Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon River Basin

Project Information

ECO

Grant agreement ID: 101002359

DOI

10.3030/101002359

EC signature date 5 March 2021

Start date 1 January 2022

End date 31 December 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 291,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 291,00

Coordinated by

CENTRO DE ESTUDOS SOCIAIS
Portugal

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ECO (Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon River Basin)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project examines the ways in which plants and animals inscribe their modes of existence in Amazonian texts, cinema and artworks and therefore shape human culture. The project resorts both to Amazonian thought and to the academic field of ecocriticism to produce innovative knowledge of how animals and plants leave imprints of themselves in cultural productions, becoming co-creators of human cultural productions about Amazonia. The project’s main theoretical innovation it to develop the concept of zoophytography that reveals the dynamic interchanges between human beings, animals and plants, thus decentering humanity as the sole source of meaning-making. At a time when the Amazon and its peoples are increasingly threatened by large-scale logging and forest fires associated to extractivist industries such as mining, oil drilling, agribusiness, and so on, that regard the biosphere as a mere resource at the service of humanity, ECO aims to uncover alternative, more equitable, views on animals and plants in the region.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The beginning of the project was dedicated to the integration of the research team within the project and the Host Institution (HI); to establishing a working partnership with members of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC); to creating a network of project partners, including a group of affiliated researchers and of partner institutions that continues to expand as the project progresses; to the organization of several events, including major colloquia on Vegetal Humanities in the Amazon (October 2022), Amazonian Futurisms: More than Human Imaginaries (July 2023) and Monocultures: Eco-Cultural Perspectives (February 2024), that brought together, beyond core team members, the SAC and several affiliated researchers; to the gathering of sources and to the dissemination of preliminary project results.

A major research achievement in the first 30 months of the proejct was the gathering of sources and the development of the concept of zoophytography, together with an analysis of the inscriptio of animals and plants in Amazonian cultural productions, based on the examination of the sources gathered, as well as the publication of preliminary research results. Team members have undertaken research in libraries and archives in South America, North American and in Europe, including the Amazonian Library of Iquitos (Peru), the Amazon Library in Leticia (Colombia), the Goeldi Museum (Brazil), the Public Archive of the State of Pará (Brazil), the Library of Congress (USA), the National Library (Portugal) and the National Library (France), as well as field work in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil to gather materials on plants and animals in Amazonian thought and cultural productions by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. In addition, the team has gathered and analyzed a comprehensive list of theoretical sources on the issue of plant and animal inscription in human cultural productions.

Based upon the sources gathered, the PI has written several published and forthcoming essays on zoophytography, including “Amazonian Zoophytography: Ecopoetic Writing with Animals and Plants,” published in the Routledge Companion to Ecopetics (2023) and “More than Human Indigenous Poetry from the Amazon: Márcia Kambeba’s Zoophytography,” forthcoming in a special issue of Portuguese Studies on “Luso-Ecologies” (2025) and is currently working on the monograph Zoophytography: Animals and Plants in Amazonian Cultural Productions (forthcoming with The University Press of Florida). Project team members have published over 20 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and other academic essays over the past 30 months.

Another major achievement has been the successful dissemination of project research results. Over the past 30 months, project team members have given over 90 talks in conferences, colloquia, workshops and other academic venues throughout South and North America, in Europe and in the Middle East, have organized over 30 academic and dissemination events, as well as several training events, and have participated in the CES goes to school research dissemination program for Portuguese school children. The team has coordinated five short fiction and documentary films, over 10 interviews with experts in Amazonia and has made over 30 academic talks organized by the project available in ECO’s website.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

A breakthrough in the publications by the PI thus far is the theorization of the concept of zoophytography, establishing the basis for an analysis of cinema and poetry as a co-creation of plants, animals and humans. This lies at the core of ECO’s research and will be further developed in the PI’s forthcoming articles and monograph, including Zoophytography: Animals and Plants in Amazonian Cultural Productions (forthcoming with The University Press of Florida). Such an understanding of texts, films and artworks offers a new entry point into the interpretation of cultural productions and therefore advances the state of the art in the understanding of human culture as a collaboration between human and more than human beings.

The publications by the postdoctoral researchers Emanuele Fabiano and Karen Shiratori make a significant contribution to the cutting-edge field of multispecies ethnography that examines the articulation of more than human beings within human life and the formation of multispecies communities. Emanuele Fabiano’s already published research prefigures his forthcoming book Cantos urarina y poética de la contaminación (Colección de Estudios Amazónicos, Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) on the inscription of plants and animals in Urarina chants and cultural life. Karen Shiratori’s book O olhar envenenado: uma metafísica vegetal amazônica, forthcoming in 2025 with Ubu Press, will continue her previous research on plants and deepen the understanding of plant agency in shaping human life.

The work of Raphael Uchôa on the agency of Amazonian plants in shaping European scientific practices has opened a novel, historical and museological dimension of ECO’s research that the team will continue to explore in the second half of the project.

The dissertation of PhD student Elena Galvéz, “Amazonian Nature as a Subject in the Face of the Current Crisis of Civilization,” that is being developed in the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information of the University of Coimbra, co-supervised by the PI, will shed new light on the key role of alternative ways of understanding plants and animals as subjects in current socio-political and environmental debates.