Christopher Santiago | College of Staten Island (original) (raw)
Videos by Christopher Santiago
A panel discussion with Christopher Santiago (CUNY - Staten Island) and Lynda Sullivan, moderate... more A panel discussion with Christopher Santiago (CUNY - Staten Island) and Lynda Sullivan, moderated by Odi Gonzales, (CLACS NYU), following the screening of "Singing, Dreaming and Resistance Among the Water Guardian of Cajamarca Peru," a short video directed by Christopher Santiago. Presented by the CLACS Quechua Program at NYU.
10 views
This video presentation is based on Santiago's fieldwork with the peasants of Cajamarca (2012-201... more This video presentation is based on Santiago's fieldwork with the peasants of Cajamarca (2012-2014) and their struggle against the Conga gold mining mega-project. The presentation focuses on dreaming and singing as native arts of resistance that proved crucial in the fight for water and life, specifically the dreams and songs of Señora Máxima Acuña Atalaya de Chaupe and Señora Santos, and reflects on the power of cultural resistance.
Dedicated to all my campesino friends who taught me about the power of art, resistance and human dignity. Thanks to Alexander Luna for sharing his incredible photograph and video of Máxima! ¡Conga No Va Carajo!
68 views
Video recording of a mesada ceremony at the Sitán Waterfall, Huancabamba Peru, 2011 with Maria Ro... more Video recording of a mesada ceremony at the Sitán Waterfall, Huancabamba Peru, 2011 with Maria Rosas Pintado and Jose De La Cruz
6 views
July 2nd 2013 La gente de Celendin bailando en cadena humana mientras Tinkari hacen una musica r... more July 2nd 2013 La gente de Celendin bailando en cadena humana mientras Tinkari hacen una musica ritual por el Aniversario de los Martires del Agua.
CONGA NO VA CARAJO! SIEMPRE RECORDAMOS NUESTROS HERMANOS CAIDOS!!!!!!!!
The people of Celendin dancing in a circle while Tinkari plays ritual music for the Anniversary of the Martyrs of Water
3 views
Papers by Christopher Santiago
Dream alliance: Art, anthropology, and consciousness, 2023
Editorial to special issue of Anthropology of Consciousness
Anthropology of Consciousness , 2023
My art revolves around the theory and practice of cultural resistance, which I call the ‘dreamwea... more My art revolves around the theory and practice of cultural resistance, which I call the ‘dreamweapon’ or the shamanic aspect of the fight for social justice. Through repetitive patterns, highly saturated colours, stark black and white alteration and abstracted anthropomorphisms, these paintings unleash an excess of spirits, a profusion of phantasmata, pineal eyes in ecstatic communion with heaven and earth. Flora and fauna imagery, as well as visionary, outsider and brut aesthetics challenge Western rationality and call for the reenchantment of inner and outer nature. I use found materials and specifically found paintings (Figures 2, 4, and 5) to allow for the entrance of heterogeneity, chance and formlessness into the work. My ultimate preoccupation is to redeem what is labelled 'phantasy' or 'hallucination', the reality of experience that is excluded from modernity, by restoring a sense of relatedness, mutuality, sacrifice and cosmic coexistence.
Anthropology of Consciousness , 2023
This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With... more This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With the help of Nietzsche's critical perspective, I develop a notion of hystery as the series of collective traumas repeated in each individual's growth, whereby the phantasm changes value from psychosomatic interface, to evil incarnate, to disease of learning. Beginning with the Classical episteme represented by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, then moving up through the Christian era, I focus primarily on Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes and Bacon, who represent the last nail in the imagination's coffin. The next section examines Nietzsche's rediscovery of the phantasm and the theoretical contributions of post-structuralism that follow in Nietzsche's wake. Juxtaposing Bataille and Deleuze, I look at Deleuze's early enthusiasm and ultimate betrayal of the phantasm, and I posit Bataille's emphasis on the affective force of the mythological phantasm as an insurrection to reclaim our experience and life along with it. The article ends with speculation, offering Bruno's art of memory as an ontic and epistemic alternative to dominant Western hystery, other pasts opening to other possible futures, an ungrounding that paradoxically leads to a restoration of the human house in a re-enchanted cosmos.
