Aoyama Gakuin University
Online Talk#19: "Anthropology opening itself up to the earth and the plants"
Sat, Jul 08
|Online
Time & Location
Jul 08, 2023, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Online
About the event
Speaker: 箭内匡(教授・東京大学大学院総合文化研究科)
Tadashi Yanai (Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)
このトークでは、私⾃⾝の学問的ヴィジョンの中で、「⼈類学 anthropology」(=⼈間の学)がどんな道筋を経て「地球と植物に向かって⾃らを開いていく」のかについてお話ししたいと思う。導入として、文化人類学が「文化」・「社会」から「イメージ」・「自然」へと焦点移動していく今日的な動きについて述べたあと、自然の中でも質・量ともに圧倒的な重要性を持つ植物という存在ーーそれなしには我々は呼吸すらできない...ーーにまっすぐ向かおうとする新たな人類学的アプローチについて論じる。具体的には、植物学の助けを借りながら(人間や動物とは対照的な)植物独自の存在様態をあらためて把握したあと、南米先住民の民族誌に触発されつつ、我々自身の思考を植物の存在様態の方に接近させていく、「植物人類学」のヴィジョンを提示する。終盤では、この植物人類学の延長線上で、「地球に向かって自らを開いていく」という点についても二、三の論点を提示したいと思う。
In this talk, I would like to discuss the path through which "anthropology" (i.e. "study of humankind") opens itself up to the earth and the plants based on my earlier works in this discipline. After briefly talking about the current shift in focus of sociocultural anthropology from "culture" and "society" to "image" and "nature," my main focus will be on plants, which are of overwhelming importance in nature, in terms of both quality and quantity (and without which we cannot even breathe). To discuss this, I first reassess plants' unique mode of existence—in clear contrast to that of animals/humans—with the help of plant science, and then I present, inspired by the ethnography of some indigenous peoples of South America, a "phytoanthropological" proposition which consists in moving our own thinking toward the mode of existence of plants. In the final part, by extending this phytoanthropological thinking, I would like to add a few points about "opening ourselves up to the earth.