Ontopoetics Part 1: The meaning of ‘ontopoetics’

with guest contributor Freya Mathews

This post is the first of several from philosopher Freya Mathews developing the notion of ontopoetics.[1] Learning How Land Speaks has already touched on ontopoetics in the post outlining living cosmos panpsychism; and in many of the examples from the experience of participants in our co-operative inquiries. Our intention is to intersperse these more philosophical reflections with further examples from experience.

Many of us have been visited at some point in our lives by a certain kind of experience which, though deeply arresting, confounds our modern cultural categories: we have no way of processing it or grafting it into the received discourses of our society. We each accordingly fold such experiences away into the privacy of our own psyche, touched by them, but unable to provide any account of them. In premodern societies, experiences of this kind were often read, religiously or superstitiously, as omens or signs. In Indigenous societies, even today, they may be understood as references to old or new Dreamings; as such they may be expected to occur routinely, to the point of directing the life of the community. In a Western context, Carl Jung spoke of synchronicities, mysterious manifestations in the outer environment of inner states of a person’s psyche – manifestations that Jung named but was unable to illuminate. Omens, signs, Dreamings, synchronicities – these terms suggest in their different ways instances of I-Thou encounter between self and cosmos, moments when the cosmos seems to speak directly to the human self in a ‘language’ that is both apposite and intimate. Any such encounter seems inexplicable from within the basically science-based frame of reference that defines modernity.

Is it possible to make sense of these not unfamiliar experiences in a way that acknowledges that there may indeed be a level of affinity and rapprochement – a more-than-causal relationship – between self and cosmos? Can we acknowledge this without, on the one hand, entirely rejecting the empirical evidence of science or, on the other hand, subscribing to a premodern faith that interprets such experiences in supernatural terms – as, for example, communiqués from gods or other spirit agencies?

Ontopoetics… is a way of talking about a communicative form of engagement with world… against the backdrop of a view of reality as presence …

I use the term, ontopoetics, to provide such a way of acknowledging these experiences, a way of denoting instances of engagement between self and world that are understood as structured not merely by causation but also by meaning, where such meaning emanates not merely from the side of self but from the world’s side as well. Ontopoetics, in other words, is a way of talking about a communicative form of engagement with world, and as such is conceivable only against the backdrop of a view of reality as presence, a presence with a psycho-active dimension of its own and a capacity and inclination to create and share meaning with us.

Although such a metaphysical backdrop may be theorized in various ways, different versions of the theory will presumably share the idea that reality is not exhausted by the kind of representation offered by physics, according to which all physical properties are in principle observable and in this sense fully extensional and externalized. Rather, physical properties will be understood, from this alternative metaphysical perspective, as also suffused with something that approximates to the ‘innerness’ that we experience as subjectivity. Another way of putting this point is to say that, in its largest outlines, reality must be moved by an inner principle or impulse not reducible to the strictly quantifiable laws or forces of physics, though the existence of such an informing principle or impulse will presumably be consistent with the activity of these latter laws or forces – it will not contravene them, though it may, at the deepest level, guide or explain them.

…panpsychism is the philosophical view that ‘psyche’, from Greek psykhē, meaning “soul, mind or spirit”, suffuses all of physical reality.

Such characterizations of reality point in the direction of panpsychism, where panpsychism is the philosophical view that ‘psyche’, from Greek psykhē, meaning “soul, mind or spirit”[2], suffuses all of physical reality. So we might say that ontopoetics rests on a broadly panpsychist premise. This is not to deny that there may be alternative terminologies, such as animism or hylozoism, that develop the core insight of panpsychism in different directions and for different purposes. But to my mind, the discourse of panpsychism seems to provide the best theoretic framework for ontopoetics. That said, panpsychism itself is open to a range of theorizations and interpretations and few of these are in fact consistent with ontopoetics. For to speak of ontopoetics is to imply not only that the world is psycho-active, in the sense of having a subjective life of its own, as panpsychism implies, but also that it is responsive to us, that we bring to it – or can bring to it, if we choose – something that calls it forth on a new, expressive plane, a plane of meaning and not merely of causation. To suppose this is tacitly to subscribe to a particular cosmological and communicative version of panpsychism that I call living cosmos panpsychism.[3]

