Sebastian Job | The University of Sydney (original) (raw)

Papers by Sebastian Job

Research paper thumbnail of Russia, the silence of the lambs

Research paper thumbnail of The Post-Cold War Predicament || Globalising Russia? The Neoliberal/Nationalist Two-Step and the Russification of the West

Research paper thumbnail of The Rise of a Global God-Image? Spiritual internationalists, the international left and the idea of human progress

Third World Quarterly, 2009

ABSTRACT For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, du... more ABSTRACT For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, durable barriers stood between those who sought political liberation and those who sought spiritual liberation. We are now emerging from that period. The barriers never ...

Research paper thumbnail of Bakunin and the Entheogenic Challenge to Atheism

As fossil fuelled capitalism drags global civilisation towards the strange attractor of ecologica... more As fossil fuelled capitalism drags global civilisation towards the strange attractor of ecological implosion, can we get any help from outside (what the secular mainstream in the west generally recognises as), the human social field? This paper makes the case for the pedagogical potential of the naturally-occurring psycho-active 'entheogens', that is, substances which, taken sacramentally, are held to 'engender the divine within'. Handled in a thoughtful way, these substances, I argue, are potential allies for the remaking of the revolutionary movement in an age where human extinction is now thinkable. Between the existing radical left in its various forms, and this ally, however, there are some obstacles. One such obstacle is the atheism of the dominant European revolutionary tradition. In this paper Mikhail Bakunin's influential critique of religion as a form of human domination , as an enemy of human freedom, is taken as exemplary of this tradition. The testimony, meanwhile, of entheogenic experience puts this familiar leftist-atheist standpoint in question. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with users of entheo-gens including ayahuasca, vaporised DMT, and 5-MeO-DMT toad venom, I argue that a left willing to open itself to these experiences could gain a new standpoint from which to oppose and outflank capitalist ecocide.

Research paper thumbnail of Sebastian Job Human Sciences at the Edge of Panentheism: God and the Limits of Ontological Realism

Job, Sebastian (2012), 'Human Sciences at the Edge of Panentheism: God and the Limits of Ontologi... more Job, Sebastian (2012), 'Human Sciences at the Edge of Panentheism: God and the Limits of Ontological Realism', in Mervyn Hartwig and Jamie Morgan (eds.), Critical Realism and Spirituality, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 170-186.

From archaeology to anthropology, philosophy to psychology, at their best the modern human sciences undermined calcified ideologies and opened up, even created, hitherto unimagined dimensions of human existence. Yet, as to some of their basic assumptions, the human sciences now operate as a social bulwark against fundamental spiritual and political renewal. The problem has not been the view, announced by Marx and taken on by non-Marxists generally, that the presupposition of all criticism is the criticism of religion. It has rather been the expectation, again shared with Marx, that thought would remain critical if it supposed the criticism of religion to be essentially completed. In the name of this error, ‘critical thought’ has dogmatically insulated itself from the challenge of the numinous, while exempting the faithful from testing encounters with open-minded criticism.

Research paper thumbnail of Communism

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Societies, Class

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Materialism, Cultural

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Humankind, Psychic Unity of

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Climate Change and the Challenge of Immortality: Faith, denial and intimations of eternity.” Online proceedings of the symposium Anthropology and the Ends of Worlds, edited by Sebastian Job and Linda Connor

University of Sydney, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of An Eyewitness Account: Russia's White House Won and Lost

New Politics, Vol. IV, No. 4 (New Series), New York, Winter 1994, 1994

Eyewitness account of the events of 3rd-4th of October 1993 in Moscow, when protestors broke the ... more Eyewitness account of the events of 3rd-4th of October 1993 in Moscow, when protestors broke the blockade which president Yeltsin had imposed around the Russian parliament building, briefly restoring this democratically elected institution, before being crushed by Yeltsin's special forces; events which killed several hundred people, and also decisively killed off the democratic impetus begun during Perestroika, clearing the way for the rise of current oligarchic capitalism. Boris Yeltsin's (and Yegor Gaidar's and sundry others’) actions were cheered on by western governments and most western observers. This article, which has not previously appeared on the net, was written from a very different perspective.

