Eduardo Kohn's 'How Forests Think' Challenges Anthropocentrism

Eduardo Kohn's book 'Come pensano le foreste. Per un’antropologia oltre l’umano' (How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human), published by Nottetempo with a preface by Emanuele Coccia, proposes an anthropology that moves beyond the human by examining how non-human beings think and relate. Drawing on fieldwork among the Runa people of Ecuadorian Amazonia, particularly in the village of Avila, Kohn shows that the Runa are not isolated 'savages' but colonized people who interact with the Western world through supermarkets, NGOs, and trade. Their hunting and gathering practices, however, place them in a relational web where predator and prey merge. Kohn argues that thought and knowledge are not exclusively human, and that encounters with other species—like white-eyed parakeets kept away from cornfields by scarecrows designed from the birds' perspective—reveal a semiotic ecology that transcends human language. The book breaks down anthropocentric binaries and advocates for a 'thinking with' the forest as an ecosystem that communicates through non-verbal signs. Published in 2021, the 448-page volume (€20, ISBN 9788874528943) is part of Nottetempo's catalog and was reviewed in Grandi Mostre #25.