Leviathan and the bagpipe: Hobbes and the poetics of figuration in the English revolution

Though English humanists tended to emphasize the continuity between rhetoric and poetics, Thomas Hobbes confronted the tensions between those linguistic arts as they were practised in the early modern period. This essay argues that Hobbes’s reinvestment in rhetorical eloquence was accompanied by a renewed understanding of figurative expression’s uniquely poetic effects. Breaking from royalist writers who often insisted upon the literal truth of monarchical imagery, Hobbes adapted an approach to metaphor honed by parliamentarian polemicists in the English Revolution. In both his literary-critical epistle, the “Answer to Davenant”, and Leviathan, Hobbes used an awareness of language’s poetic dimensions to revise many of the master tropes of early modern discourse, deconstructing the epic invocation to the muse and fundamentally transforming the body politic. In the process, he demonstrated the power of poetic figuration as a philosophical instrument for collective knowledge.     

The Servilia tomb: an architecturally and pictorially important Roman building

One hundred and eleven samples from the important Servilia Roman tomb have been analysed for the first time by Raman spectroscopy, resulting in a complete characterisation of the pigment palette used for its remarkable wall paintings: 73 different pigment mixtures have been identified for the composition of its 11 colours and their tonalities. Dyer’s weld, an ancient organic yellow pigment, which was described by Vitruvius, has been identified and characterised for the first time in Roman wall paintings. Distinctive Raman spectroscopic signals which differentiate between haematite and caput mortuum (a violet colour from haematite which has been subjected to thermal treatment) are also reported. The use of the very expensive lazurite for a balance relates the importance of this otherwise ordinary instrument with psychostasia (the human soul weighing process) and is not found elsewhere in the tomb. The distribution of white minerals alone or in admixture is not related to any particular colouring pigment or figure; this possibly indicates that there was no specific use for each white mineral and that several craftsmen worked on the paintings, perhaps in different periods, or that the frescoes have been subjected to unrecorded restoration. We conclude that Raman spectroscopy is a valuable analytical technique for the unambiguous identification of mixtures of both organic and inorganic compounds, to study the degree of mineral crystallinity and for identifying treatment. These data are relevant for the holistic interpretation of the artwork in its historical, economical and social context.     

Endorheic currents in ecology: an example of the effects from scientific specialization and interdisciplinary isolation

ABSTRACT

Mainstream ecological thought is explored in three sections: (i) Epistemological traits. Given the typical scientific development and the necessity of preserving our intellectual heritage, the conservatism outlined in (i) is cyclical, so its stages are graphically summarized. (ii) Methodological benchmarks antithetically derived from (i), in order to get faster advancement consistent with the growing environmental challenges which spur ecological development. (iii) The renaissance of an old paradigm. This section exposes the misunderstanding of the physical concept of equilibrium by the mainstream ecological thought; this explains its current state. Consequently, section (iii) also summarizes the evolution of a recent set of proposals (organic biophysics of ecosystems) that rescues the foundational paradigm of ecosystem ecology based on physics, neglected by the mainstream thought before producing its most valuable results. We highlight that the main problems emerge from the weakness of integration between ecology, physics and epistemology, and spurious links between ecology and neoclassical economics.     

The Politics of Wandering in Michel de Certeau

This article examines Michel de Certeau’s analysis of the declining social and political authority of the Church and its political implications for the life of a Christian. In response to the shifting social dynamics of the West in the latter half of the twentieth century, de Certeau advocates for a poetics of “wandering” wherein Christians have no knowledge of their destination, no place to call their own, and no expectation of arrival. While his position provides enduring insights into the contours of religious belief, de Certeau’s analysis raises questions regarding a contemporary spiritual life. The article argues that de Certeau’s poetics of wandering neglects the dynamics of hope and anticipation in the life of a believer. Further attentiveness to these dynamics suggests a move from a poetics of wandering to a politics of wandering, which includes embracing a less institutionalized Christian political engagement and transgresses untenable secular/religious divides.     

Reviews

Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century. Edited by ROLENA ADORNO and KENNETH J. ANDRIEN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 295.

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy. By ALEXANDRA PARMA COOK and NOBLE DAVID COOK. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Pp. xvi, 206.

