Experiencing Elemental Embodiment: (Re) visiting Latvian Folklore on Life and Nature

Latest research in environmental humanities often presumes the necessity of some kind of an ontological “shift” in thinking and living, while the question of the possibility of such a shift on an experiential level, is still to be answered. In this article, I am (re) visiting Latvian folk epistemologies as a sample case of alternate yet already “present” ontogenealogies that could be applied for reinventing ways to experience environed embodiment. While it is not possible, or desirable to recapture the past, alternate ontogenealogies of the Global North—partly local, yet always also entangled with closer and farther regions, can provide insight into the building of future societies upon the idea of meaningful, senseful materiality. Especially—in context of pre-Christian sacrality of naturecultures that place meaning beyond and before human I-consciousness, thus, capturing the idea of consciousness as the result, not the source of senseful agency of materiality. Moreover, such inquiry allows diluting the presumption of a homogeneous Global North, instead demonstrating the heterogenous genealogical background that co-constitutes our experiences and materialities today. Within this article, I focus on the topics of life and nature in Latvian folksongs—Dainas, expressed through the elemental worldings of stone and forest, to demonstrate old Latvian epistemologies as a fruitful ground for an affirmative environmental ethics in the future.