From Animism to Animation: Authors Meet Critics

This authors-meet-critics session introduces a book co-authored by three scholars representing religious studies, environmental humanities, and the history of science. Responding to calls to reconsider human-nonhuman relations in a time of global polycrisis, the book offers a novel framework for imagining connections between animated matter and political action through case studies focused on animated films, ritual practices, and robotics. Rather than studying animism as a specific cultural tradition distinct from non-animistic cultures and their supposedly disenchanted worldviews, the authors argue that practices of animation are universal, even as they stress that specific methods of animation differ according to time and place. The authors investigate how humans make persons through rituals, use the technique of compositing to construct worlds in illustrated films, and evoke feelings to forge intimacy with robots. Additionally, they show how humans deanimate entities that have become unruly, dysfunctional, or unwanted.