The cannonade of Valmy

Abstract

The eccentric American zoologist Richard Lynch Garner (1848–1920) spent almost two decades living with Nkomi people in southern Gabon between 1893 and 1918. His essays often discussed the connections between occult beliefs and political change during the chaotic era of concessionary companies in the colony. This period is often seen by historians as a violent period that destroyed pre-colonial political institutions in equatorial Africa. However, Garner described how he engaged with local occult beliefs in ways that reveal the continued use of landlord/stranger relationships in the colony. While Garner employed chemicals and phonographs as a means of gaining authority over his African hosts, Gabonese people sought to incorporate Garner into their communities through healing rituals and boycotts backed by supernatural threats. Although the American constructed Gabonese people as gullible and backward, a close reading of his writings demonstrates how southern Gabonese communities placed Garner and his technology into a long tradition that tied together European wealth, supernatural forces, and rights of local people over foreigners. The nineteenth century Nkomi kingdom might have crumbled, but links between occult forces and political power survived and adapted to the new realities of the early colonial era.     

Hobbes on the supernatural from The Elements of Law to Leviathan

Hobbes's unusual religious views in his classical work, Leviathan, are often seen as a product of his attempt to reconcile Christianity with his philosophical materialism. Yet given Hobbes's materialistic view in his earlier works too, this explanatory framework alone is not sufficient for grasping distinctive features of Leviathan. This article remedies this lacuna by paying close attention to an understudied aspect of the development of Hobbes's religious theory from The Elements of Law to Leviathan: his treatment of the supernatural and, particularly, of matters of faith known by supernatural revelation as opposed to natural reason. I argue that over time Hobbes developed an epistemological analysis of supernatural revelation and refined his argument about the sense in which matters of faith are supernatural and about the extent to which they are found in the Bible. It was not materialism per se but the more sophisticated analysis of the supernatural in Leviathan that enabled Hobbes to admit the sphere of the supernatural to a much smaller extent than in De Cive and to discuss in detail what he sees as a matter of faith and beyond the scope of philosophy in De Cive.     

Names and Tales: On Folklore and Place Names

Abstract

Names, like stories, are linguistic performances; so the twin disciplines of folkloristics and place-name studies can learn from each other’s methods. Some names offer straightforward evidence for traditional culture, but others are rhetorical, not literal. Allusions to goblins, giants, and the Devil derive from playful storytelling rather than supernatural belief, while names of landmarks are used as pegs on which to hang local legends. The rules for coining names have varied through time and often use special linguistic markers to highlight moral or imaginative content. As we move into a more semiotically aware onomastics, we find ourselves interpreting names from a realm of popular idiom and allusion which is already familiar from folklore.     

Alister E. McGrath,A Scientific Theology

Abstract

One of the more interesting points of contention between Slavoj ?i?ek and John Milbank in their recent debate, The Monstrosity of Christ, is over the nature and status of belief in the supernatural. For ?i?ek belief in the supernatural is an ultimate symptom of capitalist domination; for Milbank it is a sign of the reality of the elusive promise of a world whose beneficence exceeds both the imagination and the administrative powers of empire and capital. I contend that even without Milbank's orthodox perspective, ?i?ek's reduction of magic to fantasy obscures the black magic of capitalism itself and so arbitrarily and unnecessarily forecloses on modes of resistance that are allied to liturgical, theurgical, and spiritual practices.     

The Other Side of the Tamar: A Comparison of the Pixies of Devon and Cornwall

Abstract

A consideration of pixy traditions of Devon and Cornwall reveals similarities and differences. Although people from both places described the supernatural beings in similar ways, examples of migratory legends diverge, particularly when comparing those from the far west of the peninsula with those from Devon. A method employing Reidar Christiansen’s index demonstrates that differences in these narratives reflect the isolation of far western Cornwall. This analysis indicates that nineteenth-century Cornish folklore should be seen as distinct from English traditions.     

Ideal Coconut Country: Commodified Coconuts and the Scientific Plantation in Pohnpei,Micronesia

ABSTRACT

Pohnpeians regard human beings, natural forces, and supernatural forces as equally important agents in the making of their island’s past. Pohnpei’s rapid transition from an island where families maintained only a small number of coconut plantings to one whose 20th century skyline was dominated by coconut palms should therefore draw our attention to the entanglement of human and nonhuman agents that facilitated the growth of the copra trade on Pohnpei at the end of the 19th century. This article focuses on the modern proliferation of coconut trees on Pohnpei, its link to a powerful scientific agricultural discourse, and the coconut’s attendant effects on Pohnpeian relationships and ecology. It argues that Pohnpeians and coconuts, commodified as copra, remade the land and one another as indigenous and foreign visions of the coconut collided.     

