Estranys: Escrits sobre l'humà i el no humà

by Rebecca Tamás, Yannick Garcia Porres (Translator)

Set assajos de gran lucidesa sobre la relació de l’ésser humà amb la natura i les seves dimensions política, filosòfica i espiritual.

Assajos breus sobre l’ésser humà i la natura; la propietatde la terra; el canvi climàtic i el capitalisme; l’ecologia en relació amb la política, la filosofia i l’espiritualitat; la utilització del cos femení i del cos animal...

Tot plegat a partir de les idees col·lectivitzadores de Gerrard Winstanley a l’Anglaterra del XVII, La passió segons G. H. de Clarice Lispector, la fusió de cos i natura de l’artista Ana Mendieta, la fi del món segons Melancholia de Lars von Trier i el panpsiquisme, que ens parla de la consciencia dels arbres i les pedres... Set textos plens d’intel·ligència i de sensibilitat.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Philosophy, Feminism, Nature, Ecology, Theory

136 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2020

Reviews

[Emma Lotta · Rating 5 out of 5]

ma kohutavalt armastan raamatute lugemist sellel kevade-eelsel perioodil…. soovitan. ja seda raamatut soovitan lausa kahe käe, jala ja südamega.

[Goodreeds User · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhhhh this is so good!!!! So potent and engaging and sparkling and disturbing and urgent and heartfelt and full of lovely and terrible surprises - and all packed into such brief and breezy essays! This is thick and muddy and very nutritious, one of the best things I've read all year, can't recommend it enough.

[Milly Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ay buenísimo !

Qué
Ahora qué: seguir. Seguir.

[belisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

bölük pörçük ama ilginçti...

[Pablo Mallorquí · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraños es una colección de pequeños ensayos escrita por Rebecca Tamás que trata sobre cuestiones de actualidad vinculadas con el momento sociopolítico que vivimos. Entre los diversos temas que trata tenemos la cuestión de lo común respecto a lo privado, la conexión con los seres vivos no humanos, la emergencia climática o la salud mental. Extraños está escrito de manera muy bella y ofrece caminos para explorar y despertar la conciencia humana respecto a lo humano y lo no humano.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved these essays ❤️

[ona · Rating 3 out of 5]

El mal que sent la vaca [industrial] a la panxa i a la gola és el mal de l'humà degradat.

La pena, en la seva essència, és sobre l'altre i no sobre un mateix.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What did I just read?
I’m left wide-eyed and deeply shaken and in awe of this perfect wee collection of essays. I won’t say it’s magic but it is. It’s magic

[Marianela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hola? Que corto! Perfecto para leer de pie a las 8 am en el metro!

[Christina Dongowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brillant collection of personal essays that is really connecting the personal with the political, where each essay builds on the other - and it’s really beautifully written. Highly recommended, especially if you are new to trans humanist and pantheist thinking.

[Vicky P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't even talk about how good this book is, and how affirming its message of unity of life on earth is.

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Interesting to read about climate grief, humans relationship with nature/the non-human and climate change v capitalism from this perspective

[Hannah MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly well written and thought provoking. also pulled from an incredible reference list, this collection of essays gave me a long list of books I need to read

[Jacob Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't love this one! Some cool references and concepts used, but Tamás just doesn't really do anything with them. The writing is a bit frustrating in that classic over-earnest way, which can be great when stuff of substance is being said, but I found it all a bit shallow sadly.

[Yogesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Everywhere I go it seems like all the warnings and all the metaphors have already been written, and are waiting patiently for us to read them.”

Singaporeans drape on sweaters and drink hot tea to soak up the surprisingly cool weather we’ve been having, even as homes in Batam and Tanjung Pinang are flooded. On the Internet, I see memes highlighting a scene in Parasite, of a rich woman thoughtlessly celebrating the rain, completely unaware of the effects flooding has wrought on the poorer sections of society. Fiction illuminates our everyday experience with the natural world, and helps us see the inequalities we might otherwise no longer be able to perceive.

Data is not enough. Scientific studies are not enough. Millennials and Gen Z youth have grown up desensitized to the deluge of data pointing us to one clear direction – there is a clear climate crisis, and its impacts will be magnitudes beyond what we can imagine. The science is there, but we have grown accustomed to its banal horror.

This is why I’ve felt strongly for a while that we need to be interrogating our affective and sentimental relationship with the environment if we want to spur any collective action. Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman is a fantastic collection of essays doing just that – in each essay, Tamás explores the environmental dimensions of manifestos, poetry collections, and short stories, illuminating our social relationships with non-human worlds. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed her analysis of climate grief and panpsychism.

This book made me feel things about the environment I struggle to feel. It helped me think about our duties to the environment, and the joy and expansiveness of thought the environment can bring us if we let it into our lives. It reminded me of the despair I feel when I think too much about what the climate crisis means for the world as we know it – but it chastised me gently for being overwhelmed by this despair, reminding me to stay focused on what needs to be done.

If you’ve been looking for a book that shows you how to think about the environment culturally and socially, this is the book to pick up.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. 'On Watermelon' 'On Greenness' and 'On Panpsychism' were favourites.

