）
For example, according to the Runa, animals are "aware" of the presence of their natural enemies, so they have souls. And souls have a specific place in their bodies. For example, the gallbladder and sternum of a agouti are its organs of consciousness. Through these organs of consciousness, the agouti can detect the presence of predator dogs.
When these parts are eaten, the soul or consciousness is also transmitted. So the Runa sometimes fed their dogs with the bile of agouti to enhance their ability to detect prey. Similarly, the Runa sometimes ate animals, not to refuel their meat, as we do, but to eat a soul or self-consciousness in order to acquire the self of these animals.
The thinking of the Luna is not an abstract symbol, but something concrete, living. "Thoughts of the forest" run through their lives. In a variety of ways, they connect themselves with other species in the forest, "beings".
A still from the documentary The Green Planet (2022).
Cohen elaborates, "Why is anthropology required to look beyond humans? He wrote: "Looking at the animals, the animals also look back at us, look with us, and ultimately be a part of us." It can tell us how things that 'transcend' humans sustain us and make us who we are and what we can be. ”
"Those living beings give magic to the forest, giving it spirit. My goal is to reveal this magic and animist reality beyond humans, and I try to conceptually generate it and mobilize it in an anthropological way that allows us to transcend humans. ”
"Perspective shifting" is also a way to "transcend humans". Cohen points out that all sentient beings (whether spiritual, animal, or human) have a subjective consciousness. That is, their subjective perspective is the same as the way the Runa people see themselves. The same thing appears completely different in different perspectives.
For example, the stench of carrion, which the Luna people believe, is to vultures like the sweet smell of cassava tubers after steaming; The tapioca beer drunk by the Luna people is, in the eyes of the jaguar, the blood of the wild boar that "they" drink.
A still from the documentary The Green Planet (2022).
As the book's subtitle "Anthropology Beyond Humans" suggests, Cohen challenges traditional anthropocentrism in the book and provides us with a more open and pluralistic perspective that helps us better understand and respect the natural world. At a time when environmental crises such as global warming, resource depletion, frequent extreme weather, and species extinction are becoming more serious, the book's "ontological turn" can be said to be a response to reality.
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