cmcee.org - anthropomorphism and cosmomorphism



	The Circuit of Anthropomorphism and Cosmorphism "As a certain imaginary becomes a part of habitual practice, it both becomes part of, and serves to establish what I describe as circuits of anthropomorphism and cosmomorphism. This process constitutes a central aspect of the imaginary institution of nature, and thereby requires some elaboration. When someone observes nature, or something that passes for nature, s/he cannot but project human, and thus cultural forms onto it (Lindahl Elliot 2001). This humanizing projection may be described as anthropomorphism. An anthropomorphicized nature may then be the selfsame nature with which an individual or social group identifies, and this in such a fashion that it helps to construct a sense of self, and indeed, of ‘others’. This second aspect of the process, this identification with nature, may be described with the social theorist Edgar Morin (2001) as cosmomorphism. The cultural production and reproduction of the two dynamics—anthropomorphism and cosmomorphism—comes to institute a cycle or circuit—and thereby a certain cultural form of observation—insofar as human forms are projected onto a nature which, humanized, paradoxically serves to identify, express, or ‘confirm’, apparently with no human intervention or mediation, the anthropomorphic subject’s beliefs, culture, or politics." Excerpt from Nils Lindahl Elliot's (2006) Mediating Nature, London & New York: Routledge International Library of Sociology, p. 42 See also, the introduction to N. Lindahl Elliot (2001): 'Signs of Anthropomorphism' in Social Semiotics, 11:3, pp. 289-301. In the picture: Ana Julia Torres of the Villa Lorena animal rescue centre in Cali, Colombia
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