animism

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Animism, in the restricted use retained by AB and RB2, is situated attention to encounters and assemblages that change capacities to feel, think, imagine and act. Their efficacy is not exclusively the human subject's possession. This practice neither inventories hidden minds nor requires stones, trees or mountains to possess human-like consciousness, intentions or experience.

Explanation

AB introduces the word cautiously through Stengers: believer and debunker can both presume the right to decide what another being really is. The alternative asks how encounters alter capacities, while Abram supplies the bodily condition of reciprocal exposure. Participation therefore need not entail panpsychism, and belonging to the world's flesh does not dissolve the difference between sensing and sensed.

RB2 develops this restriction through the encounter of stone, hand, gravity, memory and place. The relation can reorganize perception and action without assigning an interior mind to every component. Its philosophical gain is non-appropriation: attention asks what capacities a relation produces and whether its effects enlarge or capture participants. This is a practice of situated attention, not a taxonomy of entities.

Scope and attribution

Positive treatment in AB and RB2. Reclaiming Animism title citations in PB, RB1 and RB3 do not themselves establish animism definitions.

AB — The Actual Book

The word is retained as attention to encounter-mediated changes of capacity, not a census of hidden minds. Abram's reciprocal exposure and the refusal of generalized animist ontology qualify its use.

Occurrence locators: 112; Notes: 242, 243.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Situated attention tracks assemblage efficacy without assigning human-like consciousness to everything. The stone encounter changes perception and action; the question includes whether relations enlarge or capture participants.

Occurrence locators: 159, 160.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.