Arqueología de Omagua y Dorado. Por ALEIDA ANSELMA RODRÍGUEZ. Rende, Italy: Mediterranean Press, 1990. Pp. 221.

History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, otherwise Called America. By JEAN DE LÉRY, Translated by JANET WHATLEY. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Pp. lxii, 276.

Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru. By SABINE MacCORMACK. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Pp. 488.

Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador. By SUZANNE AUSTIN ALCHON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 147.

Mitos y utopías del descubrimiento. By JUAN GIL. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989. Vol. 1, Colón y su tiempo. Pp. 302. Vol. 2, El Pacífico. Pp. 414. Vol. 3, El Dorado. Pp. 432.

The Noble Savage: Allegory of Freedom. By STELIO CRO. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990. Pp. xx, 182.

The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State, 1492–1867. By D.A. BRADING. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 761.

The Identity of Hispanoamérica: An Interpretation of Colonial Literature. By JOSÉ PROMIS. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991. Pp. 137.

Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590–1660: Silver, State and Society. By LOUISA SCHELL HOBERMAN. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Pp. xiv, 352.

Society, Economy and Defence in Seventeenth‐Century Peru: The Administration of the Count of Alba de Liste (1655–61). By PETER T. BRADLEY. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1992. Pp. 170.

A sátira e o intelectual criollo na Colônia: Gregório de Matos e Juan del Valle y Caviedes. By LÚCIA HELENA COSTIGAN. Lima/Pittsburgh: Latinoamericana Editores, 1991. Pp. 171.

La segunda Celestina. Una comedia perdida de Sor Juana. By SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ/ AGUSTIN DE SALAZAR Y TORRES. Edition, prologue and notes by GUILLERMO SCHMIDHUBER. México: Editorial Vuelta, 1990. Pp. 225.

Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Edited by STEPHANIE MERRIM. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Pp. 189.

Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Edited by ELECTA ARENAL and STACEY SCHLAU. Translations by Amanda Powell. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Pp. 450.

Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil, 1600–1900. By MURIEL NAZZARI. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii, 245.

The Royal Treasuries of the Spanish Empire in America. Vol. 4. Eighteenth‐Century Ecuador. By ALVARO JARA and JOHN JAY TEPASKE. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990. Pp. xxii, 170.     

Landscapes of death: GIS-based analyses of chullpas in the western Lake Titicaca basin

The western Lake Titicaca basin is marked by above-ground funerary towers, known as chullpas, located in a variety of geographical contexts and dating to the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1100–1450), and Late Horizon (AD 1450–1532). Over the years, interpretations of these tombs have concentrated upon their roles as loci for ancestral veneration and their abilities to perpetuate memory, delineate social ties and territories, and demarcate access to resources. These views share the implicit or explicit assumption that these mortuary structures were intended to be highly visible. Yet this assumption has never been formally tested. By using GIS-based geospatial tools and statistical analysis, this paper investigates the extent to which chullpas surveyed in the western Lake Titicaca basin visually dominated the landscape. These tombs were not positioned in random locations; they exhibit a high degree of clustering and were built in highly visible areas that could be seen from sites of occupation and regions of economic importance such as Lake Umayo. This paper suggests that this landscape of death was deliberately constructed to have an enduring social impact.     

Alternative adaptive regimes for integrating foraging and farming activities

There are two distinct forager-farmer adaptive regimes evidenced in the ethnographic record: an ancillary and surplus cultivation regime. Societies characterized by these different regimes define different systems for allocating time to the production of domesticated plants. Cross-cultural patterns support the proposition that two socioecological conditions are logically necessary in order for an ancillary cultivation regime to develop and persist within a population of foragers. Wild resources must be sufficiently available, and farmers who produce a surplus of crops must be available to exchange with, live with or raid to redistribute crops after an episode of crop loss. The cross-cultural presence of two empirically distinct regimes for integrating foraging and farming is a useful frame of reference for evaluating how prehistoric foragers first integrated foraging and farming activities in archaeological contexts of secondary crop acquisition. A preliminary examination indicates that the ethnographic patterns are most consistent with the interpretation that the earliest farmers to inhabit the American Southwest produced at least a minimal surplus of domesticated plants. It is postulated that the adoption of a surplus cultivation regime by a population creates the adaptive opportunity for ancillary cultivation to develop and persist on a landscape.