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All Change 62 Somuchforgroundrules,butthequestionis:whoaretheplayers,thedeterminedly indeterminate multitude of singularities that peoples this newly animated environment? To answer this it is necessary to insist on the difference of the meeting place investigated as a concrete situation and the general discourse on improved sociability associated with postcolonial discussions of intercultural or transcultural reconciliation. The meeting place is in the west presided over by Eros in the guise of the Public Worker or Demiurge, a name that suggests turbulent energy. Eros in this incarnation is the protean principle of change but also the divinity, spirit, or sense of place that lends the crowd a certain identity. In relation to a number of points drawn at random on a page, Leibniz once maintained it would be “possible to find a geometric line the motion of which is constant and uniform according to a certain rule such that the line passes through all the points.” In his experimental novel Drame (1965), Philippe Sollers transposed this challenge to the construction of a narrative. The same notion could also be applied to the language of gesture. For instance, one could imagine an algorithm of sociability derived from the fluid dynamics of clothes as they crease, pucker, and swirl out in the course of traversing a shared space. The god in charge of this calculation will be the Demiurge. The point here is that before starting to think about changing human behavior, it is necessary to retrain the gods. So long as the gods remain like statues, motionlessly presiding over the ebb and flow of the crowd, they are incompetent to evaluate what is happening. In particular, they must remain blind to the erotic gesture continuously folding people together and whirling them apart. They need to be loosened up, emancipated to dance. You enter an erotic zone when you step out of your comfort zone. The meaning all change 63 ofecstasy(ec-stasis)is“standingoutfrom.”Ifyouareattachedtoyourstanding , you will find this propulsion into walking produces vertigo. Ecstasis can be a form of tottering. A statue used to regarding the world from a pedestal would totter and fall. Agoraphobes, rooted to the spot, finds their environs slippery. They associate its treacherous crossing with a slide into sin. On the other hand, limbs are loosed as you sink into the yielding earth. Something comes alive there. When Sappho remembers “the most beautiful thing on the black earth,” she recalls “her lovely way of walking.”1 The leadingattributeofthegirlAnacreonfallsinlovewithisthatshecomesfrom Lesbos, “motley-sandalled.”2 Kafka’s Milena—she “did not walk through life with a sure, firm step. She glided”—is of the same society.3 With the exception of Venus, who, in a lubricious incarnation, is identified with carnal sliding, the Olympians presiding over public life are notably immobile. Pallas Athene, in particular, is every inch a statue. However, Carol Christ, following Jane Harrison and others, suggests that the Pallas Athene of ancient Athens was a patriarchal slander. According to the male myth, virginal, cerebral (sprung from Zeus’ head), and warriorlike (armed with lance and shield), she lacked sexuality, which was the source of her power. Thus, and with fatal historical consequences, the Athenians transformed a protectress into a warrior—“when the Taker of Life is cut off from the Giver of Life, she can degenerate into a bloodthirsty huntress or warrior who glories in the shedding of blood for its own sake.”4 By contrast , when Athene’s erotic temperament is recovered, she moves off her pedestal. Pheidias’ famous statue of Athene in the Parthenon represented a figure at rest, a royal personage encumbered with the insignia of her symbolic office. Her slightly menacing grandeur is Olympian in our sense: dispassionate ,inscrutable,far-seeing,butalsooverbearing,totalitarian.Taking the weight on one foot, she stands relaxed, an image of monumental stasis. But, Shearer reminds us, “There is another temple of Athene on the Acropolis of Athens, set between the Erechtheum in which she is worshipped together with Poseidon and her own maiden chamber of the Parthenon.”5 Here Athene is depicted very differently, as a hunter or runner: “She has thrown her weight on to her left foot; her knee is slightly bent and her right leg is extended behind her under the folds of her robe; she is all readiness for movement.”6 Indeed, this “image of balanced power, remote attentiveness and flowing energy”7 is not about to move but is caught midstride. Whatisthesignificanceofthis?Apartfromillustratingthevalueofinterrogating received stereotypes so that the western mythos can continue to [3.141.244.201...

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