Da anima e dos animes

Mushishi

Abstract

For centuries, western culture has been governed by the anthropocentric mistake of holding humans as the top of the evolutionary chain, and distancing them from other living beings. Derrida, Deleuze, Nagel, among other theorists, have shown us the complexity and the historical and cultural importance of investigating animal and vegetable life under different lenses. This field of study encompasses philosophical debates, as well as zooliterature and fitoliterature, and several means of artistic production. This essay is an attempt to form a post-human reading of the anime Mushishi, through the intersection of the concepts of soul and anima, considering a pervasive worldview in Japanese animes, capable of confronting us with that initial anthropocentric mistake, evident in western works.