Au bord des mondes. Vers une Anthropologie Métaphysique
Mohamed Amer Meziane – 2023
It is not enough to attribute a soul to plants and animals to heal the ravages of extractivism. We also need to broaden the spectrum of non-humans beyond the visible. Dragons and subterranean beings, places of dreams or ultimate realities hold a central place in the living traditions that populate this earth. To really listen to them, it's time to break with a whole series of presuppositions that clutter up anthropology, starting with the idea that the ‘natives’ remain unaware of the structures that govern their collective life. In order to bring about a ‘decolonisation of knowledge’, this book invites us to take on the metaphysical aspect of thought and reality. Only philosophical contact with the invisible, thinking about what lies at the edge of worlds, will enable a fruitful double critique - of both the limits of modernity and the traditionalisms that are exercised in the name of God. What if we had to visit the heavens once again in order to rehabilitate the earth? This essay offers an innovative perspective that overturns the commonplaces of ecological thought and the social sciences.