What is it about?
Many contemporary theorists claim that attempts to give legal rights to 'non-humans' such as mountains, rivers or ancestral spirits represents an 'indigenous' politics that resists the legacies of colonialism. Using an example from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, I present a note of caution, suggesting that it is sometimes local elites who benefit from contemporary global economic inequalities who promote this position in their own interests.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
In recent years the rights of non-human agents have been enshrined in the laws of countries throughout Latin America and other parts of the world including India and New Zealand. Although this is often presented as a triumph for an indigenous 'cosmopolitics', we should be aware that there is no such thing as an essential 'indigenous' world-view and that people in all communities are divided and can shift perspectives depending on the context of the conversation. Essentialising an 'indigenous' perspective that simply celebrates such moves risks uncritically taking the position of those with the most power to position themselves as representatives of the 'community' and silencing those with less economic or political power who might view such claims with scepticism.
Perspectives
I think that in contemporary anthropology there is sometimes a headlong rush to celebrate anything that is presented as the opposite of what we construct a 'Western' world-view or ontology to be in our own imaginations. This has reintroduced a tendency towards a romanticism and 'noble savaging' of indigenous communities and non-Western societies that post-colonial approaches to anthropology and social theory were quite rightly sceptical towards during the 1980s and 1990s . I'd like us to be a little more cautious about the reintroduction of these essential distinctions, even if they are today presented as part of a strategy for 'declonising' ontologies as they risk flattening important differences of power and influence within communities. If the mountains and rivers speak - who gets to decide who speaks on their behalf?
KEIR JAMES CECIL MARTIN
Universitetet i Oslo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Subaltern perspectives in post-human theory, Anthropological Theory, November 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1463499618794085.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
