Hannah Arendt on the Power of Creative Making in a World of Plural Cultures

Since culture is a form of poēsis and thus carries the danger of monologism and domination, and since today political “conflicts are increasingly defined from a cultural standpoint,” the question this paper addresses is whether culture can affect politics other than as a form of conflict and political aestheticism. Put differently: can culture become a source of communication and dialogue in politics? The answer this paper proposes is that culture can do so not by uncompromisingly divorcing praxis from any association with poēsis, but by making a distinction between two forms of poēsis. I argue that there are good grounds in Hannah Arendt's conception of the human condition and of the life of the mind to think that a distinction is possible between, on the one hand, technical, and thus non-creative, making and, on the other hand, metaphorical, imaginative, and creative making. It is the work of art that, through the joint employment of taste and polyphonic authorship, brings culture into politics in a manner that creatively and dialogically serves the purpose of augmenting the world. Through taste one is receptive to particulars and thus capable of judging their worldly suitability, while keeping one's mind open. Through polyphonic authorship one anticipates the unfinalized and open character of ideas and thus, the ongoing need to speak with other ideas, with the ideas of others.     

Wheels of Time: Some Aspects of Entanglement Theory and the Secondary Products Revolution

This paper responds to that aspect of Andrew Sherratt??s writings that argued for building specifically archaeological theory. In describing a theory of entanglement, I have focused on the archaeological sensitivity to the complexities and practical interlacings of material things. The theory argues that human?Cthing entanglement comes about as a result of the dialectic between dependence (the reliance of humans and things on each other) and dependency (a constraining and limiting need of humans for things). Andrew??s discussion of the role of the wheel in his Secondary Products Revolution is a good example of how humans and things have become entangled so that, over the long term, we have been channeled down particular evolutionary pathways.     

GUEST ESSAY: THINKING LIKE A GEOGRAPHER

Compared to the geographic wasteland south of your border, geography appears to have fared well in Canada, both as a formal discipline extending our understanding by illuminating the human and physical worlds, and as a subject taught at all levels to create informed and aware citizens. I known you think much remains to be done, and perhaps things always look a bit greener on the other side of the hill, but I hope you will not mind my somewhat envious gaze. In fact, when I received the five volumes of the 'curriculum guideline' for geography, issued by the Ontario Ministry of Education for the intermediate and senior divisions of your high schools (ome 1988), my feelings were not so much envy as panic, a panic that rapidly induced something close to intellectual paralysis. Because in a moment I can only describe now as utterly weak and foolish, I started to read them, only to learn that your senior students 'analyze, interpret … explain … design and develop networks, systems and simulations that involve six or more variables' (ome 1988, A12).
In retrospect, I still think my panic was justified. After 30 years of hard post-doctoral work I have reached the point where I can think about the interactions of maybe three variables, but hardly the combinatorial possibilities of six. Such ineptness would mean that I might just squeeze into your tenth grade and from there slowly work my way over the next two years towards those Olympian heights of analytical thought where dwell Ontario's high school graduates.     

Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century england. a study of the relationships between natural science,religion, history. law,and literature

Enlightenment optimism over mankind's progress was often voiced in terms of botanical growth by key figures such as John Millar; the mind's cultivation marked the beginning of this process. For agriculturists such as Arthur Young cultivation meant an advancement towards virtue and civilization; the cultivation of the mind can similarly be seen as an enlightenment concept which extols the human potential for improvable reason. In the course of this essay I aim to explore the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘cultivation’ through botanical metaphor. By using the recurring motif of the mind's cultivation as a site from which to explore enlightenment views on female understanding, I investigate how far concerns with human progress extended to the female mind.

I examine the language of botany and cultivation in texts by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Laetitia Barbauld alongside that of Rousseau and Millar. Wollstonecraft's appropriation and subsequent inversion of the conventional cultivation metaphor, for example, demonstrates her desire to draw attention to society's neglect of women's educational potential by substituting images of enlightened growth with those of luxuriant decay. By pushing this analogy further she indicates how society has cultivated women rearing them like exotic flowering plants or ‘luxuriants’ where ‘strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty’. I discuss the antipastoral rationalism which enables her to unmask the false sentiment behind this traditional metaphoric association between women and flowers arguing that such familiar tropes are the language of male desire and are indicative of women's problematic relationship to culture.     

