Anthony Chaney. 2017. <em>Runaway. Gregory Bateson, the double bind, and the rise of ecological consciousness</em>
10.13125/americacritica/3998
Recensione di Anthony Chaney,&nbsp;Runaway. Gregory Bateson, the double bind, and the rise of ecological consciousness. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017, pp. 304.
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América Crítica
Anthony Chaney. 2017. <em>Runaway. Gregory Bateson, the double bind, and the rise of ecological consciousness</em>
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Juan Javier Rivera Andía
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urn:nbn:it:unica-25994
Anthony Chaney. 2017. <em>Runaway. Gregory Bateson, the double bind, and the rise of ecological consciousness</em>
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                                    América Crítica 4(1), pp. 99-100, 2020, ISSN: 2532-6724, doi: 10.13125/americacritica/3998




 Anthony Chaney, Runaway. Gregory Bateson, the double bind,
  and the rise of ecological consciousness. Chapel Hill: The
      University of North Carolina Press, 2017, pp. 304
                                                         Juan Javier Rivera Andía1
                                                1   Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn




                                                                             research on dolphins in an immense 300,000-gallon tank, and
        hat Anthony Chaney wants to provide us with this                     “oceanarium” called Bateson’s Bay at the Oceanic Institute
W        book could be considered a reply to the frequent call
made by authors such as Donna Haraway: “What must be cut
                                                                             in Hawaii. The problem of play-fighting is illustrative of
                                                                             Bateson’s life-long concerns: how does an animal convey
and what must be tied if multispecies flourishing on earth,                  to another one that its bite is only a play bite and not a
including human and other-than-human beings in kinship,                      real bite? How do they communicate such a paradox, in
are to have a chance?” (Haraway 2016: 2). When Chaney                        which a statement contradicts the meta-statement that frames
states that “we require stories” (17), the reader might find this            its meaning? (112). His hypothesis that mammals asked
requirement in correlation with what Haraway suggests we                     (riddle of the Sphinx) questions to each other continually and
require: “learning to be truly present [...] as mortal critters              unconsciously, and that their answers contained information
entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places,                      (most important to them) about their relationships (111)
times, matters, meanings” (1). Does Gregory Bateson’s                        emphisezes those recent proposals (mostly inspired to the
works help us “staying with the trouble”?                                    theories of the biologist Jakob Johann von Uexküll and the
    Chaney reminds us that Gregory Bateson came from                         philosopher Charles Pierce) interested in nonhumans among
a family that was firmly established in the intellectual                     the so-called ontological turn (cf. Kohn 2013).
environment of his country. His grandfather, John Bateson,                       Also in a similar vein to some of the authors associated to
was the headmaster at St. John´s College, Cambridge. The                     the ontological turn, Bateson arrived to certain deep concerns
research assistant of his father, William Bateson, was Nora                  about the future of the planet. At the congress on the Dialec-
Barlow, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin and wife of                      tics of Liberation, which took place in London at the end of
the queen’s physician (127). Since the beginning, when he                    the Sixties (247), he gave his audience — among which was
studied biology in Cambridge, Gregory Bateson dedicated                      an impressed Allen Ginsberg —, according to Chaney, “a new
his works to building a theory of communication. Later on,                   accounting of reality” that suggested greater responsibility
thanks to his fieldwork among Iatmul people of New Guinea                    and emphasized dependence (3): “Bateson explained the
– where Bateson, Margaret Mead and her then husband Reo                      greenhouse effect and the potential consequences of a rise in
Fortune “were analysing each other as much as or more than                   global temperature” (234). Building on his conceptualization
they were the tribal people who surrounded them” (32) –,                     of the “double bind” — the inescapable paradox in which a
he began to ask himself what protected a collective from                     message was refuted by its context (“Don’t be so obedient!”)
splintering or exploding. Where do diffusing patterns (such                  (5) —, he viewed his world as a system in runaway, out of
as Iatmul naven ritual) come from? Already unsatisfied with                  balance and accelerating toward breakdown. Again, this
functional explanations, Bateson “could find no cause for                    proposal could remind the contemporary reader that “There is
group equilibrium other than coincidence. [...] It was an                    a fine line between acknowledging the extent and seriousness
uneasy question to leave hanging: why should an entity not                   of the troubles and succumbing to abstract futurism and
explode?” (27-28).                                                           its affects of sublime despair and its politics of sublime
    Despite the recognition received for his anthropological                 indifference” (6). To Chaney, Bateson’s participation at the
studies, Bateson did not decrease his attention towards ani-                 congress represented a shift in thinking about humankind and
mals. After observing with attention octopuses monkeys and                   the environment that is actually the underrecognized legacy
otters (111) with his new family – “doing natural history was                of the 1960s and the foremost intellectual experience of our
always a family affair” (103) –, he finally left for Hawaii to               time (3).
                                                                                 Whichever the contribution of Bateson to this legacy
 Contact data: Juan Javier Rivera Andía, jjriveraandia@gmail.com             might be, it certainly was one emerging from a life troubled
100                                                                                                     América Crítica 4(1): 99–100


