The Spell of the Sensuous Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

by ABRAM, DAVID

• ISBN13: 9780679776390
• ISBN10: 0679776397
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-02-25
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with passion and intellectual daring. "Long awaited, revolutionary...This book ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it."--Los Angeles Times

Author Biography

DAVID ABRAM, Ph.D., is an ecologist and philosopher whose writings have had a deepening influence upon the environmental movement in North America and abroad. A summa cum laude graduate of Wesleyan University, he holds a doctorate in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Watson and Rockefeller Foundations and a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction. He is an accomplished sleight-of-hand magician and has lived and traded magic with indigenous magicians in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
The Ecology of Magic: A Personal Introduction to the Inquiry	p. 3
Philosophy on the Way to Ecology: A Technical Introduction to the Inquiry	p. 31
The Flesh of Language	p. 73
Animism and the Alphabet	p. 93
In the Landscape of Language	p. 137
Time, Space, and the Eclipse of the Earth	p. 181
The Forgetting and Remembering of the Air	p. 225
Coda: Turning Inside Out	p. 261
Notes	p. 275
Bibliography	p. 305
Index	p. 315
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