Among other things, capitalism is a mode of economic production based on dissymmetrical relations of production that allow the exploitation of the majority by a minority through the extraction of work force from our minds and bodies. But who is susceptible of becoming work force under capitalism? Almost everything – not just you and me….
Capitalism’s Five Pillars // Sofya
Its immense complexity notwithstanding, it can be said that capitalism stands on five major pillars on which I would like to briefly write here. These pillars are: private property, human exceptionalism, rationality, progress, and hard work(❖). Private property In order for it to exist, capitalism must, in the first place, appropriate land. Colonists in North-America…
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…
Phantasmagoria // Sofya
An aquatic space, A ghostly water… I (i?) dance butoh drowning. An aquatic space A porous body— Dissolving Into dark waters, Dreamy waters, An a-temporal space. An aquatic space. i dance butoh In ghostly waters.
Evolution, or Vital Exploration? // Sofya
The word “evolution” has some unpleasant connotations. For example, it is thought that evolution works by progressing from less complexity to more complexity, with human exceptionalists arguing that the perl of both evolution and complexity are we: humans. I have discovered that contemporary biology proves otherwise by reading Andreas Hejnol in Arts of Living on…
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…
Life’s Autopoietics and Sympoietics // Sofya
This world, the same for all things, did none of the gods or men make, but it always was, is, and shall be an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures Heraclitus, Fr. 30 They (Empedocles and Anaxagoras) assert that everything is mixed in everything, because they saw everything arises out of…