Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

If I am here in Vancouver to discuss Religion and Ecology, I have flown here from Florida. (I did not sail here, like Greta Thurnberg). I am here because I don’t yet really believe what I know to be true: not merely that I shouldn’t fly, but that there is really no place to go, and nothing to do. The very act of coming here is an act of bad faith, in the theological sense that I specifically derive from Kierkegaard, Whitman and Emerson. I think and act as though I am–despite what I know from their theological perspective. This I-am-ness is ecologically disastrous, the precondition that drew me here. This paper explores, through texts, images and audience exercises, how these proto-post humanist writers, Kierkegaard, Emerson and Whitman, conceive of the self in a way that counters the mythology that “I am.” And by dismantling the grammar of “I am,” they provide a framework toward a post-human ecology. As we currently identify the pronouns by which they prefer to be addressed, these writers encourage us to normalize an alternative form of the verb “to be,” to apply to ourselves. By the end of this paper, I wants “I is” to sound grammatical. I believe that these writers provide a framework which allows for that shift, without which our ecological efforts are bound to be self-defeating and contradictory. I hope that speaking here enables me to someday stay home, in my oikos.