[Sergio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo no humano nos permite seguir siendo humanos y cuando el exterior esté corrompido, el interior sólo procederá a corromperse.

[Robert Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a teenager I got deeply obsessed with the fact that minds and the people that have them might not be the same thing. I am able say I have inner experiences and know that’s true because I experience them, but I have no way of knowing if that’s true for you or anyone else. The man down the street might have no inner mind at all; the man he’s married to might have ten million, though he wouldn’t even know it because they’d all be being produced by the same brain. It’s a bit unsettling and disturbing to think about, so of course my brain leapt on it when I was young because I was unsettled and disturbed.

And as Rebecca Tamás says in this book of hers that is great, we have no way of knowing if anything else has experiences, either— if trees do or the wind does, or what it might mean if they do. She understands that this thought isn’t necessarily as airy-fairy as it may seem, but in fact contains horrors: if it’s possible to inflict suffering on things we didn’t even comprehend *could* suffer, suddenly it’s very hard to see how to live in an ethical way. And this book is also full of the suffering we very much do comprehend but can choose not to see: of humans and of other animals, of maybe everything we’d say has a mind. But it also sees the beauty of minds existing at all, of not inhabiting the world alone. It sees the joy and the grief of a world that contains other people, whatever those people might happen to be. I think it’s really good, in other words. I think that you should read it.

[Navya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays meditating on the permeable boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, focusing on environment and climate justice.

I don't know. I feel like it could be the case that this is an excellent book, but I am not the reader for it. It is well written and well conceived, for sure. I also see the value and the beauty in the premise and the author's thought process. But many times, it dipped into a kind of spirituality and sense of being that just does not speak to me.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

Strangers is probably the most effective 'soft intro' to nonhuman thinking qua TM that I've read and of course Rebecca writes wonderfully so there's no difficulty with Getting Through It. Loved the piece on Everest but maybe because that's most fresh in the memory. panpsychism & greenness too here - with the nonhuman

[imini · Rating 4 out of 5]

v interesting and useful collection

[Camilo Castaño Quinchía · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dondequiera que acuda, parece que todas las advertencias y todas las metáforas ya están escritas, y esperan pacientemente a que las leamos". — Rebecca Tamás

"No quería ya salir de aquel país de ratas y tarántulas y cucarachas, amor mío, donde el gozo fluye en gruesas gotas de sangre". — Clarice Lispector, La pasión según G.H.

En esta colección hermosamente traducida (pensé que estaba escrita en su idioma original) transitan ideas más o menos familiares: las heridas abiertas por la voracidad del neoliberalismo, el llamado a la mirada antiespecista, la relación entre el veganismo y el feminismo basada en dolores y horrores compartidos, y la aflicción ante las crisis climáticas. Todos estos densos temas son abordados por Rebecca en un lenguaje cercano, con referentes al arte, a la vida cotidiana y a su propia experiencia, y en lo que me pareció una conversación con una amiga he podido pensarme al fin en medio de esos conceptos, que por abstractos he imaginado lejanos.

Cada texto es una invitación a la compasión, al despertar de una conciencia ecológica, a la conciencia de clase, y a la lucha interseccional. Llamados que quiero seguir.

[Carlton · Rating 1 out of 5]

A collection of essays published in 2020, where I unfortunately was annoyed by the author’s approach, after an initial discussion of a concept, of making an assertion as if it was fact, rather than a point of view or assumption. This approach, which I found strident, undermined the arguments made in many of her essays for me.

For example the essay “On Greenness” which discusses the Green Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man and the artwork of Ana Mendieta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Men..., with no illustrations. I find this essay frustrating as Tamas is seeking to link the Green Man and some artworks of Ana Mendieta, but cites no connection other than the visual similarities, as she perceives them. There may be a relationship, or there may not, but Tamas provides insufficient detail.
The only essay with which I had an interest, rather than an antagonistic reaction, was the final essay, “On Mystery”, but this is more a collection of thoughts, rather than an ordered argument or discussion.

[S. Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strangers is an exploration of the world and our relationship with nature through a series of essays linking the environmental, the political, the folkloric and the historical. It felt like a deeply necessary, urgent read for all human people anywhere along their journey, who wish to experience life and living in a profoundly intimate and compassionate way. There is one particular essay about a cockroach that I highly recommend. And that is a sentence I never could have foreseen myself typing out.

[Mcmonip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una reflexión muy chula sobre la relación con la naturaleza, lo no humano. Los límites entre los seres y materias del planeta se difuminan. El paisaje modela nuestro pensamiento.

El primer capítulo sobre los cavadores y la explotación comunal de las tierras es increíble. El sexto... Puff, la diferencia entre la aflicción y la melancolía... La experiencia deprimida, la depresión porque el mundo explota...

