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David Abram, cultural ecologist and philosopher, is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Pantheon /Vintage) for which he received numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction. An accomplished sleight-of-hand magician who has lived with indigenous sorcerers in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas, his essays have appeared often in such journals as The Ecologist, Orion, Parabola, Resurgence, Wild Earth, Tikkun, and Environmental Ethics, as well as in over 30 edited anthologies. The recipient of numerous fellowships, Abram lectures and teaches widely on several continents; he has been named by the Utne Reader as one of a hundred leading visionaries currently transforming the world. His work focuses upon the cultural and imaginative aspects of ecological transformation, and upon the intertwined mysteries of perception and language ~ the way in which these two dimensions modulate the ethical relation between humankind and the animate earth. |
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Nomadic by nature, David and his wife, nature educator Grietje Laga, circulate between the southwest desert and the northwest coast of North America. David is an ardent spokesperson for night-herons, cedar trees, and storm clouds; he maintains a passionate interest in interspecies communication, and in the rejuvenation of oral culture. |
Some reviews of: The Spell of the Sensuous Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World
The Spell of the Sensuous is currently being taught in over 120 graduate and undergraduate programs throughout the North America, in fields as diverse as environmental studies, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, religious studies, drama, Native American Studies, architecture and engineering, visual arts, and literature.
“ Long-awaited, revolutionary. . . This book ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it.” ~The Los Angeles Times
“A truly original work. Abram...puts forth his daring hypothesis with a poetic vigor and argumentative insight that stimulate reconsideration of the technological commonplace. . .With Abram anthropology becomes a bridge between science and its others.” ~Science (Journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science)
I am breaking a vow to cease all blurb-writing for three years, but Abram’s Spell must be praised. It’s so well done, well-written, well thought. I know of no work more valuable for shifting our thinking and feeling about the place of humans in the world. Your children and their children will be grateful to him. ~James Hillman, author of ReVisioning Psychology
Speculative, learned, and always ‘lucid and precise’ as the eye of the vulture that confronted him once on a cliff ledge, Abram has one of those rare minds which, like the mind of a musician or a great mathematician, fuses dreaminess with smarts. ~The Village Voice
A masterpiece ˜ combining poetic passion with intellectual rigor and daring. Electric with energy, it offers us a new approach to scholarly inquiry: as a fully embodied human animal. It opens pathways and vistas that will be fruitfully explored for years, indeed for generations, to come. ~Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar and activist
This is a landmark book. Scholars will doubtless recognize its brilliance, but they may overlook the most important part of Abram’s achievement: he has written the best instruction manual yet for becoming fully human. I walked outside when I was done and the world was a different place. ~Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
The Spell of the Sensuous does more than place itself on the cutting edge where ecology meets philosophy, psychology, and history. It magically subverts the dichotomies of culture and nature, body and mind, opening a vista of organic being and human possibility that is often imagined but seldom described. Reader beware, the message is spell-binding. One cannot read this book without risk of entering into an altered state of perceptual possibility. ~Max Oelschlager, author of The Idea of Wilderness
Read it and get your gourd rattled smartly. ~ Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and Dalva
The outer world of nature is what awakens our inner world in all its capacities for understanding, affection and aesthetic appreciation. The wind, the rain, the mountains and rivers, the woodlands and meadows and all their inhabitants; we need these perhaps even more for our psyche than for our physical survival. No one that I know of has presented all this with the literary skill as well as the understanding that we find in this work of David Abram. It should be one of the most widely read and discussed books of these times. ~Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth
Disclosing the sentience of all nature, and revealing the unsuspected effect of the more-than-human on our language and our lives, in unprecedented fashion, Abram generates true philosophy for the twenty-first century. ~Lynn Margulis, co-originator of the Gaia Hypothesis, author of Symbiosis in Cellular Evolution
When rumor had it that David Abram was writing a book, we expected it to be very special and very powerful. Those expectations were justified. This book has the ability to awaken us. . . ~Arne Naess, Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo; originator of “ deep ecology”
A tour-de-force of sustained intelligence, broad scholarship, and a graceful prose style that has produced one of the most interesting books about nature published during the past decade. ~ Jack Turner, in Terra Nova
Nobody writes about the ecological depths of the human and more-than-human world with more love and lyrical sensitivity than David Abram. ~Theodore Roszak, author of Where the Wasteland Ends
This book by David Abram lights up the landscape of language, flesh, mind, history, mapping us back into the world. . . ~Gary Snyder
Brilliant in its own field of environmental philosophy, it is destined to change the way we think about linguistics, literature, anthropology, and comparative religion, as well as the living landscape around us. . . . Beautifully written, elegantly argued, immensely original, The Spell of the Sensuous is the kind of book that comes along once in a generation. Like Carson’s Silent Spring, it will become the touchstone for environmental literacy in the years to come. ~ Christopher Manes, in Wild Earth
David Abram’s passionate knowledge of language, mythology, landscape and his meditations on the human senses ˜ all make for highly-charged, memorable reading. Without sermon, dogma, or academic bluster, The Spell of the Sensuous deftly tours us through interior and exterior terrains of the spirit, right up to the present. This is a major work of research and intuitive brilliance, an archive of clear ideas. At the end of our century of precarious ecology, the Spell of the Sensuous strikes the deepest notes of celebration and alertness ˜ an indispensable book! ~Howard Norman, folklorist and novelist, author of The Bird Artist
Links to more about David Abram:
"The Ecology of Magic" by David Abram, along with study questions from the Rutgers Writing Program
"Deep Spirit: The Spell of The Sensuous" - book review by Christian de Quincey
"Speaking with Animal Tongues" - essay by David Abram for the Acoustic Ecology Institute
"The Ecology of Magic: An Interview with David Abram," by Scott London on "Insight & Outlook"
"A Conversation with David Abram" by Larry Parks Daloz of the Whidbey Institute Online Colloquium
Biography of David Abram from the Orion Fire and Grit Conference, 1999
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