How then would a prospective ontopoetics, understood against such a metaphysical background, play out in practice? To aver that the world has the capacity to respond to us requires that we adopt a stance of address in relation to it: in order to call reality forth on an expressive plane we need to invoke it. The practice of invocation is as old as humanity itself, or at least as old as the ceremonial aspects of human culture expressed so eloquently in Paleolithic cave and rock art. But while, historically speaking, invocations seem generally to have been intended to engage spirit beings and spirit phenomena, it is possible, as we have seen, to interpret them as engaging the cosmos itself, under its panpsychist aspect: a living cosmos is capable of responding to our call, and if it does so, it will frame its response in the terms of reference of the invocation itself. So, for example, a 19^th century Christian may have invoked a Catholic saint, perhaps Bernadette of Lourdes; if springs that had hitherto been hidden in the landscape bubbled up in consequence, the Christian would probably interpret this as a response from Mary, Mother of God, or perhaps from the saint herself. But, from an ontopoetic perspective, we might interpret this phenomenon as the response not of an independently existing spirit-being, such as Mary or Bernadette, but of the living cosmos itself to an act of address.  Or, to take another example, a heartfelt prayer from a devout individual of any faith might be met with a burst of light and the appearance of, say, a rainbow in the heavens. To the individual in question, this would presumably signal a divine response. But a different interpretation is again possible: the rainbow might be seen as the response of a communicative cosmos to an act of address. The response takes the form of a rainbow because the address or invocation is framed within the terms of a religious narrative and rainbows have figured as tropes of divine blessing in many religions.

Invocation understood ontopoetically, however, need by no means be framed by religious narratives but may draw on narratives from folklore, myth, totemism, pilgrim tradition or, on a more personal level, dreams, especially ‘big dreams’ that convey archetypal motifs from the deep unconscious. Invocations framed in any of these various – and no doubt other – ways may call forth answering manifestations from the world. So, for example, a seeker may invoke a cherished land form, such as a river, by way of pilgrimage or other ceremonial form of address, and be graced with marks of answering attention by iconic local birds, breezes, butterflies or the revelation of river secrets or mysteries.

the ‘language’ that a living cosmos speaks in response to our invocations is… the language of poetics – of imagery, of meaning conveyed through the symbolic resonance of things

In all instances of ontopoetics, the ‘language’ that a living cosmos speaks in response to our invocations is a concretised and particularized one. It is the language of poetics – of imagery, of meaning conveyed through the symbolic resonance of things. It is in such language – traditionally a language of poetic narrative – that our invocations need to be couched, so that they may in due course be answered in the same language, the world’s own language, this language of things. This is the idea, or cluster of ideas, that the term, ‘ontopoetics’, is intended to capture: ontos, from the ancient Greek, on, or being, and poetics, both in its modern sense and in a sense drawn from the ancient Greek, poietic, making or creating. Reality is not only informed with meanings of its own but is disposed subtly to re-arrange itself, locally, in physical reconfigurations that creatively signal a response to our call.

When I address the world by way of such a poetic frame of reference, a story with the kind of poetic undertow that characterized the numinous legends and tales of ancient societies, and when the world responds to me with an emanation or conjunction of circumstances clearly referenced to that same story, I cannot help but be smitten. The response of the world is unmistakeable in its poetic appositeness, an appositeness already familiar and recognizable to us from the night-time realm of dreams, or those dreams at any rate imprinted with the strangeness of a source beyond the circle of ordinary experience. And there is in this appositeness, in the attunement of this response to the particular poetics of our call, a rightness, a directedness to the meanings at our own most personal core, that draws us inescapably into intimacy. Each time the world arranges itself with poetic intent, each time it manifests in the poetic image of our invocation, it is as if it presents itself to us for the very first time. It is as if the veil of the ordinary is drawn aside and a mythic world that exists only for our eyes, pristine and untouched, still dripping with the dew of creation, is vouchsafed to us. There is such intimacy in this revelation, such incomparable largesse in the gift, such breath-taking unexpectedness, we cannot help but surrender to it. Thereafter we will become as infatuated, at some level, as a mystic, holding the world as a beloved in our hearts despite the undiminished perils, griefs and trials it presents to us in our everyday transactions.

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[1] This post has been in small part adapted from Freya Mathews, “On Desiring Nature,” Indian Journal of Ecocriticism 3, 2010: 1-9.

[2] https://www.etymonline.com/word/psyche

[3] For a theoretical elaboration and defence of living cosmos panpsychism, see Freya Mathews,  “Living Cosmos Panpsychism” in William Seager (ed), Routledge Handbook on Panpsychism, Routledge, New York, 2019, 131-143