NB This talk is ZOOM only, Tues May 21, 6:30pm (London time)
Morna Finnegan specialises in the anthropology of gender, the body and kinship. She investigates the female reproductive body as model of the person as porous and multiple.
Morna writes: “”In his paper ‘When individuals do not stop at the skin’, Alan Barnard reiterates a long-held conviction that ‘extended mind’ is best illustrated by African immediate return hunter-gatherers. While an understanding of the person as porous or multiple is widely found among hunter-gatherers beyond Africa, the evidence that ‘early human kinship was matrilineal’ (Knight) is essential for grounding understanding of the social brain, literally returning it to earth. Yet most writers persist in pulling back from the obvious conclusion: that it is specifically the female reproductive body as mind which promotes the flourishing of a whole universe of cultural systems stressing deep relatedness and interconnection. Let’s use this session as a conversation to collectively re-member who we are, where we come from, and why it is not too late for us ‘social deviants’ (Barnard) to reclaim the deeper vital force of kinship for our children.”