Let’s begin with a few axioms and theses: Axiom 1. Freedom and servitude are opposite notions. Axiom 2. Instead, servitude and domination are complementary notions. Axiom 3. Domination and servitude establish social inequality. Thesis 1. All forms of state entail some sort of domination and servitude, hence inequality. Therefore, they restric freedom. Thesis 2. Freedom…
Category: Otherness
Those Who(se Bodies) Do Not Look Like Us
Early in the morning at the Pnyx, west of the Acropolis, Aristotle and Spinoza walk and chat on the eve of the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries… Aristotle: “But don’t we say that the body is defined in two ways: as a compound of form and matter, on the one hand, and, in physical terms, by its…
Little Stories from Malawi // S&C
We had a chance to visit Malawi in July 2019. We travelled there to learn about the environmental-justice initiatives put forward in various villages by the Lilongwe-based NGO Youth for Sustainable Development (YSD) over the past eight years—practices that have effectively enabled such villages to recover their pre-colonial agricultural practices and thereby strengthened their economic…
Plato, Author of a Tukano Myth // Carlos
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…
Persian Love // C&S
Ancient Persian temples had no icons and no statues inside or outside their walls. They hosted fire altars. Altars with fire. Altars of fire. Fire symbolises the sacred (xodā). We are all fire. We are all incandescent. We are all a degree of intensity within a cosmic blazing dance. A burning flame. Unlike in the…
A Pure Body – Artaud’s Dream // Carlos
Trees do not exist: nobody has ever seen one. We see something we identify and name as “a tree,” but what we call a tree is always something else than what we assume. Suppose we touch the tree instead of staring at it: free from its twofold visual enclosure – from its numeric and objectual…
Humanity and Cannibalism as Problematic Notions // S&C
The crocodile-man from Papua New Guinea whom you see on the picture below is more similar to a crocodile than to any other “human” living in a nearby community. In turn, this cat-man from the Amazon rainforest is more similar to a jaguar than to any other “human” living in a nearby community. Finally, this…
Animism as a Question of Bodies and Logical Paradoxes // Carlos
There are two possible definitions of animism. The most widespread one turns around notions of projection and belief. Briefly, it states that we project onto animals, plants, rocks, and natural phenomena human qualities which these things lack like, for example, consciousness, intentionality, and agency. According to this definition, set forth by Hume and popularised by…
The Outside of Thought // Carlos
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…