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2022
This paper is an effort to locate blood magic in the age of psychopathy. Taking as a starting poi... more This paper is an effort to locate blood magic in the age of psychopathy. Taking as a starting point Michael Eigen's observation that psychopathic tendencies can become cut off from balancing capacities and wreak havoc, we consider the ways in which practices of blood magic, including rituals surrounding menstruation have functioned variously across cultures to balance destructive tendencies and sustain relationship with the living surround. We argue that the lack of these practices and the attitudes fed by and feeding them has contributed to an upsurge in ultra-violent phenomena like mass shootings in our culture. Moreover, we consider the ways in which such phenomena are perverted expressions of a need for blood magic that, though twisted beyond recognition, nevertheless seek expression and wishes to be recognized in this age, which has as its backdrop an unrecognized, unfolding human-wrought ecological catastrophe.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
This article compares two case studies: that of Anna O., whose hysteria helped found psychoanalys... more This article compares two case studies: that of Anna O., whose hysteria helped found psychoanalysis, with that of possessed Wolof priestess Khady Fall. Questioning the psychic separation of the modern subject, I contend that cultures with a spirit idiom are potentially more sensitive to complexities of interpersonal relationships. In both cases, the paternal influence wreaks havoc, but where ritual, myth, and magic empower Khady to become a healer herself, Anna O. is not so lucky. The poverty of the scientific viewpoint is overrun by a phantasmic excess that it fails to explain, unable to admit that the analyst too is implicated in this numinous morass of unacted desires. The internalization of spirit worlds into the subject, and their consequent reduction and confinement to the category of “hallucination,” blinds us to the affective intensities of interpersonal phantasy upon whose exclusion our sense of reality is founded.
The Psychoanalytic Review , 2019
Developing Lacan's idea of 'hystory,' the following reading of D. H. Lawrence's story, "The Lovel... more Developing Lacan's idea of 'hystory,' the following reading of D. H. Lawrence's story, "The Lovely Lady," considers the personal and historical as deeply entwined, both in their oppression and potential liberation. The lady, who represents the order of bourgeois idealism, discovers the key to eternal youth, each night vampirically feeding off the erotic energy of her son. This essay views the story as an allegory of modern life as a dead zone of alienation, in which "hystory" is comprised of the web of transgenerational phantoms, traumas of the past, and haunting secrets from the crypt of the (m)other's unconscious.
Books by Christopher Santiago
Catalog for "The Waking Dreams of Phantasmata Traumata," an group exhibition at the College of St... more Catalog for "The Waking Dreams of Phantasmata Traumata," an group exhibition at the College of Staten Island Gallery, Spring 2024. Curated by Siona Wilson and Cynthia Chris.
A panel discussion with Christopher Santiago (CUNY - Staten Island) and Lynda Sullivan, moderate... more A panel discussion with Christopher Santiago (CUNY - Staten Island) and Lynda Sullivan, moderated by Odi Gonzales, (CLACS NYU), following the screening of "Singing, Dreaming and Resistance Among the Water Guardian of Cajamarca Peru," a short video directed by Christopher Santiago. Presented by the CLACS Quechua Program at NYU.
10 views
This video presentation is based on Santiago's fieldwork with the peasants of Cajamarca (2012-201... more This video presentation is based on Santiago's fieldwork with the peasants of Cajamarca (2012-2014) and their struggle against the Conga gold mining mega-project. The presentation focuses on dreaming and singing as native arts of resistance that proved crucial in the fight for water and life, specifically the dreams and songs of Señora Máxima Acuña Atalaya de Chaupe and Señora Santos, and reflects on the power of cultural resistance.
Dedicated to all my campesino friends who taught me about the power of art, resistance and human dignity. Thanks to Alexander Luna for sharing his incredible photograph and video of Máxima! ¡Conga No Va Carajo!
68 views
Video recording of a mesada ceremony at the Sitán Waterfall, Huancabamba Peru, 2011 with Maria Ro... more Video recording of a mesada ceremony at the Sitán Waterfall, Huancabamba Peru, 2011 with Maria Rosas Pintado and Jose De La Cruz
6 views
July 2nd 2013 La gente de Celendin bailando en cadena humana mientras Tinkari hacen una musica r... more July 2nd 2013 La gente de Celendin bailando en cadena humana mientras Tinkari hacen una musica ritual por el Aniversario de los Martires del Agua.
CONGA NO VA CARAJO! SIEMPRE RECORDAMOS NUESTROS HERMANOS CAIDOS!!!!!!!!
