Rejoinder to Descola’s ‘Biolatry: a surrender of understanding’

ABSTRACT

This comment offers a brief rejoinder to Phillipe Descola’s ‘Biolatry: A Surrender of Understanding’, and concludes an exchange that began with my article ‘A Naturalist Abroad in the Museum of Ontology: Philippe Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture’. I review the definitions of such key terms as naturalism, interiority and production, and the issues that divide us with regard to the possibility of unmediated knowledge, the salience of structural models, and the future of comparative anthropology.

See also:

A Naturalist Abroad in the Museum of Ontology: Philippe Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture 10.1080/00664677.2015.1136591

Biolatry: A Surrender of Understanding (Response to Ingold’s A Naturalist Abroad in the Museum of Ontology) 10.1080/00664677.2016.1212523

KEYWORDS:

• Naturalism
• interiority
• production
• semiosis
• models
• comparative anthropology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.