“The Glacier Knows.” Lived Experiences and Attachments with Mountain Entities in the Alps, beyond Loss and Death
Abstract ID: 3.13416 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA
Jean Chamel (1)
As a result of global warming, glacier retreat is accelerating, and rock collapses are increasing in high Alpine mountains. This transformation disrupts the landscapes, altering how the mountains are perceived and navigated. People, such as glaciologists, mountain guides, crystal hunters or altitude workers, who have in common a deep knowledge of, and a sensitive and affective relationship with the mountains of the Mont Blanc range and the Valais Alps, express feelings of loss and sadness. Sometimes it is intensified by attachments developed with specific places or beings, through forms of personification and animation that can be related to animism. This contribution will present and analyse their deep and embodied experiences of loss of landscapes, entities and practices, as well as of human lives, but also how they live on the edge, experiencing the simple fact of staying alive, in a mindset that some describe as “being animal.” The ethnographic account of such entanglements can help to think the future of ways of relating with high mountains, and feed the more general debate on how to overcome the modernist divide between societies and their more-than-human environment. Finally, this contribution will also briefly reflect on how participatory research gatherings (with the informal collective glaciers ardents) as well as collaborations with artists through comics, documentary essay, performance and poetry can nurture the research and help disseminate its findings.
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