Extra-modern peoples are often viewed not only as materially underdeveloped, politically immature, and culturally uneducated, but also as being fundamentally cruel. We cannot discuss here all these accusations, which tell more about those who pronounce them than about anything else. But there is one we would like to examine here: the supposed cruelty of indigenous…
Category: Otherness
Dionysos and Apollo
I Dionysos and Apollo Dionysos and Apollo shared one sanctuary: Delphi, located on a ridge of the Parnassos mountains overlooking the Valley of Phokis and the surrounding hills, near the town of Krissa north of the Gulf of Corinth in today’s region of Sterea or Central Greece. Dionysos was worshiped there in the winter, whereas…
How Does an Indigenous Concept Look Like?
In what follows, we render all indigenous terms in curly brackets to remind the reader that indigenous languages were, originally, non-written languages. This does not mean they were simpler, though. The fact that many indigenous languages are polysynthetic, for instance, makes them complex to an extreme which is hard for us to even fancy; thus…
On Conceptual Noise and De-territorialisation
Due to human inactivity during the lockdown, in late March mountain goats were seen roaming the streets of a Welsh town. Events like this have provoked four different types of reaction in the social media. Some (A) celebrate such events (too naively?) as a return of nature to places from where it had been exiled….
Chaos, Rhythm, and Forms
Schizophrenics are like unstable points inside machinic circuits, thus their frequent drawings and narratives on the “influencing machines” they are, in their perception, connected to and controlled by. Generally, these “machines” reflect the technological status of the historical period in question: they can be immaterial (e.g. religious or theological) machines, mechanical machines with gears and…
What Socialism Owes to the Tupinamba
In 1550 the Tupinamba travelled to France to take part as French allies in the Royal Entry Festival of Henri II in Rouen. A few years later, in 1562, they visited Rouen again, invited by Charles IX. Montaigne wrote extensively on them in Chapter 31 of his First Book of Essays, published in 1580. This…
Plato, Author of a Tukano Myth
Is writing so very useful? A Tukano myth tells that Yepa [Huake, the demiurge] said to Yupuri Bauro, the chief of the Tukano: “In this world, you will have several riches: ritual ceremonies, feathers, arrows, blowguns, benches… Your riches will remain in your homes, the homes of the Tukano – it is there that your…
The Outside of Thought
It is not only that attempting to write while lacking a certain degree of sensitivity is not possible at all. But that writing is, we may say, a sensitivity event. Yet there is no sensitivity but towards the Other – for sameness moves, instead, to recognition. Now, showing sensitivity towards anything means to let it…