Video: Postapocalyptic Futures: Visionary Landscapes in Northern Peru

In this conversation with Gnosologies host Giovanna Parmigiani, Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Professor of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo, shared how sentient mountains and lakes (Apus), channeled by Northern Peruvian shamans, addressed the greatest challenges of our climate crisis: overcoming anthropocentrism, the sole focus on human welfare, and justice for humans at the expense of the planet. Bacigalupo argued that by healing epistemic fractures between subject and object, matter and spirit, humans and ecosystems, Apus taught planetary ethics, restoring humanity’s sense of belonging to the earth. 

Bacigalupo discussed how Apus also offered a collective vision of humanity’s future as climate change continued to ravage the world. By decentering the human and fostering awareness of the inevitable end of modern industrial civilization and humanity—and of a world that would persist without us—Apus inspired responses to the climate crisis. When accepting that humanity would ultimately be destroyed by climate change events, Apus reasoned, people might mitigate their suffering by engaging in ethical, reciprocal, multispecies relationships to postpone the end of humanity and reimagine existence as insects and birds in a post-human world. 

Bacigalupo posed thought-provoking questions: “What could be the implications for our climate crises of truly decentering the human? How might sentient landscapes define and advocate for collective ethics and climate justice? And what kinds of postapocalyptic visions could trigger our moral responsibility toward the earth?” 

ANA MARIELLA BACIGALUPO, PhD, is a Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York (SUNY), University at Buffalo. She has worked with Indigenous Mapuche in Chile and pan-Indigenous communities in northern Peru. She has authored several books, including Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Patagonia (University of Texas Press, 2016). Prof. Bacigalupo is a fellow at the National Humanities Center, writing a new book: The Subversive Politics of Sentient Lands: Collective Ethics and Climate Justice in Northern Peru. Her research has been funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and many more. 

SITALIN SANCHEZ, Sirena Design Lab Co-founder and HDS graduate, joined the conversation.