Smudging Relationships between Plants, Smoke and Smudge Stick Makers to Connect Partially Multispecies Worlds

Abstract

This work deals with smudge, interweaving of plants that are burned for healing purposes. These artifacts are made by hand, mainly by women –the smudge stick makers– who live in urban areas associated with the river basin of Paraná River (Argentina). Prior to the field approach, our notions installed these smudge stick makers in new age contexts. Inhabited, but in disagreement with these previous ideas, we unfolded an ethnographic practice that began to speak to us of a praxis in which the vegetable body possesses a power capable of affecting human bodies. We learned that the vegetable soul carries an intention that is transmuted through smoke when the botanical matter is burned, linking those who immerse themselves in said multispecies dialogue exercise. The objective of this text thus lies in navigating towards these lands with the aim of narrating relationships that circumvent the disintegration of urban nature and connect –at least partially– the practices deployed by the smudge stick makers with those of relational worlds.