Urban law—I

In this essay, I aim to identify and analyze the influence of Cartesian dualism on Rembrandt's pictorial representations of the self. My thesis is that Descartes and Rembrandt share concerns about philosophy's exploration of human nature, concerns rooted in mind–body dualism. Descartes's corpus bears witness to a growing skepticism about the relation between matter and extension. Likewise, Rembrandt's anatomy lessons lead the viewer to question the value of treating humans as scientific objects. I suggest that by reexamining Rembrandt's work in light of the mind–body problem we generate a fuller understanding of Rembrandt's artistic critique and expression and Descartes's mature scientific thinking and abiding influence. My analysis centers on four Rembrandt paintings: The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp (1632); The Descent from the Cross (1632–1633); The Sacrifice of Abraham (1635); and The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Joan Deyman (1656).     

Stable Isotope Analysis of Human and Animal Remains at the Qijiaping Site in Middle Gansu,China

Intercontinental exchanges between communities living in different parts of Eurasia during the late prehistoric period have become increasingly popular as a topic of archaeological research. The Qijia culture, found in northwest China, is one of the key archaeological cultures that can shed light on trans‐Eurasian exchange because a variety of imports are found in this cultural context. These imports include new cereals and animals, which suggest that human diets may also have changed compared with previous periods. To understand human and animal diets of the Qijia culture, carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios from human and animal skeletal remains were analysed from the type site of the Qijia culture at Qijiaping. The results demonstrate that human diet at the site mainly consisted of millet and animals fed on millet. C₃ cereals, such as wheat and barley, did not contribute significantly to human diet, and no isotopic differences were found between adult and subadult diets. Furthermore, three outlying human results raise the possibility of exogenous individuals, perhaps in relation to the parallel movement of animals, crops and goods. This study provides human and animal dietary information for evaluating the nature of exchange and diffusion in eastern Eurasia at this time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Middle Stone Age pièces esquillées from Sibudu Cave,South Africa: an initial micro-residue study

In this paper I present the results of a micro-residue study conducted on ten pièces esquillées (scaled pieces) from Sibudu Cave, South Africa. These artefacts are associated with the Howiesons Poort Industry (∼61.7 and ∼64.7 ka years ago at Sibudu), representing part of the later phase of the Middle Stone Age. Until now, it was unclear on what these pieces were used, and whether they were functional. Previous experimental use-wear work tentatively pointed towards bone processing. However, replication work on stone tool production technology suggests that pièces esquillées are merely the by/end-product of bipolar knapping. I used residue analysis on the Sibudu artefacts because this alternative method has the potential to identify if they were used, and if so, illuminate the specific materials the pieces were used on. Although the sample is small, all the pièces esquillées reveal a clear animal processing signal. There are some bone deposits on the utilised edges that may substantiate bone processing, or perhaps a bone hammer was used with them, but additional study, including Later Stone Age artefacts, is needed to assess the feasibility of these observations. It remains possible that the artefacts are core reduced pieces that were subsequently used as tools or simply knapped with a bone hammer.     

Unsocial Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment: Ferguson and Kames on War,Sociability and the Foundations of Patriotism

Summary

This article reconstructs a significant historical alternative to the theories of ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘liberal’ patriotism often associated with the Scottish Enlightenment. Instead of focusing on the work of Andrew Fletcher, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume or Adam Smith, this study concentrates on the theories of sociability, patriotism and international rivalry elaborated by Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) and Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782). Centrally, the article reconstructs both thinkers' shared perspective on what I have called ‘unsociable’ or ‘agonistic’ patriotism, an eighteenth-century idiom which saw international rivalship, antagonism, and even war as crucial in generating political cohesion and sustaining moral virtue. Placing their thinking in the context of wider eighteenth-century debates about sociability and state formation, the article's broader purpose is to highlight the centrality of controversies about human sociability to eighteenth-century debates about the nature of international relations.     

