Greenhouse Research Talk: Elin McCready, Spellcasting as (non)cooperation

This talk considers spellcasting in the context of speech act theory. Here, casting a spell can be thought of as a directive aimed to produce reactive change in a hearer; for spells, that hearer is in the general context the world, and in some specific contexts a human interpreter. The talk shows that different hierarchical relationships between speaker and hearer can result in changed boundaries of permissible action between speaker and hearer and shifts in epistemic possibility. I suggest that, when spells are understood as requests rather than commands, they assume cooperation and can induce new relationships between human and nature.