Me declaro fan de la edición de los nuevo cuadernos de anagrama. Dentro trae un marcapáginas chulísimo.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Rebecca Tamás’ Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman, the opening essay ‘On Watermelon’ leads us from the radical Diggers of 1649 to the climate concerns of 2019 – through groups like Black Lives Matter shutting down a UK airport in 2016, up to the American struggle for a Green New Deal today. 370 years, the same striving for “a form of Christian proto-communism: where wage labour, class hierarchy, economic inequality […] and landowner power, became things of the past”. The Diggers were then a radical group – even then, in an age not yet tainted by Amazon and globalisation, it was radical to seek some kind of oneness with the natural world, to look after it the way it has looked after us. “Radical” has its roots in root, in the Latin word radic-, root. Though the word “radical” may evoke subversion, upheaval, overhaul, its meaning – of going to the root, of something fundamental – clarifies the nature of what is really radical: unearthing, yes, but the unearthing of what was already there, the origin of what we know.

Detouring briefly to the once-home of the Diggers – which is, “in almost too perfect a metaphor for where we are now, a gated community… home to celebrities such as Tom Jones, Elton John” – Tamás goes on to conclude the essay channelling a question asked in 1649 by Gerrard Winstanley, the visionary writer among the Diggers. He asks whether the earth was made “to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease”, or “to preserve all her children”; Gerrard Winstanley never had the misfortune of witnessing late capitalism, but his question, clearly significant then, resonates all too vividly now. Is the earth for the few, or the many? As Tamás notes, “There is only one true question, stirring and germinating underneath the ground of all the others, and that is it.”

The “radical co-operation, […] an alternative form of living, based on a community of human and nonhuman” Tamás writes of in ‘On Watermelon’ is a pillar beneath the other six essays in this singular and realised collection. ‘On Hospitality’, a successor in sequence and in spirit, considers how Ancient Grecian hospitality, “Philoxenia, or literally, ‘friend to a stranger,’ was a central tenet of societal and religious life”. For Tamás, through the proxy of Clarice Lispector’s sculptor character G.H., the principles of hospitality apply just as resolutely to the nonhuman – indeed the ecological world, the strangest stranger, is most in need of human friendship, through the climate emergency and beyond. Later, in ‘On Greenness’, Tamás takes an ever-deeper dive into the green, from works by twentieth-century artist Ana Mendieta to the fourteenth-century Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Through the various strangenesses of the green figures and spaces in these disparate works, which unsettle as well as invite, we see “the promise of a green flourishing, another way of sharing with, becoming with, the world of which we are a part.”

Tamás’ writing is defiantly hopeful – radically so – and yet unflinching, aware at all times of the inhumanity of both the human and nonhuman. In ‘On Pain’, the bodies of women and animals are subjected in similar terms to great hurt and violence, rendered “truly unnatural, not in the sense of some Eden lost, but in the loss of naturally occurring bodily freedom and independence.” Such sickness, as she rightly calls it – and still an insistence on “how we might get better, get well.” And in ‘On Grief’, through such mediums as Lars Von Trier’s 2011 film Melancholia, Tamás writes of her own experiences with depression; where depression intersects with grief, especially as our planet is concerned; how that climate grief is almost inevitable amongst the self-aware; and how active “climate hope”, hard as it may be, is an essential antidote, for us, for the world around us. “Being numb will not help us, hating ourselves without action will not change things”, she notes with her signature precision. Again that insistence, that we must show up for a world which shows up always for us.

Strangers ends with a gorgeous, haunting essay, ‘On Mystery’, a brief and suitably mysterious meditation on “all the warnings and all the metaphors”, on the urgency of bowing down to mystery in the world, human and nonhuman and otherwise. But the third essay, ‘On Panpsychism’, is the essay which stays with me most eagerly since first reading. Where the later essay ‘On Grief’ considers climate grief, ‘On Panpsychism’ takes a moment of inexplicable depression and considers how the world itself is ill of mind, too, how “the vibrations that we feel” from it suggest awareness of its limits and ours, and all the failings that accompany those limits. Yet the mind of the natural world is not like ours, having “freedom from being stuck in the unbearable feedback loop of the purely human”. This is something I have felt more sharply than ever in this strange year we are all trying to live through, the “radical and shocking alterity” of the nonhuman, a natural world that knows more than our supposedly conscious species could or would. Tamás writes of “the intricate ever shifting patterns of thought, millions of endless webs” – she has spun many of those in these essays, a web maybe, but really a ladder, dangling from a helicopter. We are surrounded on all sides by some encroaching natural disaster and probably don’t even know it yet. The ladder is a warning, a way out, in theory if not in practice.

[Salvador Vásquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es una excelente introducción a los estudios sobre lo no-humano. Sencillo, digerible y fácil de entender y empatizar con una cucaracha, el bosque o el viento. Lectura fundamental para pensar en nuevas sensibilidades sobre aquello que se aleja de nuestro reconocimiento humano. Unos ensayos me gustaron más que otros, pero todos valen la pena.

[Josefine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everywhere I go it seems like all the warnings and all the metaphors have already been written, and are waiting patiently for us to read them.

[Alejandro Orradre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pequeño compendio de artículos cortos que hablan de varios temas de moda en esta segunda década del siglo XXI pero que no pasan de ser meras observaciones sin apenas profundidad.

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. My brain is buzzing with inspiration and thought.