“There is no fundamental, coherent, pre-given, exclusive formula or ontology to reality. Time isn’t fixed; identity is relational; matter is not a thing, it is an ongoing generativity. This disrupts the idea that all that is alive about the world is necessarily human to begin with. It suggests matter is mind, and mind is matter; that emotions are not what ‘we’ feel, but what the world does; that knowledge is not about exposure to an already determinate set of ideas and concepts, but the very creation of those concepts. Young’s experiment suggests matter is not passive, it initiates, it remembers, it studies, it self-organizes, it knows, it dances. The world always happens in the middle… [the] mind is transcorporeal, omnimaterial, flowing with everything, instead of imprisoned behind our brains. In short, we do not create – we do not feel – we do not act. ‘We’ do. I refer, of course, to a thicker ‘we’ – comprised of entangled agencies of lichen and leeches, mycelia and mountain, barnacles and howling beasts, not just humans. We are a conspiracy – a commonwealth of breath, as David Abram would say. We are in the time of monsters, mostly because monsters are embodiments of the magical between… To come to this place, to notice our promiscuous affinities with environment, with ‘objects’, with the non-human, is to walk a messy terrain. And yet, this mess of things frees us and opens us to relationships we never thought were possible, allowing us ‘resources’ beyond the parenthetical remarks of activism, or positivity, or wealth as social mobility. A new ethics of coming undone is stealing into the territory once occupied by advocates of irreducible wholeness.”

The above passage comes from a blog post by Nigerian thinker and activist, Bayo Akomolafe, who describes himself as a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor and also someone who is “passionate about the preposterous.” I’m ecstatic to be turned on to his work, but also a little sad and ashamed that I haven’t come across him before! Regardless, I look forward to following Bayo and his writing very closely.

…

Image above: Digital Fractal Design by batjorge

Tags:Bayo Akomolafeemergentismindigenous philosophyphysicsprocess-relational philosophyshamanism