“For us, politics is something else…” Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa’s call for a cosmopolitics has guided the Cosmologies research group since its beginning. Problematizing the modern cosmology, its ontology (i.e. epistemology), and perspective (i.e. anthropocentric), we have been moving across different fields and their theories, which make, to use the words of Alfred North Whitehead, thinking in cosmology possible.

The concerns have ranged from those in the environmental ecology, notably the bifurcation of nature and its ramifications for bodies of nature and nonhuman entities, to the mental ecology, notably questions on the spiritual and its different apparitions in shape of ghosts, spectres, and spirits, and in between the social ecology, with questions of power, relations, and more widely peoples. We have constantly asked how these concerns inflect back into the approaches and methods of anthropology, philosophy, and cultural studies that we study with. Moreover, how do the studies of technology (cosmotechnics) and the arts (cosmopoetics) make a difference for thinking non-Eurocentric, and non-anthropocentric?

Having focussed in the previous years on the expanded fields of the Americas with minor ventures onto others such as those of Africa and Australia, this year we aim to open further onto cosmologies not yet explored in depth.

Researchers involved: Erica Biolchini (McGill University), Halbe Kuipers (UvA), Riley Gold (USC), Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp (UvA), Xinyi Zheng (UvA), Matthias de Groof (UA / UvA), Jie Shen (UvA), Diego Cagüeñas Rozo (UvA), Brian Trinanda Kusuma Adi (UvA), Sara Gelao (UvA), Martina Griessing Valsecchi (UvA)

The Cosmologies workgroup organizes events and a monthly reading group. You can find new calls for both the reading and events on the ASCA website. To participate, contact: h.h.kuipers@uva.nl.

Events

To be updated soon…

Reading group
Currently composed by: Xinyi Zheng, Erica Biolchini, Halbe Kuipers, and Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp

fabulation - 16th of may 2025

Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (2008): 1–14.

Kuipers, Halbe Hessel & Wiedemann, Sebastian. excerpt “If an image is a cosmos, is the camera then a cosmic-eye? A dialogue on the cosmopolitics of the image, mediators, and the ontological turn of film,” forthcoming.

Manning, Erin. “Experimenting Immediation: Collaboration and the Politics of Fabulation” in Inflexions 11, “PopFab”. 2019.

pragmatics of storytelling - 25th of april 2025

Blaser, Mario. “Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology.” Current Anthropology 54, no. 5 (2013): 547–68.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. "7. Camille Stories. Children of Compost," in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham London: Duke University Press, 2016.

Savransky, Martin. "5. Pragmatism in the Wake," in Around the Day in Eighty Worlds: Politics of the Pluriverse. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.

forest - 21st of march 2025

Kopenawa, Davi. "Gens de près, gens de loin," Yanomami, l’esprit de la forêt. Voix de la terre. Arles: Actes Sud, 2022.

Rodriques, A, Rodriguez, C. A., and Vargas Tovar, C. "The Ancestral Tree of Plenty" in The Word for World Is Still Forest. Intercalations 4, eds. Springer, Anna-Sophie, and Etienne Turpin. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2017. Pp 96-124.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. "The Crystal Forest: Notes on the Ontology of Amazonian Spirits," Inner Asia 9, 2007. Pp 153–172.

land and indigeneity - 21st of february 2025

Pierce, Joseph M. “A Manifesto for Speculative Relations”, in Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World, Boswell, Phoebe, Saidiya V. Hartman, Janaina Oliveira, Joseph M. Pierce, and Cristina Rivera Garza. Durham: Duke University Press, 2025.

Sanbar, Elias and Deleuze, Gilles. “The Indians of Palestine,” in Discourse 20 (3), 1998.

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. “Land as Pedagogy”, in As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Patrick Wolfe. “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 2006. pp. 387-409.

witches, witchcraft and witching - 24th of january 2025

Evans-Pritchard, Edwards (1937). ‘Chapter II: The Notion of Witchcraft explains Unfortunate Events’, in Witches, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Clarendon Paperbacks.

Federici, Silvia (2018). ‘Part one: revisiting capital accumulation and the European Witch Hunt’, in Witches, Witch-hunting and Women. PM Press.

Snaza, Nathan (2024). ‘Introduction’, in Tendings: Feminist Esoterism and the Abolition of Man. Duke University Press.

cosmotechnics - 6th of december 2024

Viveiros De Castro, Eduardo, and Yuk Hui. “For a Strategic Primitivism: A Dialogue between Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Yuk Hui.” Philosophy Today 65, no. 2 (2021): 391–400.

