Becoming Earth
Ecokritike March 5, 2026 Chantal Noa Forbes
Cross-species tracking among hunter-gatherers in southern Africa facilitates an ontological process of trans-species ambiguity, where humans and more-than-humans exchange sentience. Drawing on comparative historical analysis and the work of anthropologist Mathias Guenther, the paper argues that this ontological fluidity serves a prehumanistic, somatic, and intuitive function, engaging the body's physical, emotional, and mythological aspects to assimilate a multidimensional environment. The author concludes that such trans-species sentience informs a metaphysics of Becoming Earth, suggesting that a posthumanist future depends on a prehumanist understanding of interspecies consciousness.