David Abram

In the absence of

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In the absence of any written analogue to speech, the sensible, natural environment remains the primary visual counterpart of spoken utterance, the palpable site, or matrix wherein meaning occurs and proliferates. In the absence of writing, we find ourselves situated in the field of discourse as we are embedded in the natural landscape; indeed, the … Read more

No event for the

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No event for the Koyukon – or for most other indigenous peoples – is ever entirely meaningless or accidental, but neither is any event entirely predetermined or fated. Rather like the trickster, Raven, who first gave it its current form, the sensuous world is a spontaneous, playful and dangerous mystery in which we participate, an … Read more

For the Amahuaca, the

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For the Amahuaca, the Koyukon, the Apache, and the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Australia – as for numerous other indigenous peoples – the coherence of human language is inseparable from the coherence of the surrounding ecology, from the expressive vitality of the more-than-human terrain. It is the animate earth that speaks; human speech is but … Read more

Each thing organizes the

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Each thing organizes the space around it, rebuffing or sidling up against other things; each thing calls, gestures, beckons to other beings or battles them for our attention; things expose themselves to the sun or retreat among the shadows, shouting with their loud colors or whispering with their seeds; rocks snag lichen spores from the … Read more

Entranced by the denotative

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Entranced by the denotative power of words to define, to order, to represent the things around us, weve overlooked the songful dimension of language so obvious to our oral [storytelling] ancestors. Weve lost our ear for the music of language — for the rhythmic, melodic layer of speech by which earthly things overhear us. David … Read more

Does the human intellect,

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Does the human intellect, or reason, really spring us free from our inherence in the depths of this wild proliferation of forms? Or on the contrary, is the human intellect rooted in, and secretly borne by, our forgotten contact with the multiple nonhuman shapes that surround us on every hand? David Abram