The Earth as a Gift-Giving Ancestor

Abstract

This article puts into conversation Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism and a particular expression of “African animism,” drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana. Nietzsche’s perspectivism extends interpretation beyond the human species into natural processes. Like perspectivism, African animism troubles the binaries—body/soul, nature/culture—that permeate anthropocentric thinking. Human-nonhuman relations are refigured as socio-ecological relations: the earth may be regarded as life-generating ancestors; baobab trees may approach humans as kin. These two images of the world intersect, but they do not mesh together. Nietzsche adopts perspectivism as active intersections between dynamic processes, within an open universe that has not been predesigned for humans. Animism tends toward a world of personalized relationships that would reach harmony if we would only lighten our ecological footprint. I draw upon such resonances to advance a new ethic of experiential environmentalism that treats ecological threats as lived risks and shared experiences with a lively and communicating “environment.”

Indigenizing, and Developing Africa: The Role of Indigenous Cultural Norms and Values

“…For these reasons, all the research participants would not divulge the recipe of medicinal plants they use to cure all the ailments they mentioned to us. The reasons why these are kept secret as shared by the research participants and affirmed by Ignatov (2017), is, the African ancestors will, "Withdraw their protection for the living" (pp. 66-67).…”