Conjuring Tomorrow

Abstract

We conceive this thesis as a cosmological conversation between the Ancestors and ourselves. Responding to the current ecological crisis, we ask how ancestral ken and the liminal imaginary can reconnect us with an extraordinary and mysterious Universe. Theorising a cosmic-osmology, we experience the shock of wonder and concede the myth of our self-possession. Unfixed and manifold, the Ancestors, our kin: flora and fauna who, speaking in unfamiliar tongues, disclose an aromatic knowingness, Earth’s environmental forces on whom our lives depend, and our Northern European genetic antecedents, from the islands of Gotland and Öland in the Baltic Sea, guide this research. Their odiferous conversations, bridging private–intimate and socio-cultural spheres, permeate minni (memory) and óminni (unmemory). Destabilised by their atmospheric presence, we shed the singular pronoun, I, reimagining ourselves. Cloaked in ambiguity, we are eigi einhamr, not of one skin—but hybrid Beings.

Anthropologist Joy Hendry, tendering their analysis of world-conception, asserts cosmologies are metanarratives vital to communicating sublunary and numinous knowledge. Seeking to interrogate our perceptions of the world, we weigh the obscure teachings of thaumazein (wonder) presented by philosopher Mary-Jane Rubenstein. Who explains that wonder challenges determinant thought, creating a breach sufficient to render the familiar strange. Leaving propositions open and contingent, wondering compels us to yield to the nebulousness of uncertainty. Recognising our inability to be explicit about how the Ancestors communicate or how we divine their curious ken, we ask: What is language? Venturing into the liminal imaginary, we relinquish surety for the embrace of rainbows and Harpies. Analogous to Arnold van Gennep’s Rites of Passage, the liminal imaginary, a threshold state, initiates a substance change. Inhaling, we recall the Ancestors scent; breathing them in, we transform. In this moment of transition, we are overcome by the elemental force, which Empedocles calls Earthly Love—the unifier. In response to the Ancestors, we practice an alchemical poiesis, composing aromatic poetics.

Wonder also exposes us to philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s theories of being-with and touching. The Ancestors, entering and exiting through porous bodies, influence the limbic system, which incorporates our primordial brain, emotions, and memory. Endlessly, yet often without us realising, the Ancestors alter us with their aromatospheric touch. In this way, being-with and touching disclose our coevality, which anthropologist Johannes Fabian argues is an atemporal, indefinable coexistence akin to Henri Bergson’s concept of pure memory, whereby our pasts touch our presents and transform our futures. The whiff and hum of odour’s touch binds us.

Whilst this thesis traverses olfactory, mythic, magical, and scientific terrains, our ideas remain tethered to the omnipresent Ancestors and their odiferous affects. Tracing the origins of philosopher Brian Massumi’s concept of vitality affect, we unearth psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Daniel N. Stern’s hypothesis of a prelingual connectedness reliant on implicit relational knowing. Our experiences of the Ancestors semiochemical narratives correspond with Stern’s psychological and Massumi’s art-based vitality affects.