Taming the untamable

2022 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-57
Author(s):  
Sarah-Maria Schober
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Human World ◽  
Animal World

Although our systems of thought have long accustomed us to differentiate sharply between the human world of ‘culture’ and the animal world of ‘nature’, both sides of this very influential dichotomy are entangled in complex and indissoluble ways. The civet cat and its very special perfume—civet—provide a perfect example of this ‘merging’. The idea of taming the untamable, expressed in paintings of civet cats and textual sources, has been especially fruitful and became a promising preoccupation especially for artists like Joris Hoefnagel to enrich their work with an intellectual hybridity. The article shows how—in painting, perfume, and writing—nature and culture complemented one another, rather than standing in opposition. Owing to the animal’s odour, its mysterious nature, and debates about its (un)tamability, the image of the civet cat served as a focal point through which early modern Europeans wrestled with and redefined the realms of human and animal, of art and science, and of culture and nature.

scholarly journals Uma revisão crítica da antropologia de Carmen Junqueira

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindinalva Laurindo Teodorescu
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Group Interaction ◽  
The Core ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
System 2 ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Village ◽  
Animal World

O artigo faz uma revisão crítica da antropologia produzida pela antropóloga Carmen Junqueira, junto ao povo Kamaiurá, do alto Xingu, ao longo de cinquenta anos de pesquisa. Entre as publicações selecionadas para análise, foram retidos quatro temas que são recorrentes em suas pesquisas e que constituem o cerne de sua antropologia. São eles: 1) a composição do universo Kamaiurá (as formas de produção, parentesco e relações de poder, a generosidade ostentada e o sacrifício do líder, mudanças e interação grupal entre os povos do alto Xingu, política protecionista e deslocamento de poder na aldeia de Ipavu e os ritos como fundamento do sistema social); 2) o espaço das mulheres nas sociedades indígenas (as narrativas míticas e a situação das mulheres); 3) o imaginário e o simbólico na configuração do tempo Kamaiurá; 4) o mundo animal e o mundo humano ou a relação natureza e cultura. Neste último item, foi feita uma tentativa de comparação entre a antropologia de Carmen Junqueira e a perspectiva que dá conta da composição do universo indígena, em termos de pluralidade de mundos, como o modelo desenvolvido por Philippe Descola e Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.  Abstract: This article reviews the anthropology produced by the anthropologist Carmen Junqueira, around the Kamaiurá people of the upper Xingu, over fifty years of research. Among the publications selected for analysis four themes were retained that are recurrent in her research and which constitute the core of her anthropology. They are: 1) the composition of the Kamaiurá universe (the forms of production, kinship and power relations, the leader´s bounty and sacrifice, changes and group interaction among the upper Xingu peoples, protectionist politics and power displacement in the village of Ipavu and rites as the foundation of the social system); 2) the space of women in indigenous societies (the mythical narratives and the situation of women); 3) the imaginary and the symbolic in the configuration of Kamaiurá time; 4) the animal world and the human world or the relation between nature and culture. In this last item, an attempt was made to compare the anthropology of Carmen Junqueira with the perspective that accounts for the composition of the indigenous universe in terms of a plurality of worlds, such as the model developed by Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.  

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Innes ◽  
Michael J. Braddick
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Political Economy ◽  
Later Phase

The Introduction offers a brief overview of Paul Slack’s contribution to early modern history, distinguishing between an earlier phase concerned with social policy and the ideas which informed it, and a later phase concerned with the history of political economy, and particularly the shifting discourse of happiness which, he argued, informed it. It then explores recent interest in the history of emotions, distinguishing a variety of approaches to that subject. Reviewing three broad approaches taken by the contributors to the volume, it goes on to suggest that the history of emotions is most stimulating when seen as a focal point for different kinds of history rather than as a discrete subject of enquiry. A further implication is that a variety of forms of expertise need to be brought to bear.

Can Animism Save the World? Reflections on Personhood and Complexity in the Ecological Crisis

Sociologus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92
Author(s):  
Guido Sprenger
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Moral Commitment ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Communicative Processes ◽  
Politics Of Life

The term “animism” is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as “animist” is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.

Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-133
Author(s):  
Mark A. Waddell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Art And Science

scholarly journals Rembrandt's Textural Agency: A Shared Perspective in Visual Art and Science

Leonardo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve DiPaola ◽  
Caitlin Riebe ◽  
James T. Enns
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Image Detail ◽  
Viewing Experience

The authors hypothesize that Rembrandt developed new painterly techniques in order to engage and direct the gaze of the observer. Although these methods were not based on scientific evidence at the time, they are nonetheless consistent with a contemporary understanding of human vision. The authors propose that artists in the late early-modern period developed the technique of textural agency—selective variation in image detail—to guide the observer's eye and thereby influence the viewing experience. They conclude with the presentation of laboratory evidence that Rembrandt's techniques indeed guide the modern viewer's eye as proposed.

scholarly journals Posthuman Conjectures: Animal and Ecological Sciences in Marie Darrieussecq’s Dystopian Fiction

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Stephanie Posthumus
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Dystopian Fiction ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Made In ◽  
Animal World

Despite being published over twenty years apart, Marie Darrieussecq’s novels, Truismes (1996) and Notre vie dans les forêts (2017), share many features including their dystopian setting, urgent narrative tone, and themes of hybridity, corporeality and radical revelation. Deconstructing the boundaries between animal and human, nature and culture, human and machine, they invite the reader to move beyond anthropocentrism. In response to this invitation, I propose four posthuman conjectures, tracing the ethos of animal and ecological sciences in the two novels. First, I examine the ways in which the presence of non-human animal worlds requires imagining new subjectivities and writing embodied languages. Second, I move from the animal world to the machine cyborg who remains caught in the effects and affects of the techno-scientific complex in Darrieussecq’s dystopian fiction. Third, I consider the space made in both novels for death and dying as a non-metaphysical phenomenon situating humans in an eco-evolutionary web. Last, I define writing as a form of (post)human technology that the novels use to reject the notion of human superiority and to illustrate language’s capacity to imagine new, less-hierarchical paradigms.

scholarly journals The peculiarities of dialectic of good and evil in works of the philosophers of the Early Modern Age (T. Hobbes, B. Spinoza, G. V. Leibniz)

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Andrei Andreevich Kovalev
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Human World ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Evil

The subject of this research is the categories of good and evil in philosophy of the representatives of the Early Modern Age (on the example of the works of T. Hobbes, B. Spinoza, and G. W. Leibniz). These philosophers conceptualized the dialectic of good and evil leaning on the shifted paradigm at the turn of the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. However, the article advances a hypothesis that despite a fundamental turn in the philosophy of the Modern Age, the prevalent n medieval philosophy dialectic of good and evil had a strong impact upon the views of the philosophers of the Early Modern Age. The research employs the dialectical method and metaphysics, which allowed viewing the categories of good and evil from the perspective of the logical-philosophical position of their contradiction, as well as revealing their initial nature and the role in human world. The novelty of this study consists in the fact that in a certain sense it explores the dual dialectic: on the one hand, it is a longtime problems of good and evil, while on the other hand, the philosophy of good and evil of the Early Modern Age is ambiguous and contradictory, when the previous paradigm is no longer relevant, although a new philosophical concept of good and evil is yet to be formed. There is a good reason why the author chos the ideas of T. Hobbes, B. Spinoza, and G. W. Leibniz – their approaches towards the problem of good and evil in the traditions of the Early Modern Age mark the key milestones in the research of these categories in the transitional historical period.

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