Telling stories: Exploring research storytelling as a meaningful approach to knowledge mobilization with Indigenous research collaborators and diverse audiences in community‐based participatory research

A growing number of geographers seek to communicate their research to audiences beyond the academy. Community‐based and participatory action research models have been developed, in part, with this goal in mind. Yet despite many promising developments in the way research is conducted and disseminated, researchers continue to seek methods to better reflect the “culture and context” of the communities with whom they work. During my doctoral research on homelessness in the Northwest Territories, I encountered a significant disconnect between the emotive, personal narratives of homelessness that I was collecting and more conventional approaches to research dissemination. In search of a method of dissemination to engage more meaningfully with research collaborators as well as the broader public, I turned to my creative writing work. In this article, I draw from “The komatik lesson” to discuss my first effort at research storytelling. I suggest that research storytelling is particularly well suited to community‐based participatory research, as we explore methods to present findings in ways that are more culturally appropriate to the communities in which the research takes place. This is especially so in collaborative research with Indigenous communities, where storytelling and knowledge sharing are often one and the same. However, I also discuss the ways in which combining my creative writing interests with my doctoral research has been an uneasy fit, forcing me to question how to tell a good story while giving due diligence to the role that academic research has played in its development. Drawing on the outcomes and challenges I encountered, I offer an understanding of what research storytelling is, and how it might be used to advance community‐based participatory research with Indigenous communities.     

Science and the Fate of the Human Soul in Tom Wolfe

Abstract

This article investigates Tom Wolfe's assessment of the age-old debate between nature and nurture, the Cartesian mind–body problem, and the tensions between science, politics, and morality that result from the human struggle to explain what the components of a human being are. I begin with Wolfe's own study of what evolution and neuroscience tell us about the “Human Beast.” Wolfe is not certain that evolution tells the whole story of how human beings came to be who and what they are in the twenty-first century. Evolution got us to the point of speech but Wolfe is persuaded that at that point, evolution ended and speech took over. Speech, according to Wolfe, made the development of reason and ingenuity and the creation of culture possible. And it is culture, the shared set of human behavior, knowledge, and beliefs, manners, and mores, and, above all for Wolfe, status, which then informs human motivation and actions. Wolfe is open to the idea that neuroscience might eventually be able to explain every detail of how and why the human brain functions as it does but he is skeptical that it will be able to explain away completely the idea that each of us is an individual, striving for honor and success within our status sphere.     

In the Shadow of the 1919 Total Solar Eclipse: The Two British Expeditions and the Politics of Invisibility**

This paper addresses the legendary total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. Two British teams confirmed the light bending prediction by Albert Einstein: Charles R. Davidson and Andrew C. C. Crommelin in Sobral, Brazil and Arthur S. Eddington and Edwin T. Cottingham on the African island of Príncipe, then part of the Portuguese empire. By jointly analyzing the two astronomical expeditions supported by written and visual sources, I show how, despite extensive scholarship on this famous historical episode and the historiographical emphasis on the plural dimensions of knowledge construction, many human and non-human actors have been kept in the shadow of the eclipse. I do so by focusing on what I call knowledge from the periphery together with knowledge from below, grounded literally on how localities (sites) affect choices and events, and growing outward to encompass a wide range of participants. I show how the geopolitical status of the two nations where the observational sites were located, and specifically Portugal's condition of colonial power, affected main decisions and events, while highlighting the active role of participants, ranging from experts from the peripheries and those involved in the travels to local elites and anonymous peoples, some of whom contributed to the observation of totality.     

Very long term history and people's history

Often William Blake and Isaac Newton are positioned as “opposites”: Newton the great systematizer, Blake the visionary artist. (Blake himself, in fact, seemed to have set up this direct opposition.) However, this opposition is perhaps too simple and overlooks the intricacies of each thinker's work. Further, this straightforward “opposition” fails to account for the pressure that scholarship itself, always occurring from a particular subjective position, applies to shape its objects of study; that is, it creates a useful “Newton” and a useful “Blake” with which to work. Here I employ spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre's technique of “critical thirding” (as Edward Soja has called it), or accounting for “an-Other” position in the dialectic of “Blake” and “Newton”. I consider where Blake and Newton were perhaps more similar than has been suggested in the scholarly literature, and, more crucially, how scholarship itself mobilizes (or indeed “creates”) its own, subjectively useful, “Blake” and “Newton” in order to make particular arguments.     