Murphie, Andrew. “The World as Medium: A Whiteheadian Media Philosophy.” In Immediation, edited by Erin Manning, Anna Munster, and Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen. Open Humanities Press, 2019.

ancestrality - 6th of november 2024

Anzaldúa, Gloria. ‘Preface: Gestures of the Body—Escribiendo para idear’ & ‘Chapter 1: let us be the healing of the wound’, in Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. pp. 1-21.

Povinelli, Elizabeth. ‘The four axioms of existence’ & ‘Toxic Late Liberalism’, in Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. pp. 1-59.

predation - 16th of october 2024

Plumwood, Val. chapter 1-3. The Eye of the Crocodile. Canberra: Australian National University E Press, 2012, pp. 1-45.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. Chapter 8: "The Metaphysics of Predation". Cannibal Metaphysics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014, pp. 139-149.

the bifurcation of nature - 27th of september 2024

Debaise, Didier. “Introduction” and “Chapter One: The Cosmology of the Moderns” in Nature as Event: The Lure of the Possible. Thought in the Act. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, pg. 1-39.

Whitehead, Alfred North. “Chapter 2: Theories of the bifurcation of Nature,” in The Concept of Nature. Dover Science Books. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 2004, pg. 26-48.

ontologies of power - 14th of june 2024

Clastres, Pierre. 2022. “Copernicus and the Savages.” In Society against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology, First paperback edition, eight printing. New York: Zone Books.

Vázquez, Rolando. 2012. “Towards a Decolonial Critique of Modernity Buen Vivir, Relationality and the Task of Listening.” Denktraditionen Im Dialog:Studien Zur Befreiung Und Interkulturalität 33: 241-­252.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2012. “Immanence and Fear: Stranger-Events and Subjects in Amazonia.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1): 27–43.

onto/cosmopolitics - 3rd of may 2024

Chandler, David, and Julian Reid. 2020. “Becoming Indigenous: The ‘Speculative Turn’ in Anthropology and the (Re)Colonisation of Indigeneity.” Postcolonial Studies 23 (4): 485–504.

De La Cadena, Marisol. 2010. “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond ‘Politics.’” Cultural Anthropology 25 (2): 334–70.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2005. “The Cosmopolitical Proposal.” In Making Things Public, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 994–1003. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

cosmofeminism - 5th of april 2024

Lugones, María (2019) ‘Revisiting Gender: a Decolonial Approach’, in Andrea J. Pitts, Marian Ortega and José Media (eds.), Theories of the Flesh. Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance. Oxford University Press.

Lugones, María (2003) ‘Playfulness, "World"-Traveling,and Loving Perception’, in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions. Rowman and Littlefield Publisher.

Strathern, Marilyn (2018) ‘Opening up Relations’, in Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser (eds.), A World of Many Worlds. Duke University Press.

ontological perspectivism - 1st of march 2024

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2015. "The Relative Native" in The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual World. Special Collections in Ethnographic Theory. Chicago, IL: HAU Books. 3-39.

animism and media - 24th of January 2024

Castro, Teresa (2016) ‘An Animistic History of the Camera. Filmic Forms and Machinic Subjectivity’, in Diego Cavallotti, Federico Giordano, and Leonardo Quaresima (eds.), A History of Cinema Without Names: a Research Project. Mimesis International: pp. 247-255.

Konior, Bogna (2021) ‘We’re all Vermin: Tactical Predation, Interspecies Media Arts, and Perspectivism,’ New Formations 104-105: pp. 15-29.

Melitopoulos, Angela and Maurizio Lazzarato (2012) ‘Machinic Animism,’ Deleuze Studies 6(2): pp. 240-249.

Yoneyama, Shoko (2021) ‘Miyazaki Hayao’s Animism and the Anthropocene,’ Theory, Culture, and Society 38(7-8): pp. 251-266.

animism - 21st of december 2023

Bird-David, Nurit. 1999. “‘“Animism”’ Revisited. Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40: 67–91.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2012. “Reclaiming Animism.” E-Flux 36.

environments - 16th of november 2023

Ingold, Tim. ‘Chapter 1’ and ‘Chapter 3’. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, 2011.

ontological turn - 5th of october 2023

Costa, Luiz, and Carlos Fausto. “The Return of the Animists: Recent Studies of Amazonian Ontologies.” Religion and Society 1, no. 1 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3167/arrs.2010.010107.

Graeber, David. “Radical Alterity Is Just Another Way of Saying ‘Reality’: A Reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5, no. 2 (2015): 1–41. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.003.

intro - 9th of june 2023

De Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4, no. 3 (1998): 469. https://doi.org/10.2307/3034157.

Kohn, Eduardo. “Forest Forms and Ethical Life.” Environmental Humanities 14, no. 2 (2022): 401–18. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9712478.

To participate send an email to: h.h.kuipers@uva.nl

Organised by: E. Biolchini, R. Gold, and H.H. Kuipers