elder brother was killed by a bombshell a month before the               finances and his health [...] diagnosed with lung cancer [...]
armistice of WWI, during WWII Gregory Bateson worked                     his research life was over and thus his access to grants [...]
with the Office of Strategic Services created by William                 never having institutionalized himself, Bateson faced periods
“Wild Bill” Donovan, also founder of the Central Intelligence            of «singing for his supper»” (252).
Agency (8), producing and deploying what was then called                 Despite its very valuable sources (i.e., Bateson’s personal
“black propaganda”: information intended to subvert enemy                letters) that illuminate the context of his intellectual work,
intelligence and morale (40). Not much is added in the book              this book does not develop very much the legacy it points
about how Bateson saw this period of his work. Writing from              out. What are the concrete contributions of this legacy to
what is now Sri Lanka and was then the British colony of                 the contemporary issues currently raised around a so-called
Ceylon, he asks to a friend of his: “Do you like to be used              Anthropocene in which “life-enhacing entanglements disap-
as an energy source? And do you like, at all, the product                pear from our landscapes” affecting “multispecies livability”
achieved by combustion of little pieces of your image?” (41).            (Tsing et al. 2017: G4-G5)? Which could be the precise
Chaney also recalls Bateson’s respect toward and relation                components of Bateson’s contribution to the current debates
with Konrad Lorenz (156, 200), which corresponds to the                  on the agency of non-humans that seek to avoid both natu-
former’s late interest in dolphins’ forms of communication.              ralist reductionisms and semiologist idealisms? And finally,
Building on and feeding the “mainstream fascination with                 how does Bateson’s apparent distance from issues of power
dolphins,” Life magazine once published a photo of Bateson               and inequality should be considered if we aim to “provide
using a submerged giant ear in order to hear them and added              resonance to those other worlds that interrupt the one-world
that one of his colleagues was working “at the behest of the             story” producing “non-existence points at the non-existence
navy” implying that “dolphins might become sophisticated                 worlds” (Escobar 2016: 15-22)?
new weapons in the Cold War” (105).
    Beyond the vicissitudes of war, what might be more as-
tonishing is that such brilliant outcomes as those of Bateson’s
work were produced in an environment persistently haunted                References
by precarity. Such situation sometimes seems provoked by
himself and his desire to explore a different field of knowl-            Escobar, Arturo. 2016. “Sentipensar con la tierra: Las luchas
edge. During his works with mental illness issues (between                   territoriales y la dimensión ontológica de las Epis-
his work as anthropologist and ethologist), Bateson turned                   temologías del Sur.” AIBR. Revista de Antropología
down two job offers from American psychiatric institutions                   Iberoamericana 11 (1): 11–32. doi:10 . 11156 / aibr .
involving the continuation of his clinical work. His stay at the             110102.
Oceanic Institute in Hawaii illustrates well how his previous            Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the trouble: Making kin
affiliations usually represented a kind of temporary refuge for              in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
him and his researches: “He was given the title of associate
director, along with a number of administrative duties, but              Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How forests think: Towards an anthro-
as usual, the position was funded largely by a grant Bateson                 pology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of Cali-
had himself obtained, and his research objectives were his                   fornia Press.
own. When that funding dried up, in just over a year, Bateson            Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Eliane Gan, and Neils
was again at loose ends” (110). At the end of his career,                    Bubandt, eds. 2017. Arts of living on a damaged planet.
“the 1970s was a challenging time [...] in regard to both his                Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.




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