"Have I Got a Monster for You!": Some Thoughts on the Golem,The X-Files and the Jewish Horror Movie

The figure of the golem, the Jewish "mud man," has persisted not only in folklore, but in popular culture as well; not only in Jewish tradition, but in Gentile too; it has inspired not only horror writers, but also scientists, who see in this legend a metaphor for humanity's quest for the creation of life. One particular variation of this story is the focus of this paper: in February 1997, Fox Television's highly acclaimed weekly television show The X-Files told the story of the golem, but with certain new features added. These additions annoyed a number of fans, and they expressed their concerns on the Internet newsgroup, alt.tv.x-files. Not all of the problems identified by these tuned-in vernacular theorists were errors, I think; instead, they point to a number of issues concerning the nature of "monstrosity" and "horror." In this case, those issues are framed within a Jewish context. This paper will begin with a brief overview of the legend of the golem, which, like most folk legends, exists in multiple forms. I hope to demonstrate that The X-Files episode should be regarded as one further variant of this legend. I also outline the objections many of the show's fans had to that particular episode, specifically the variance between The X-Files version and Jewish tradition. Finally, I will say why I feel these "errors" are not mistakes, but perhaps operate to define the monstrous within Jewish culture. "Go ahead … make my mitzvah!" (Dennis Terrell, on alt.tv.x-files)     

Temps, succession,cogito

In the following pages I consider how Descartes argues the thesis of a permanent, continuous and actual thinking represented by expressionscogito andsum cogitans. Of this thesis I only examine the reasoning leading to those expressions first and then reasoning upon the same, single expressions, I found the continuity of thinking breaks off when the mind, set aside the dubious or deceitful opinions, meets with the clear and distinct ideas, and when it meets with the succession of ideas. In both these cases there emerged a kind of interruption which should have prevented the philosopher from writing «cogito» and «sum cogitans», that is from making use of a verbal form just meaning an actual and continuous action.     

Ideology and the Retreat From Personhood

Abstract

In this paper I make two primary arguments. First, I argue that what makes totalitarian regimes distinctive and leads to their hyper-repressive atmosphere is ideology. Such regimes are totalitarian precisely because they are ideological. These regimes are thus better termed and understood as “ideocracies.” Second, I attempt to depict in precise terms how ideological regimes attack the human person to disable agency and responsibility. Numerous authors such as Václav Havel and Czeslaw Milosz have argued that living in an atmosphere saturated by ideological lies has a very profound effect on the human person. Very few authors, however, have even attempted to delineate how ideology does this work. First, I examine one such attempt by Hannah Arendt. Then I use the resources of phenomenology and the work of Robert Sokolowski to give my own account of how ideological thinking and ideological language attack human agency.     

Science War II: the shift from physics to biology as the field of struggle

Abstract

It is generally agreed that, in some sense, there have been 'science wars' for at least the past ten, perhaps even twenty, years. In fact, as I argue here, there have been two such wars, the second of which is ongoing. The first part of this paper is concerned with distinguishing the two science wars and marking the transition between them. The second part deals with the substantive issues arising from a key theatre in Science War II, namely evolution versus intelligent design. The third part concludes the paper with a brief proposal for regular monitoring of the state of science in society, perhaps anticipating the terms of engagement of any subsequent 'Science War III'.     

