Poetics of Cohabitation: An Ecosemiotic Theory of Oral Poiesis

AbstractThis article exposes the principles of an ecosemiotic theory of oral poiesis, which conceives of singing as a highly specific habit or skilled practice within the human domain of languaging. It is claimed that oral poiesis may contribute to the semiotic alignment of human and nonhuman own-worlds (Umwelten), playing a role in processes of structural coupling within a habitat, understood as a hybrid assemblage or collective of multispecies inhabitants. The article describes how oral poiesis, as a modeling system, contributes to sustaining the various modes of identification that characterize collective human ontologies (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism) through distinctive operations of symbolization (literality, metaphor, metonymy, analogy). These modes of ecopoetic symbolization serve to bring nonhumans, such as animals, plants, mountains, or rivers, into human own-worlds. Moreover, as one of many skilled practices of humans, oral poiesis is characterized by certain intrinsic features, such as attention, play, feeling, ritualization, musicality, or remembrance, which contribute to human sociality and hence to a system-wide relationality. All these elements constitute the foundations of a poetics of cohabitation.