Spirits in the Mudflats: Nils Bubandt’s “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene”
Nils Bubandt is a professor at Aarhus University, the largest and second oldest research university in Denmark, as well as editor in chief of Ethnos, an international, peer-reviewed journal of anthropology. He’s contributed to a wide range of publications, including A Non-secular Anthropocene: Spirits, Specters and Other Nonhumans in a Time of Environmental Change, the third volume in a series of “working papers” published by AURA (Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene) and Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, the anthology in which the essay we read, “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene” can be found.
One of the main issues Bubandt addresses in relation to the Anthropocene is the blending of human and non-human causality in relation to natural disasters: “undecidability, I will argue, is simultaneously the signature characteristic, the curse, and the promise of our current moment.” He points to Lusi, a mud volcano on the north coast of Java, as an embodiment of this. Lusi (abbreviation for Lumpur Sidoarjo) is the largest mud volcano in the world, and its story is one of undecided causality. There are those who say the mudflows were caused by an earthquake and those who say they were caused by oil drilling, and plausible evidence exists to support both claims. Regardless of which of these narratives is true, it cannot be denied that the eruption fundamentally altered the lives of those living in the area. Ongoing political, economic, and spiritual claims about Lusi only fuel the controversy surrounding it. Bubandt focuses on the necropolitics of the mudflats, describing the interwoven issues of corruption, industry, nature, and spirituality, and how they all feed into the larger discussion about spirits and their effects in the Anthropocene.
Bubandt discusses spirits by saying “spirits exist under the same conditions of uncertainty and possibility. Spirits are never just ‘there.’ They are both manifest and disembodied, present and absent. Spirits thrive, as a result, in conditions of doubt rather than belief.” He claims that spirits are an intrinsic part of the Anthropocene, citing figures such as Donna Haraway’s chthulus and Lyn Margulis’ Gaia as examples. He argues that geology brings spirits into being through the example of Lusi and that the undecidedness of its origins fosters the mysticism around it. Lusi regularly spits out stones in the mudflats, stones are associated with the spiritual nature of Lusi itself. It is said that the vent itself is a guardian spirit, Penunggunya, that spits out bezoars. The bezoars are regarded as possessing great spiritual power and good fortune (reziki). They are scattered throughout the mudflats, where they are found by some of Lusi’s victims, who “now make a living and seek good fortune on top of the toxic mud that covers what used to be their villages.” While these objects become personal treasures for those who find them, this idea of Lusi’s spiritual presence can be further explored in the surrounding mud.
Somewhat ironically, given the potentially corrupt circumstances of Lusi’s eruption, mud has become a symbol of protest against the corrupt government-- and more than a symbol, a cosmological agent, entangled in the world of spirits. One of the most popular narratives surrounding the eruption of Lusi characterizes it as “the result of spiritual revenge from a murdered labor activist” named Marsinah, and it’s said that the mud at the vents will boil more violently when corrupt bureaucrats come near. In this way, mud is not just physical, but “the spiritual index of vengeance against capitalist murk, personal greed, and social betrayal,” rendering Lusi haunted, a necropolis in contrast to the Anthropocene’s metropolis.
Our class discussion centered largely on the frankness with which Bubandt discusses spirits throughout his essay. We struggled with what it means to believe in the possibility of, say, “a giant snake spirit at the center of the mud volcano” spitting out treasures for the population to find, and how easily narratives centering around spirits can be co-opted. Bubandt makes clear that “spiritual anxiety has been the constant companion of dreams of good fortune at Lusi since its eruption in 2006,” and that while engineers have failed to plug the vents, it is entirely possible that sacrifices of human heads by the government have been provided to the volcano in an attempt to appease its “vengeful and angry geospirit.” Here, we see both magic and science at work, but we also see the ways in which the oil company, Lapindo, skirts responsibility through Lusi’s uncertainty. Bubandt argues that this strangeness speaks to a “spectral moment in Indonesia in which geology is political, politics is corrupt, and corruption is haunted by spirits,” but we can’t help but wonder whether designating a primarily spiritual element to these occurrences has the potential to reduce their socio-political significance.
(AL & TC)
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