Early North African Cattle Domestication and Its Ecological Setting: A Reassessment

Nearly four decades have passed since an independent North African centre for cattle domestication was first proposed in 1980, based on the Combined Prehistoric Expedition’s work in the Nabta Playa—Bir Kiseiba region of southern Egypt, and the initial rigorous debates between Andrew B. Smith and Fred Wendorf, Romuald Schild and Achilles Gautier. More recently, geneticists have entered the fray with determinations on the spread of haplotypes, and the timing thereof, that extend the scope and increase the complexity of the debate. Here, a new look at the botanical data and a re-analysis of the geology of Bir Kiseiba–Nabta Playa rejects the ecological foundations of the early African domestication model, while a detailed examination of the published osteological and radiometric data from the same area reveals a more nuanced picture than has been recognised to date. These results are placed into context by a wider review of the genetic and other archaeological evidence from the Western Desert of Northeast Africa, where no other cattle remains designated as domesticated have been found. It is concluded that (a) Bos remains from the early Holocene at Nabta Playa—Bir Kiseiba were those of hunted aurochs; (b) domesticated caprines were likely present in Northeast Africa before domesticated cattle; and (c) the domesticated cattle spreading across Northeast and northern Africa, including Nabta Playa—Bir Kiseiba, from the late seventh millennium BC or early sixth millennium BC onwards were descendants of Bos taurus domesticated in the Middle Euphrates area of the Middle East.     

Arendt in the refugee camp: The political agency of world-building

Refugee camps are frequently conceived as spaces in which social and political life is reduced to biological concerns of survival or ‘bare’ life. Yet, for researchers who focus on life in the camp as it is lived, through material adaption, social negotiation and resistance, this Agambenian perspective is unsatisfactory. Instead, a relation is made apparent between practises of everyday life and the manifestation of a politics. This paper argues for the importance of Hannah Arendt's writings for a new understanding of how refugee camp inhabitants can develop and sustain political agency. First, it will highlight the relation by observations and analysis of ‘the jungle’ in Calais, France. This unofficial camp, although short-lived, has influenced a broad spectrum of research including examination of spatial political practice. Second, applying a phenomenological reading of Arendt's work, I argue that political agency emerges through the concept of world-building. World-building results from the conjunction of human activities – from the quotidian, like labour and work, to the exceptional cases of action – and their orientation towards a specific type of visibility. World-building manifests as camp inhabitants erect spaces of meaning that engage a plurality of persons, transforming them into political agents.     

George Thomson and the Dialectics of Hellenism

Abstract

When I think of G. Thomson one question which immediately springs to mind is: why was he, and why is he still, so popular in Greece, a country he visited only four or five times? Was it his scholarly work, his Marxist beliefs or his emphasis on the continuity of Greek culture that bestowed on him respect and acclaim among Greeks? It seems to me that it was a combination of all these three factors which resulted in the fact that Thomson is one of the few classical scholars whose major studies have been translated into Greek and enjoyed wide publicity. He is now considered in Greece not only an exception among classicists but an exception among those who have studied the historical development of Greek culture and vehemently stressed its continuity. Despite the fact that his views were largely ignored during the debate of the 1960s and early 70s concerning the question of continuity, and which centred around Byzantium, Thomson's views on the subject must seriously be taken into account.     

Explaining prehistoric variation in the abundance of large prey: A zooarchaeological analysis of deer and rabbit hunting along the Pecho Coast of Central California

Three main hypotheses are commonly employed to explain diachronic variation in the relative abundance of remains of large terrestrial herbivores: (1) large prey populations decline as a function of anthropogenic overexploitation; (2) large prey tends to increase as a result of increasing social payoffs; and (3) proportions of large terrestrial prey are dependent on stochastic fluctuations in climate. This paper tests predictions derived from these three hypotheses through a zooarchaeological analysis of eleven temporal components from three sites on central California’s Pecho Coast. Specifically, we examine the trade-offs between hunting rabbits (Sylvilagus spp.) and deer (Odocoileus hemionus) using models derived from human behavioral ecology. The results show that foragers exploited a robust population of deer throughout most of the Holocene, only doing otherwise during periods associated with climatic trends unfavorable to larger herbivores. The most recent component (Late Prehistoric/Contact era) shows modest evidence of localized resource depression and perhaps greater social benefits from hunting larger prey; we suggest that these final changes resulted from the introduction of bow and arrow technology. Overall, results suggest that along central California’s Pecho Coast, density independent factors described as climatically-mediated prey choice best predict changes in the relative abundance of large terrestrial herbivores through the Holocene.