Sky-Earth Systems Science

“Comments on “At the Crossing-Place of Gods and Animals, The Sky-Earth System as Generic Cosmology” (Louis-Klein 2021) given following the talk at the conference on “Polytheisms: Today and Tomorrow” (28-29th October 2021) hosted by the Center for Polytheism Studies at Indic Academy”

“an early stage in the process of formulating a structure whereby traditional cosmogonies could become full participants in the philosophical dialogue which is carried on in real time in hegemonic languages, discourses and institutions of higher learning”

“a conceptual framework which is loose enough, generic enough, to allow for the participation of these cosmogonies without imposing content upon them, without imposing upon them some sort of alien substance”

“Lévi-Strauss uses a purely differential structure to analyze myths, rituals and social organizations of traditional cultures, a generic differential structure. That is, instead of interpreting these phenomena according to some lexicon of symbols that would be imposed upon them, he places them in a purely differential structure so that they can begin to speak at least without being spoken over by content, because we’re interpreting them in a purely formal fashion”

“The next stage, in the work of Viveiros de Castro, is the emergence of a structure that he calls perspectivism, which recognizes that what is constitutive for these mythic discourses is essentially the perspective positions of multiple human and non-human interlocutors”

“I would characterize what Adam is doing here, in the third stage of this process, as, first, recognizing that among the non-human participants in this mythic dialogue are also Gods, which opens up new axes in addition to the perspective poles. This opens up the axes of sky and earth, which are sufficiently generic to be frameworks through which multiple cosmogonies can speak”

“In order to prevent this foreclosure of spaces of mediation among non-human and human entities, which would result in this kind of deathly objectification of living agencies, we need to bring these cosmogonies, and the spirit workers who render them operative, into a real-time intellectual environment where we can work to prevent this kind of spiritual catastrophe”