Research paper thumbnail of Sebastian Job Notes on Two Human Sciences in Russian forum contribution

Research paper thumbnail of Globalising Russia? The neoliberal/nationalist two-step and the Russification of the West

Third World Quarterly, Jan 1, 2001

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the major ideological dynamic of the post-cold war era is the con... more ABSTRACT This paper argues that the major ideological dynamic of the post-cold war era is the conflictive complicity of neoliberalism and various authori-tarian and racist nationalisms. This is nowhere more apparent than in post-Soviet Russia. Indeed, far from being ' ...

Research paper thumbnail of S.Job Russia the Silence of the Lambs

Research paper thumbnail of Without Ends Facing the End: of Aztec Revivalists and Anthropologists

"This paper opens a discussion of anthropology’s relationship to mythic practices endeavouring to... more "This paper opens a discussion of anthropology’s relationship to mythic practices endeavouring to bring contemporary urbanites into a more harmonious relationship with the natural world. I give a summary account of one such mythic practice, the dance of the contemporary danzantes (popularly known as Los Concheros) of Mexico City. My argument will be that the danzantes (no doubt like many others), can help us to better grasp that the present ecological crisis is just as much an existential and metaphysical crisis, and that if an epochal shift in its relation to nature is on the cards for modern or postmodern society, an epochal shift in our thinking about reality is on the cards for the social sciences. In anthropology, however, this metaphysical shift is yet to come properly into view. Its necessity may be obscurely felt, but words have not been found. This paper is an attempt to evoke that necessity and to point in a likely direction. Beginning with a sketch of much of contemporary anthropology’s bamboozlement in the face of a sharpened existential predicament, it does no more than attempt to suggest that there could be an end to at least the present version of that bamboozlement.

Keywords: Mexico, danzantes, anthropology, myth, alienation, environment, reality, universal, metaphysics, apocalypse
"

Research paper thumbnail of The Rise of a Global God-Image? Spiritual internationalists, the international left and the idea of human progress

Abstract For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, ... more Abstract
For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, durable barriers stood between those who sought political liberation and those who sought spiritual liberation. We are now emerging from that period. The barriers never operated in the same way or to the same extent in all countries, for much the same reason that 'secularism' differed in its effective meaning from country to country. But even in secularism's Anglo-European heartland the division between spirit and politics no longer feels self-evident. This shift cannot help but resonate throughout progressive politics. What we lack are conceptual means for illuminating the shift. The progressive spiritual-political terrain will hardly come into view if it is conceived only in terms of mutual concerns, or shared ethical values, or common campaign work. Pragmatic considerations must be grounded in conceptions of the current world process. Conceptions of the world process must be capable of generating new and fertile responses to many of the deep moral and metaphysical questions which become more insistent in times of rapid—not to say cataclysmic—change. Only in this way can 'progressive social forces', whether belonging to the tradition of the left or to spiritual and religious traditions, help to open up the human vista at a time when 'progress' is pursued nearly everywhere in its narrowest and most lethal forms. This article takes up these issues, emphasising the need for a reorientation of political thought in the face of a world scene stalked by apocalyptic anxieties. The best child of these anxieties may well be an internationally integrative structure which we can refer to as a 'progressive global God-image'. Putting forward this idea as an interpretive key both to the possibilities inherent in the progressive spiritual-political encounter and to important aspects of the contemporary planetary situation, the idea is then illustrated by summarising the key claims of a specific group of 'spiritual internationalists'. In conclusion I suggest that, in so far as the spiritual-political encounter is not joined, contemporary progressives of a spiritual and a traditional leftist kind will continue to represent two forms of 'unhappy consciousness'. The option that beckons, meanwhile, is for each to discover in the other the resources they need to creatively respond to their own limitations.

