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Sonderweaving and The Sonderweb

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The Sonderweb: the intra-connected web of human and parahuman beings in which the lives of both human and parahuman beings are equally vivid, complex and important in the ongoing co-emergence of each other.

Sonderweaving: to behave in such a way as to invite the growth of the sonderweb. Once I was sitting in a park with my partner, when a curious possum came close to us on the ground. I watched the possum quietly and remained very still so as to make the possum feel comfortable sharing the same space as me and therefore allow its agency to grow. Very quickly, the possum climbed up onto the seat with my partner and I and then climbed onto me, sniffing and investigating my various scents and perhaps looking for what food I might have to offer that it maybe has learned humans do in its past experiences. I, in turn, was permitted by the possum to stroke and pet it gently and enjoy its close company for a while. This would be an example of sonderweaving for both the possum and myself – both of us were allowing of the agency of the other to grow and therefore behaved in such a way as to invite an intra-action to occur between us; neither the possum or myself made any display of threatening behaviour that might discourage a closer and longer intra-action to occur between us, but instead moved carefully and respectfully in regards to the other in order to foster a sense of trust and amicably shared space.

If we can picture human and parahuman beings as leaving a trail of silver thread behind them everywhere they and their thoughts go, we can see how the sonderweb exists whether we are aware of it or not; how we can consciously sonderweave our lives or not; consciously interweave our lives with the parahuman in ways that are more intricate, more delicate than before, and which require more careful attentiveness and awareness than perhaps we have given in the past. One literary text generates a wonderful image of this way of perceiving. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut describes how aliens perceive the human presence as it exists throughout its entire lifetime all at once, which results in their  being perceived like long worms that turn back on themselves and interweave with others so that permanent knots are formed; knots that that can never be undone.
Perceiving the sonderweb would function much in this way. As we go about our lives we would see and understand how every intra-action with both parahuman and human beings leaves a permanent mark in time that inscribes how we and the other beings we intra-act with can change each other in very lasting ways; ways that leave a trace like a web that can be read and tells a story of how only one being can leave a permanent trail of all the intra-actions and thoughts that have constituted its lifetime.
For these external trails of intra-action would then also reflect the inner space of the beings that left them – which suggests that the inner workings of any agent of capitalism is premised upon violent ideas; ideas that destroy the possibility of these delicate, intimate and life-affirming intra-actions of one being with another to take place now and in the future. In this way, agents of the capitolcene end up destroying not only the sonderweb, but destroying themselves, because the existence of the self is reliant on the existence of sonderweb.
 


Sonderweaving the Sonderweb
The word sonder was taken from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It means ‘the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.’ It sounds like wonder, but more sombre; more ‘sober,’ as Rosie Braidotti would say, to the world as it is. The sonderweb is this complex of sonderment; this careful weaving of our thoughts and actions with the parahuman world that weaves itself back into us; into our very flesh as thoughtsilk leaving a permanent trace wherever it goes; a trace that can nonetheless become wound around us like a cocoon if we struggle against it.
This cocoon is deadly. Once we are inside, it is very hard to get out, as the more we struggle, the more its patterns collapse and close in around us like fairy floss on a stick. And we must be aware that it can be fatal to our co-worlding kin, whom we may seek to form an understanding of by weaving our thoughts around them to gain an impression of the inner shapes of their thought based on the outer shapes; the webpattern left by their lived existence; their manner of intra-action and sound making as traces of the thoughts that inhabit them.
But if we watch where we go; where our thoughts wander and dangle like spiders exploding empty space into realidream catchers, we can cast nets delicate enough to catch butterflights of thought about the other side of our skin; intra-imaginings of how other beings perceive, feel and potentially suffer – we can Sonderweave. But sonderweaving is not only an act of thinking. It is also an act of relationality. It is about weaving one’s body through the world in such a way as to invite the overlap of other weavings to entangle themselves with ours. This movement is necessarily delicate and careful but only to the point that one is able-bodied enough to make it so. It is also intricate because beings are intricate. It is intricareful and intracareful; conscious of its impact as it moves both physically and intellectually through the space that it explodes with intraconnectedness.



Thoughtsilk
Like a snail trail, thoughtsilk needs light to make it visible. Our consciousness is this light that follows wherever our thoughts may lead. If we never trace our thoughts over what is dark, then it will never be envisionated in our minds. Thoughtsilk also remains invisible without an outside self to be inscribbled on. For as Timothy Morton observes, all writing is scribbling that only becomes meaningful through the non-meaning that we perceive around it and give it shape to our eyes. If we remember that all sonderweaving is also sonderscribbling, then we can appreciate the significance of the sonderweb as a meaning-making device; a tool of relationality that envsionates the permanency of both action and thought as traces left on the world; scribblings we leave in our wake on our kin and that affect how they are in turn perceived by other beings as a result of these scribblings; scribblings that might not hold any meaning for the beings we perhaps unwittingly weave into ourselves. Only if we sonderweave might we have some chance to co-create meaning with the beings with whom we share this unearthly space; through a careful listening, seeing and sometimes touching we might be able to co-weave a web that is meaningful to both ourselves and our co-worlding kin; by consciously wrapping our thoughts around each being like the cocooned entanglement of a spider web, becoming kinful of their incorpresience by envisionating the shape of their minds via the trails left by their physical presence and actions; the language of their lived experience.