The people of Celendin dancing in a circle while Tinkari plays ritual music for the Anniversary of the Martyrs of Water
3 views
Dream alliance: Art, anthropology, and consciousness, 2023
Editorial to special issue of Anthropology of Consciousness
Anthropology of Consciousness , 2023
My art revolves around the theory and practice of cultural resistance, which I call the ‘dreamwea... more My art revolves around the theory and practice of cultural resistance, which I call the ‘dreamweapon’ or the shamanic aspect of the fight for social justice. Through repetitive patterns, highly saturated colours, stark black and white alteration and abstracted anthropomorphisms, these paintings unleash an excess of spirits, a profusion of phantasmata, pineal eyes in ecstatic communion with heaven and earth. Flora and fauna imagery, as well as visionary, outsider and brut aesthetics challenge Western rationality and call for the reenchantment of inner and outer nature. I use found materials and specifically found paintings (Figures 2, 4, and 5) to allow for the entrance of heterogeneity, chance and formlessness into the work. My ultimate preoccupation is to redeem what is labelled 'phantasy' or 'hallucination', the reality of experience that is excluded from modernity, by restoring a sense of relatedness, mutuality, sacrifice and cosmic coexistence.
Anthropology of Consciousness , 2023
This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With... more This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With the help of Nietzsche's critical perspective, I develop a notion of hystery as the series of collective traumas repeated in each individual's growth, whereby the phantasm changes value from psychosomatic interface, to evil incarnate, to disease of learning. Beginning with the Classical episteme represented by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, then moving up through the Christian era, I focus primarily on Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes and Bacon, who represent the last nail in the imagination's coffin. The next section examines Nietzsche's rediscovery of the phantasm and the theoretical contributions of post-structuralism that follow in Nietzsche's wake. Juxtaposing Bataille and Deleuze, I look at Deleuze's early enthusiasm and ultimate betrayal of the phantasm, and I posit Bataille's emphasis on the affective force of the mythological phantasm as an insurrection to reclaim our experience and life along with it. The article ends with speculation, offering Bruno's art of memory as an ontic and epistemic alternative to dominant Western hystery, other pasts opening to other possible futures, an ungrounding that paradoxically leads to a restoration of the human house in a re-enchanted cosmos.
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2022
This paper is an effort to locate blood magic in the age of psychopathy. Taking as a starting poi... more This paper is an effort to locate blood magic in the age of psychopathy. Taking as a starting point Michael Eigen's observation that psychopathic tendencies can become cut off from balancing capacities and wreak havoc, we consider the ways in which practices of blood magic, including rituals surrounding menstruation have functioned variously across cultures to balance destructive tendencies and sustain relationship with the living surround. We argue that the lack of these practices and the attitudes fed by and feeding them has contributed to an upsurge in ultra-violent phenomena like mass shootings in our culture. Moreover, we consider the ways in which such phenomena are perverted expressions of a need for blood magic that, though twisted beyond recognition, nevertheless seek expression and wishes to be recognized in this age, which has as its backdrop an unrecognized, unfolding human-wrought ecological catastrophe.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
This article compares two case studies: that of Anna O., whose hysteria helped found psychoanalys... more This article compares two case studies: that of Anna O., whose hysteria helped found psychoanalysis, with that of possessed Wolof priestess Khady Fall. Questioning the psychic separation of the modern subject, I contend that cultures with a spirit idiom are potentially more sensitive to complexities of interpersonal relationships. In both cases, the paternal influence wreaks havoc, but where ritual, myth, and magic empower Khady to become a healer herself, Anna O. is not so lucky. The poverty of the scientific viewpoint is overrun by a phantasmic excess that it fails to explain, unable to admit that the analyst too is implicated in this numinous morass of unacted desires. The internalization of spirit worlds into the subject, and their consequent reduction and confinement to the category of “hallucination,” blinds us to the affective intensities of interpersonal phantasy upon whose exclusion our sense of reality is founded.
The Psychoanalytic Review , 2019
Developing Lacan's idea of 'hystory,' the following reading of D. H. Lawrence's story, "The Lovel... more Developing Lacan's idea of 'hystory,' the following reading of D. H. Lawrence's story, "The Lovely Lady," considers the personal and historical as deeply entwined, both in their oppression and potential liberation. The lady, who represents the order of bourgeois idealism, discovers the key to eternal youth, each night vampirically feeding off the erotic energy of her son. This essay views the story as an allegory of modern life as a dead zone of alienation, in which "hystory" is comprised of the web of transgenerational phantoms, traumas of the past, and haunting secrets from the crypt of the (m)other's unconscious.
Catalog for "The Waking Dreams of Phantasmata Traumata," an group exhibition at the College of St... more Catalog for "The Waking Dreams of Phantasmata Traumata," an group exhibition at the College of Staten Island Gallery, Spring 2024. Curated by Siona Wilson and Cynthia Chris.