Could Pan be rewritten as a cultural map for Haraway’s sympoietic response-ability?
Shared by REBECCA REAM
Could Pan be rewritten as a cultural map for Haraway’s sympoietic response-ability? Pan in his god-goat-human form is an early expression of the sympoiesis the Children of Compost practise (Haraway, 2016). His woolly odorous thighs, sun-browned human torso, curved horns and cloven hooves often locate him within rocky earth, but it is worth re-membering that Pan is also portrayed as the progeny of Hermes, son of sky-god Zeus (Borgeaud, 1988). Consequently, Pan looks to earth and sky for home. When he looks above he sees his father Hermes and – opening the gates of space and time – he sees Miriam’s skyward journey with colourful parrot, Chrysogaster (Potts, 2019) and, in an act of divine sympoiesis, sprouts wings so he can fly too.
Such stories weave feminist, common worlds and are “constantly in-the-making” (Ginn, 2008, p.336). Thus, as creative fabulations that trouble Western secular humanism, maybe Pott’s and Ream’s ‘flights of fancy’ are one way to enact the sympoietic response-ability Haraway calls for?
This microblog is the third in a conversation between Miriam Potts and Rebecca Ream.
Figure 1. Close up photograph of Hermes sculpture, by Augustin Pajou. Image taken by M Antonio (2016). Fromhttp://300spartanwarriors.blogspot.com/2016/03/classical-greece-and-ancient-greek.html
References
Borgeaud, P. (1988). The cult of Pan in ancient Greece / Philippe Borgeaud; translated by Kathleen Atlass and James Redfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ginn, F. (2008). Extension, subversion, containment: eco‐nationalism and (post) colonial nature in Aotearoa New Zealand. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(3), 335-353.
Haraway , D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene . Durham and London: Duke University Press.