Kin-cocoons and the Empathreadic quality of the mind
Sonderweaving seeks to harness the empathreadic quality of the mind; the materiality of thought as a structure that is built into neural networks through conscious intraweaving; physical bridges between unchartered space in the mind. These physical bridgeways can be designed as consciously as a web to catch the multitudinous forms imprinted by the lived existence of our kin in the fabric of our co-worlding. Once these moulds of our kin have been woven, or kin-cocoons, we are able, like the blind form perceptions of form through touch, or like bats form forms in their mind through sonar, so the empathreadic quality of the mind allows us form forms of our kin, or strange strangers, who, as the cocoon tells us, we can never completely know internally, but rather have a carefully wound stringtheory about based on what perceptions are afforded us. This empathreadic quality emphasises the inability of thought to permeate the substance of existence and rather points to the way that thought can only press itself against the outside of substance; wrap itself around it and be formed into a shadow of substance by the shape the substance leaves in the fabric of existence; it emphasises that thought is not an ephemeral immateriality that can be summoned without consequence, but a permanent record of the paths that we weave through and around the world; paths that affect ourselves and our co-kin in lasting and meaningful ways.



By Claire - z3393668.



 

This page has paths:

  1. A response to the Sonder-web Sigi Jöttkandt
  2. E-Concepts Sigi Jöttkandt
  3. Land Clearing in Australia Sigi Jöttkandt
  4. E-Concept: De-peripheralisation Sigi Jöttkandt

Contents of this path:

  1. Close Reading of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke: 'Black Cat' - translated from the German by J. B. Leishman
  2. Cat Body Language 101 - Jackson Galaxy
  3. Critical Reflection - A Path Through My Econcept
  4. The Capitalocene
  5. Australian Law and The Status of Animals
  6. Mycelium - The Plant Mafia - Nefarious Webs
  7. Camperdown Cemetery - A Graveforest
  8. Dismantling the idea of the subject
  9. Chernobyl Play Equipment for No Body

This page has replies:

  1. Mapping Thoreau’s Sonderweb Sigi Jöttkandt The idea that we can trace the movements of humans and nonhuman animals by following the threads they leave behind brings to mind Thoreau’s piece on the ‘art of Walking’. Through writing, Thoreau articulates his own sonderweb when he describes how he walked ‘first along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side’. By using anaphora ‘and then’ to mimic his ongoing mobility through the landscape,  language allows Thoreau to describe the literal pathways he takes guided by the ‘subtle magnetism in Nature’.

    Yet Thoreau is also attentive to the trails left by nonhuman animals; he walks ‘without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do.’ Perhaps this is Thoreau partaking in 'sonderweaving’ since he verbalises his act of thinking about the nonhuman animals he ‘encounters’ on the sonderweb. While Thoreau admits that he ‘cannot easily shake off the village’ which precludes a more authentic connection with the non-human world, the act of walking nevertheless enables an ‘act of relationality’. That is to say, walking allows Thoreau to literally ‘weave’ his body through the world in such a way as to entangle himself with the paths created by others.

    George Raptis (z5206747)
  2. Sonderweaving Through the Animal and Human Relationship Sigi Jöttkandt The Sonderweb is a fascinating concept detailing the dependent relationship between humans and the natural world in a collective space. I recently watched a video about a piano player, Paul Barton, who plays music for rescued former street elephants every day, significantly improving their wellbeing and contentment. While first in a state of depression due to their trauma, these elephants were confused as to why there was a man with a piano in the middle of their drinking pond. However, by creating a comfortable environment and allowing the elephant to indulge in its curiosity, the “intra-connected web of human and parahuman beings” was fostered. Barton explains that he enjoys giving comfort to elephants that “live in a world of darkness.” I believe the world of darkness is the Anthropocene, where human activity has impacted the environment, at the hands of human hubris. Sonderweaving can be seen here in how the man believes “music is a universal language”, initiating a space of trust and mutual enjoyment felt by both the human and animal. Additionally, sonderweaving is further exhibited in this video as the music performances rekindle the spirit in the elephant and humans, emotionally benefiting both the human and parahuman as they coexist in the same 'web'. Elements of The Sonderweb link to my e-concept of Dysanatomification as it also focuses on the occurrences in the shared ecological space between the human and nonhuman. However, I would say that my concept challenges the idea that all beings are seen as equally important in the “co-emergence of each other” as I detail the harm that humans inflict on the non-human, such as disordering the natural evolution of species, placing animals at a lower status in the minds of most humans. This concept is relevant to the strong relationship with human and nature and can be applied to both uplifting and damaging relationships between the two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6THI3hOgV8 Elle Andreopoulos

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