A Critique of the Metaphysics of Ontological Poesis : Responding to Theology and the Political

Abstract

A common set of metaphysical assumptions inform the theological proposals of many contributors to Theology and the Political: The New Debate. Those assumptions are orientated toward grounding the possibility of genuine ontological creativity (poesis) in a particular construal of nature's mediation of the supernatural. Applying the claims of Bernard Lonergan's early work on grace and freedom to those assumptions, the argument is made that this position repeats the most fundamental flaws of the Bañezian position in the de Auxiliis controversy: namely, a basic confusion of form with act, which gives rise to the misguided assumption that a "third" (i.e., physical premotion, causal influx, sophia) must be posited to mediate divine grace to the world and within it. It is argued that this confusion reveals that a competitive understanding of the God/world relation is presumed in this proposal, which itself is the result of a failure to affirm the absolute and immediate dependence implied by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.     

Adriatic Neolithic Mortuary Ritual at Grapčeva Cave,Croatia

Abstract

Excavations at Grap?eva Cave in Croatia, a major eastern Adriatic Neolithic site, yielded evidence of ritual activities during the 5th millennium CAL B.C. Structured deposits in the main interior chamber consisted of large burned features containing extremely high frequencies of animal remains and artifacts, including richly decorated Late Neolithic “Hvar-style” pottery, as well as scattered human remains. We argue that Grap?eva was a mortuary ritual site, where feasts, offerings to supernatural powers, and secondary burials took place. At Grapc?eva memories were produced and maintained at a time when group histories and genealogies were gaining importance among the newly settled Neolithic food producers of the Adriatic.     

TEMPORAL HYGIENE: PROBLEMS IN CULTURAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE LATE PREHISTORIC PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE OHIO RIVER VALLEY

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates are an independent source of data for constructing temporal relationships. Too often dates are shoehorned by preconceptions and hobbled by casual sample selection, reporting, and interpretation. Several authors have established quality-control criteria for evaluating and cleansing regional radiocarbon databases. Recent applications of such temporal hygiene practices in paleoecology and archaeology have resulted in significant reinterpretations of the sequence, timing, and tempo of change. Further, a new appreciation is often gained of the extent of synchronic variability. I apply a minimal hygienic protocol based on three criteria: material dated, method of age estimation, and when the sample was run. I illustrate both the value of and the need for such analyses by cleaning up a small sample of dates (N = 125) from 11 Fort Ancient sites. The single largest problem for determining occupation timing is the use of wood samples. Nearly 80 percent of the assays are unacceptable for use in reconstructing occupation history, except to frame the maximal age of occupation. The modifications to the timing and duration of occupation for these 11 sites significantly undermine the logical inferential structure of current reconstructions of change and difference in the middle Ohio River valley.     

Within sacred boundaries: the limitations of saintly justice in the province of Narbonne around the year 1000

ABSTRACT

Around the year 1000, judges from the ecclesiastical province of Narbonne (southern France and Catalonia) crafted judicial strategies that reinforced the region's Visigothic Code with the power of saints – conceived as gatekeepers to God's heavenly courtroom – to validate the oaths of witnesses. This practice merged liturgically grounded ideas about supernatural forces and space with a law code that prioritised secular authority. To forestall opposition to rulings, officials sometimes held proceedings in churches. This paper examines two unusual cases illustrating the challenges such strategies faced, given the perception that saints were not omnipresent. These disputes raise questions about the nature of saints, the degree of agency humans attributed to them and the utility of sacred spaces for legal ritual. In the province, saints were powerful, but constrained by their inability to act beyond the walls of consecrated sanctuaries housing their relics. This relegated saints to supplementary roles in law.     

The Grant,the Hare,and the Survival of a Medieval Folk Belief

In the third book of Otia Imperialia (c. 1211), Gervase of Tilbury describes numerous wonders, among them an English belief regarding the Grant, a sparkling-eyed entity shaped like a bipedal foal, whose appearance racing through the streets forewarns of fire. This creature, attested to nowhere but in Gervase’s work, is something of a mystery for folklorists, who have tried to draw connections to other supernatural beings based on its name and its appearance. What has gone overlooked is the fact that the same elements of the Grant’s fire-omen belief existed well into the twentieth century in parts of England, albeit applied to hares. This article suggests that the Grant is an exaggerated hare, while exploring the larger topic of why it is that hares are so often associated with fire in European folklore.     

