Discussions in Becoming-Animal on the PCC Forum

Deep Water Initiative team member Chantal Noa Forbes shared a number of key concepts from her dissertation research with the first PCC Forum of Spring 2020 on zoom. https://youtu.be/F-ZnAR1KAXs

The Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) Forum is a transdisciplinary lecture series hosted by the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). As a student group stemming from the larger PCC program—a concentrated track in the Philosophy and Religion department of CIIS—the Forum encourages contributions from across all programs, but gives priority to PCC students. PhD and Masters Students are given a platform to share and refine their research with the community.

The Forum also hosts presentations by faculty members, alumni, as well as thinkers, artists, and other creatives outside of the Institute. Events typically last about two hours with the time split between the presentation and the discussion that follows.

Becoming-Animal as Primal Theology in Primal Religions: San Bushmen and Becoming-Animal in the Hunt

The San Bushmen of southern Africa are one of the last groupings of hunter-gatherers whose lifestyle and hunting practices have been retained within memorable history. The objective of this presentation is to situate the ritual of the hunt as practiced by this group of hunter-gatherers within the context of philosophical religious debate. By illustrating that the hunt is based on the discipline of the exegesis of our ecological environment, Chantal Forbes demonstrates that the ontological reality of becoming-animal during the hunt within San Bushmen reality constitutes a theological practice, a primal form of theological practice. The process of becoming the very environment one seeks to exegete enables a type of theological practice that is relevant to us all in modern times. One of the primary questions of this presentation is how the philosophical idea of becoming translates into a practical form of eco-theology for modern times. https://youtu.be/F-ZnAR1KAXs