Mnemonic traditions and listening

[asakiyume]

In The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler made the fact that octopuses were able to write a central part of what indicates they're advanced (a character says, “Yes, they have writing… which is an enormous leap in cultural evolution”)--a hugely ethnocentric notion.

So it's very affirming to read Natalia Brizuela's introduction to another brief collection of essays by the Indigenous Brazilian activist Ailton Krenak. (The collection is called Life Is Not Useful.) She writes:

Yasnaya Aguilar, the Mixé linguist, writer, and activist, reminds us ... that Indigenous people do not have “oral traditions,” but rather “mnemonic traditions.”⁸ ... Western modernity, with its countless institutions and homogenizing temporal framework, always sees the oral as preceding the written, as falling somewhere behind in the chronology of development. But as Ailton and many other Indigenous people explain, the practice and activation of memories – through dreaming, singing, dancing, storytelling, and various other activities – are ways of belonging to and sustaining the cosmic sense of life.

⁸ See Yasnaya Aguilar Gil, “(Is There) an indigenous Literature?”, trans. Gloria Chacón, Diálogos 19.1 (Spring 2016), p. 158.

She goes on to quote Ailton about the importance of listening and then to unfold that:

“Either you hear the voices of all the other beings that inhabit the planet alongside you, or you wage war against life on earth” (p. 38) ... Listening means being alive, staying alive, and keeping the ecosystems to which one belongs alive as well. Listening is caring. Not listening brings war: that is, a type of destructive encounter, a form of non-co-existence. We listen with our entire bodies, not just our ears ... Our bodies are part of and an extension of the Earth. If we allow them to become sensing instruments for dreaming and conversation, the cosmic sense of life would not be so threatened.

I love this statement: We listen with our entire bodies, not just our ears.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

❤️❤️❤️

[asakiyume]

🥰🥰🥰

[sonia]

Oooh, I love that! Listening with our whole bodies. It matches what I did as a bodyworker, and I think it was healing for people to be received in that way.

[asakiyume]

I bet it was!

[radiantfracture]

I love this! Mnemonic traditions. Much better.

(eta) Maybe I can order a desk copy!

[asakiyume]

If you get this one, definitely also get Ideas to Postpone the End of the World. It's longer (though still short).

You might also like the video of Ailton addressing Brazil's congress in 1987. The occasion was writing a new constitution after the fall of the dictatorship, and indigenous people were there to press their demands. He was dressed in a white suit, and as he spoke about indigenous worldview and rights, he gradually painted his face with what's called in Spanish huito, in Portuguese and English jenipapo, dye, which is commonly used throughout the Amazon. This is where he begins to apply it.

[sovay]

He was dressed in a white suit, and as he spoke about indigenous worldview and rights, he gradually painted his face with what's called in Spanish huito, in Portuguese and English jenipapo, dye, which is commonly used throughout the Amazon.

That's an incredible gesture.

[asakiyume]

It really is--it's enacting reclamation and transformation all in one and performatively uttering what it is that he's there to demand be preserved and respected.

[amaebi]

I think we humans do *everything* with our whole beings, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—- but we fool ourselves with our taxonomy.

[asakiyume]

We're definitely good at fooling ourselves!

[osprey_archer]

What beautiful quotes, both the ones you shared.

Re: The Mountains in the Sea, what are the octopi writing on and why, given they're underwater creatures and most writing would wash away? Have they taken up writing just to make a point to the humans that We Are Advanced So Stop Eating Us?

[asakiyume]

Well partly they're broadcasting these things at each other on their mantels--as if we communicated by words appearing on our foreheads, but IIRC they also inscribe things, like carving. And no, it's presented as a natural development, not for the purposes of impressing us humans--but since we never get an octopus point of view, we don't know WHAT'S going on with them.

[osprey_archer]

Oh yeah, the book with the sentient octopi but NO octopus POV. What is the POINT if you don't have octopus POV!

[minoanmiss]

Oh that's just pathetic of the author. I am a mere fanfic author and I have written at least two stories from an octopus' POV. If I wrote about a civilization of octopodes I would HAVE to write the story from several of their POVs or what's the point?

[sovay]

I am a mere fanfic author and I have written at least two stories from an octopus' POV.

Links!

[minoanmiss]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/297465

https://archiveofourown.org/works/158936

this one is perhaps overly-direly labeled. I don't think it's traumatizing. But I wrote it, so.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/48893

[sovay]

this one is perhaps overly-direly labeled. I don't think it's traumatizing. But I wrote it, so.

Dubious Consentacles!

[asakiyume]

Excellent--thank you! Looking forward to reading them.

[asakiyume]

Holy wow, those were all AWESOME and I have saved them and left you comments. You are a GENIUS at this. (And seriously, the writing was *very* hot)

[minoanmiss]

You are making me blush so much, omg. thank you.

[asakiyume]

Echoing Sovay! Links links links!

[minoanmiss]

bblushes purple

I should warn you I am one of ... those ... fanfic authors.

[asakiyume]

Oh, I can handle it ;-)

[minoanmiss]

obeekaybee :)

[asakiyume]

*blows kisses*

[lokifan]

Lovely! That's more like it.

[asakiyume]

Right? Glad to read it.

*

[minoanmiss]

takes notes

Re: *

[asakiyume]

(please doodle octopuses in the margins of your notes)

[sovay]

If we allow them to become sensing instruments for dreaming and conversation, the cosmic sense of life would not be so threatened.

That's lovely (and makes me think of L'Engle's Yadah) and also I agree. Thanks for the heads-up on the collection!

[asakiyume]

It makes me think of Yadah too!!

ETA: And The Wind in the Door is absolutely aligned with these insights about interconnectedness and interweaving, and how one mitochondrion = a galaxy

[sovay]

ETA: And The Wind in the Door is absolutely aligned with these insights about interconnectedness and interweaving, and how one mitochondrion = a galaxy

It's the one I keep re-reading.

[asakiyume]

Me too. I don't reread things, but I reread that.

[med_cat]

A good perspective :)

[asakiyume]

^_^