A wedding between two trees in a Tamil village reveals that a tree can be more than, while still remaining, a tree. It needs to be a tree because trees do certain things. It can be made more than a tree, however, through a logic of homological connections which temporarily create equivalences between trees and divinities. The wedding (kalyanam), a ubiquitous Tamil ritual form which pertains not only to marriage, creatively and subjunctively opens up new possibilities to change ‘it could be’ and ‘it should be’ to ‘let it be so’. The wedding of two trees seeks to materialize ideal situations and outcomes by mobilizing the aliveness of trees, a quality they share with humans and animals, without positing personhood, identity, or confusing categories. In making this argument, I question choices of comparators in anthropological analyses which posit a holistic ‘non-West’ against a dualistic ‘West’ and contrast a taken-for-granted ‘us’ with ‘our’ really rather different ‘others’.

中文翻译：

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两棵树的婚礼：泰米尔仪式中的联系、等价和虚拟

泰米尔村庄的两棵树之间的婚礼表明，一棵树可以不仅仅是一棵树，但仍然是一棵树。它必须是一棵树，因为树会做某些事情。然而，通过一种同源联系的逻辑，它可以不仅仅是一棵树，暂时在树和神之间创造等价。婚礼 ( kalyanam)，一种无处不在的泰米尔仪式形式，不仅与婚姻有关，而且创造性地和虚拟地开辟了改变“它可能是”和“它应该是”到“让它如此”的新可能性。两棵树的婚礼旨在通过调动树木的活力来实现理想的情况和结果，这是它们与人类和动物共有的品质，而不是设定人格、身份或混淆的类别。在提出这个论点时，我质疑人类学分析中比较者的选择，这些比较者假设整体的“非西方”与二元论的“西方”相对，并将理所当然的“我们”与“我们的”非常不同的“他者”进行对比。