{"id":1039,"date":"2017-12-16T00:42:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2017-12-16T01:00:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-16T01:00:30","slug":"animate-language-the-music-of-sustainable-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/2017\/12\/16\/animate-language-the-music-of-sustainable-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Animate Language: The Music of Sustainable Perception"},"content":{"rendered":"

Often throughout the course of this class, conversation took on an integrative tone: just as often as we discussed individual behavior, we would discuss politics, the environment, and the ways in which all are connected within the greater system of our world \u2013 and potentially, our universe. A series of writings reference and evaluate this notion, but none do so with a perspective so unique as \u201cLearning the Grammar of Animacy\u201d <\/i>in Robin Wall Kimmerer\u2019s Braiding Sweetgrass<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Since early high school, I\u2019ve had a keen awareness of the subjective nature of word choice and the effect that particular speech has on perceptions and worldviews. I also find it interesting that people generally refer to non-human, non-pet objects with inanimate pronouns such as \u201cit,\u201d but I never connected those two concepts. I hadn\u2019t considered that the root of perceived in animacy was language itself rather than the conditioning of an entrenched worldview \u2013 a growth from that root. After reading \u201cLearning the Grammar of Animacy,\u201d I realized that the language which we choose to apply isn\u2019t only telling of political proclivities or value preferences; it is also telling of the ways in which we relate to everything around us.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about viewing objects as equal participants in reality rather than things which have supporting roles in the film of reality, featuring us. Kimmerer notes that whether or not language allows non-human, non-pet objects to have experience influences the ways in which we view and treat all that surrounds us.1<\/sup> For instance, In Potawatomi, wiikwegamaa<\/i> means \u201cto be a bay.\u201d In this language, the bay has an experience. It is animate. In English, we would say, \u201cthat is a bay,\u201d or perhaps, \u201cwe\u2019re at the bay.\u201d We can only view the bay as a location in the context of our own experience or the experience of another observer. In Potawatomi, observation is not a precondition for experience. The bay exists because it experiences being a bay.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"

Image of The Bay of Islands in New Zealand, taken from <https:\/\/www.newzealand.com\/us\/bay-of-islands\/><\/p><\/div>\n

This difference in viewing the bay has implications for disparity in the bay\u2019s treatment because in one worldview, the bay demands respect, for it experiences its own being. In another, the bay is exploitable since it exists in our experience, giving us license to do what we want with it. From this, we can gather that our first steps toward sustainable living must be collective re-evaluation of requisites for perceived animacy and re-learning how to relate to our surroundings.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

1. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. \u201cLearning the Grammar of Animacy.\u201d Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous
\nWisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Often throughout the course of this class, conversation took on an integrative tone: just as often as we discussed individual behavior, we would discuss politics, the environment, and the ways in which all are connected within the greater system of our world \u2013 and potentially, our universe. A series of writings reference and evaluate this notion, but none do so… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,57],"tags":[206],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-entries","category-week-10","tag-languageofanimacy-sustainability-interconnection-perception"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1044,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}