Violence and Splendor
Publication Year: 2011
Published by: Northwestern University Press
Contents
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pp. vii-viii
Part 1: Spaces Within Spaces
1. Extremes
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pp. 5-8
We let go, let the rhythm take over, and selfl essness, voluptuous pleasure, and communion are blended together. It happens in dance and in music. Forty years ago you crossed the Atlantic by ship, and for ten days saw only the ocean...
2. Nature Abhors a Vacuum
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pp. 9-10
The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that we have an intuition of space—pure space, empty space, extending infinitely—which precedes and makes possible our perception of things extended in space. This intuition is...
3. Space Travel
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pp. 11-18
Let us stop admiring our heads for a moment, Georges Bataille said, and look our feet. Our big toe is the distinctively human part, the only new body part in the human ape; it stabilizes our upright posture. Just...
4. Learn to Say
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pp. 19-20
Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing...
5. Metaphysical Habitats
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pp. 21-38
In 1922 Dr. Hans Prinzhorn published Bildnerei der Geisteskranken—translated into English as Artistry of the Mentally Ill 1—in which he reproduced and analyzed 187 from the more than 5,000 paintings, drawings, and carvings...
6. Departures
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pp. 39-44
In the nineteenth century the structural malady diagnosed in individuals and also in society was conceptualized with the term “alienation.” Dysfunctional and sociopathic individuals were called alienated, conceived to be possessed...
7. Plumage and Talismans
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pp. 45-48
Coiffure, cosmetics, scarification, and tattooing make the outer surfaces of our bodies into artworks. Perfumes, the softened or stentorian intonations of the voice, the melodic lines of gestures, and dance extend body artistry across...
8. Inner Space
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pp. 49-56
Coiffure, cosmetics, scarification, and tattooing make the outer surfaces of our bodies into artworks. Perfumes, the softened or stentorian intonations of the voice, the melodic lines of gestures, and dance extend body artistry across...
Part 2: Snares for the Eyes
9. The Fallen Giant
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pp. 59-64
The sign does not say when the sequoia fell. Or why. Perhaps it died of old age. The sign says that the oldest giant sequoia found is 3,267 years old. It says that giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are the largest single organisms...
10. The Stone
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pp. 65-66
On my last day in the Highlands of West Papua, a Lani man I came to know gave me his precious possession, a black stone some four inches long strangely marked with thick white lines and thin white lines intersecting in...
11. The Voices of Things
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pp. 67-76
We find ourselves summoned forth by the earth, the light, water, and fire; we find ourselves directed by the things about us. Animism and fetishism designate two different ways we have understood these experiences. Animism...
12. Nature and Art
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pp. 77-78
The philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel put the question, which is better, a painting of a landscape, or that landscape...
13. Nature
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pp. 79-80
When we go to the sequoia forests, the Andes in Patagonia, the Amazon jungles, the ice continent of Antarctica, when we dive the oceans and visit briefly...
14. In Touch
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pp. 81-84
Hands fondle the sleek surfaces of a body, feel the warm and supple substance of flesh. The body that the sensual hands uncover and the caresses discover...
Part 3: The Sacred
15. Sacrilege
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pp. 87-94
A sanctuary, a sacred precinct, is a dark or radiant place marked out by prohibitions and taboos, separated from the profane sphere. To encounter there the sacred is to encounter the power of what is separated from, what marks...
Part 4: Violence
16. Material Culture
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pp. 97-98
From time immemorial individuals acquired identity, worth, and community by cultivating character. His or her courage, loyalty, and hospitality gave an....
17. Orders
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pp. 99-100
A logo is an object that corporations come to prize obsessively, that controls the movements of consumer masses, without those masses being able to explicate the properties in it that elicit such compulsive movements. A logo...
18. Filth
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pp. 101-104
Feces, urine, vomit, pus, snot, sweat, smegma, menstrual discharges— these viscous substances oozing out of their shapes, expelled from our bodies, spread their decomposition outside. Outside, contact with them provokes retching...
19. Fake Fetishes, Disrobed Mannequins
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pp. 105-110
British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman1 are brothers. For twenty years their artworks have been made working together. Theirs is not a family but a political collaboration, they say: working together undermines the ego....
20. Wallowing in Glory
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pp. 111-118
Violence, we say, is blind, but it is also a vehement craving to know and a glory in knowing. Violence against persons breaks through the garb that masks and...
21. The Art of War
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pp. 119-120
From earliest times war has been a major topic of art, depicted in epics such as the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Jewish Bible, and in architectural monuments such as Angkor Wat, Chichén- Itzá, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela...
Part 5: Splendor
22. The Face of Death
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pp. 123-126
The head is about a third larger than life size. The gray sandstone, if once polished, has returned to the granular surface of stones found in nature. The head...
23. The Emergence of Dance
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pp. 127-132
Hands take leave of the trunk and reach out for things; they clench and grip, push and pull. Tools are solid things detached from the environment and handled. Hands make themselves instruments for taking hold and taking back....
24. Collective Performances
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pp. 133-138
From as far back as we can see into our history and across the planet, rituals, initiations, ceremonies, processions, dances have been celebrated. They were performed, anthropologist Victor Turner explained, to promote and increase...
25. War and Splendor
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pp. 139-150
The first time I went to Rio de Janeiro I arrived with a toothache and sought out a dentist. I asked him if he had ever danced in an escola de samba (samba club) in Carnaval. “Oh yes,” he said. “You have to, at least once in your...
Notes
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pp. 151-160
List of Photographs
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pp. 161-163
E-ISBN-13: 9780810165427
Print-ISBN-13: 9780810127555
Print-ISBN-10: 0810127555
Page Count: 172
Publication Year: 2011
Edition: New
Volume Title: 1
Series Title: Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
Series Editor Byline: Anthony J. Steinbock