Natural and supernatural virtues in the thirteenth century: the case of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls

This article argues that Marguerite Porete’s seemingly unorthodox presentation of the virtues in the Mirror of Simple Souls is not a critique of scholastic learning, but in fact reflects the thirteenth-century university discourse on this topic. The rediscovery of Aristotelian thought in this period led to the redefinition of the standard Augustinian definition of virtue as being divinely infused. Philip the Chancellor’s discussion of cardinal virtues in particular prompted thinkers to distinguish between natural and supernatural virtues. It is contended that the Soul’s abandonment of the virtues should not be read as a rejection of the virtues, but rather as the affirmation that only supernatural virtues lead to God. A consideration of how Godfrey of Fontaines, theologian and reader of the Mirror, understands the virtues confirms the basic orthodoxy of Marguerite Porete’s position, lending further support to the argument that the Mirror echoes sophisticated scholastic ideas.     

Monster soup: the microscope and Victorian fantasy

Abstract

The Victorian predilection for the grotesque owed more than is commonly recognised to nature's microdimension. During the heyday of natural history in Britain (c. 1820–70), the microscope revealed myriads of shapes and creatures so utterly unfamiliar that writers on the subject resorted to flamboyant prose in order to render them intelligible. This had reverberations not least for the visual arts. The metaphors chosen by authors attempting to describe the microscopic world soon developed a visual presence, with supernatural features being projected even onto illustrations in supposedly scientific contexts. At the same time, such illustrations share certain motifs and/or stylistic characteristics with fairy paintings and illustrations by artists such as Daniel Maclise (1806–70), Richard Dadd (1817–86), Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821–1901), and Arthur Hughes (1832–1915). In view of this, the fact that the golden age of British fairy painting coincided chronologically with the Victorian craze for microscopy seems to be the result of more than mere chance. If we acknowledge this, we must also ask whether, in the mid nineteenth century, points of contact between microscopy and the visual arts led to a liberation or else a limitation of fantasy.     

Memory,ghosts and the good life: Sati in Theravada cultural contexts

Mindfulness in its English rendering brings together a mix of historical influences, from Zen to Romanticism to yoga. Still, the most central concept from which it draws is sati, a Theravada Buddhist Pali term first translated as mindfulness over 100 years ago. This article reports on the findings of an ethnographic investigation of sati in the Theravada-majority countries of Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, where the concept is widely used for a range of religious, therapeutic and colloquial ends. Based on interviews and questionnaires involving over 600 monks, psychiatrists and lay Buddhist practitioners, the article explores aspects of sati that are not often recognized (or recognized as much) in Western, secular mindfulness contexts. These qualities include attention to memory in present-moment awareness, the potency of supernatural engagements and a social-ethical orientation towards living well. Highlighting these qualities allows for a greater appreciation of cultural diversity within contemporary global mindfulness practices and suggests possibilities for further developing the global therapeutic potential of mindfulness.     

CONVRT: A COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR THE CONVERSION OF FREE-FIELD DATA TO FIXED-FIELD DATA FORMAT

Abstract

Historians of the U.S. Congress often draw claims from interpretations of legislators’ rhetoric and the outcomes of key votes. In this article, the author tells a cautionary tale: Such strategies ignore the correspondence between roll-call voting on select issues and broader coalitional structures in Congress. He does so by examining contrary positions about a key issue during the New Deal: On the one hand, some researchers claim that reasoned congressional deliberation on the issue of administrative oversight was separate from the prevailing legislative concerns of the day. Other scholars, on the other hand, assert that the prevailing issue dimensions in Congress included administrative oversight. Using a Bayesian measurement method, Ordinary Least Squares, and probit regression, and a novel selection of roll-call data, the author tested these claims, concluding that broader coalitional structures subsumed issues of administration.     

Crafters of Kingship: Smiths,Elite Power,and Gender in Early Medieval Europe

IN THE EARLIEST CENTURIES of the Middle Ages, skilled metalsmiths were greatly valued by cult leaders who required impressive objects to maintain social links and the loyalty of their retainers. Despite their clear importance, smiths were peripheral characters operating on the fringes of elite communities. Such treatment may reflect an attempt to limit the influence of metalworkers, whose craft was seen as supernatural and who themselves were probably spiritual figureheads; archaeological evidence associates smiths and their tools in symbolic processes of creation and destruction, not only of objects but also of buildings and monuments. The Church clearly appropriated these indigenous practices, although conversion eventually saw the pre-eminence of the sacred smith and their practice wane. Anthropological study provides numerous comparators for skilled crafters acting as supernatural leaders, and also suggests that as part of their marginal identity, smiths may have been perceived as a distinct gender.