Political Spirituality in the Face of Climate Collapse : Of Monsters, Megaliths, Mules, and Muck

This book takes its motive force from our contemporary climate crisis. It seeks to reorient human (and especially Christian) understanding, towards a more ecologically-focused, indigenously-informed way-of-living. James W. Perkinson argues that our current eco-climatic and socio-political emergency is the culmination of a 5,000-year history of supremacist “settlement,” in which city-states first emergent in Mesopotamia and Egypt not only begin coercively organizing labor into surplus production and ecosystems into inordinate and destructive yields of “goods,” but in the process, also simultaneously “deform” the Spirit-World “haloing” of natural phenomenon into outsized service of imperial reach. Perkinson recognizes globalized humanity as an emerging monstrosity destroying both human culture and the world. How we re-envision and revalue, at our critical juncture, our inescapable interdependence with the more-than-human world as peer and teacher and even “elder,” is the central theme that throbs below the surface of the very disparate topics commanding attention in each chapter. Acknowledgments Contents Part I: Meeting Monsters Chapter 1: Mirror The Duel The Omen The Book The Scope The Rhythm The Outline Bibliography Chapter 2: Metabolism Beginning the Question Siting My Position Situating the Conundrum Delineating the Titan Engaging the Beast While Undoing “Reduction” And Remixing the Spirit(s) Bibliography Chapter 3: Monstrance Daily Litany Viral Vehemence Demonstrative Monstrance Myth in the Mix Whale-Tales and Milk-Cultures Ending as Beginning Bibliography Part II: Monstrous Musing Chapter 4: Menace Recapitulation The Symptom The Problem The Question Long’s Tremendum Kimmerer’s Windigo Deloria’s Revelation Earth’s Limitation Bibliography Chapter 5: Myth Tremendous Witness Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans Tremendum Ritualized Tremendum Mythologized Tremendum as Topography Mysterium and “Myth-ticism” Bibliography Part III: Monstrous Mentoring Chapter 6: Matter Hollow Openings Detroit Chicory Galilean Mustard Strait Waters Wadi Springs Ecotone Edges Holy Wells Celtic Seasons Cailleach’s Cave Underground Ghosts My Hollows Bibliography Chapter 7: Mountains Mountain Mass Cairn Consternation Hermon Haunts Betyl Bounties Provençal Rock Menhirs of the Massif The Forge of Foy Bibliography Part IV: Monstrous “Meddling” Chapter 8: Metal Industrial Metal Personal “Meddle” Algonquian Mettle Iron and Genus Homo Iron and the “Way Back” Iron and Its Age Iron Spirits and Forge Gods Iron Enfleshed and Rust Possessed Bibliography Chapter 9: Muck Monster Metabolism Water Wiles Stone Speech Mountain Massage Land Learning Shabbat Sprout Air Appetite Car Compost Motown Mulch Bibliography Part V: Mobilizing Monsters Chapter 10: Mites Reading on the Fly ... Fly Flummox Jesus Gives the Finger Moses Fingers the Flies (and Gnats) Gnats Figure the Land Isaiah Re-figures the Flies Fly Mastery and Human Vulnerability After the Swarm ... Bibliography Chapter 11: Mules Misleading ... A Burro Not a Broadsword An Ass Not a Horse A Donkey Not a Mule A Theriomorph Not a Theos A Mountain Not a City Bibliography Chapter 12: Metropolis The Mess of the Moment Metabolic Mandate From Topography to City From Watching to Sealing Terrified Fascination Hoof Watching or Census Taking? The Horse Behind the Veil Watching the Watching The Eye That Eats From Monster to Monstrosity and Back Bibliography Index