Research paper thumbnail of Russia, the silence of the lambs

Research paper thumbnail of The Post-Cold War Predicament || Globalising Russia? The Neoliberal/Nationalist Two-Step and the Russification of the West

Research paper thumbnail of The Rise of a Global God-Image? Spiritual internationalists, the international left and the idea of human progress

Third World Quarterly, 2009

ABSTRACT For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, du... more ABSTRACT For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, durable barriers stood between those who sought political liberation and those who sought spiritual liberation. We are now emerging from that period. The barriers never ...

Research paper thumbnail of Bakunin and the Entheogenic Challenge to Atheism

As fossil fuelled capitalism drags global civilisation towards the strange attractor of ecologica... more As fossil fuelled capitalism drags global civilisation towards the strange attractor of ecological implosion, can we get any help from outside (what the secular mainstream in the west generally recognises as), the human social field? This paper makes the case for the pedagogical potential of the naturally-occurring psycho-active 'entheogens', that is, substances which, taken sacramentally, are held to 'engender the divine within'. Handled in a thoughtful way, these substances, I argue, are potential allies for the remaking of the revolutionary movement in an age where human extinction is now thinkable. Between the existing radical left in its various forms, and this ally, however, there are some obstacles. One such obstacle is the atheism of the dominant European revolutionary tradition. In this paper Mikhail Bakunin's influential critique of religion as a form of human domination , as an enemy of human freedom, is taken as exemplary of this tradition. The testimony, meanwhile, of entheogenic experience puts this familiar leftist-atheist standpoint in question. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with users of entheo-gens including ayahuasca, vaporised DMT, and 5-MeO-DMT toad venom, I argue that a left willing to open itself to these experiences could gain a new standpoint from which to oppose and outflank capitalist ecocide.

Research paper thumbnail of Sebastian Job Human Sciences at the Edge of Panentheism: God and the Limits of Ontological Realism

Job, Sebastian (2012), 'Human Sciences at the Edge of Panentheism: God and the Limits of Ontologi... more Job, Sebastian (2012), 'Human Sciences at the Edge of Panentheism: God and the Limits of Ontological Realism', in Mervyn Hartwig and Jamie Morgan (eds.), Critical Realism and Spirituality, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 170-186.

From archaeology to anthropology, philosophy to psychology, at their best the modern human sciences undermined calcified ideologies and opened up, even created, hitherto unimagined dimensions of human existence. Yet, as to some of their basic assumptions, the human sciences now operate as a social bulwark against fundamental spiritual and political renewal. The problem has not been the view, announced by Marx and taken on by non-Marxists generally, that the presupposition of all criticism is the criticism of religion. It has rather been the expectation, again shared with Marx, that thought would remain critical if it supposed the criticism of religion to be essentially completed. In the name of this error, ‘critical thought’ has dogmatically insulated itself from the challenge of the numinous, while exempting the faithful from testing encounters with open-minded criticism.

Research paper thumbnail of Communism

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Societies, Class

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Materialism, Cultural

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Humankind, Psychic Unity of

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Climate Change and the Challenge of Immortality: Faith, denial and intimations of eternity.” Online proceedings of the symposium Anthropology and the Ends of Worlds, edited by Sebastian Job and Linda Connor

University of Sydney, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of An Eyewitness Account: Russia's White House Won and Lost

New Politics, Vol. IV, No. 4 (New Series), New York, Winter 1994, 1994

Eyewitness account of the events of 3rd-4th of October 1993 in Moscow, when protestors broke the ... more Eyewitness account of the events of 3rd-4th of October 1993 in Moscow, when protestors broke the blockade which president Yeltsin had imposed around the Russian parliament building, briefly restoring this democratically elected institution, before being crushed by Yeltsin's special forces; events which killed several hundred people, and also decisively killed off the democratic impetus begun during Perestroika, clearing the way for the rise of current oligarchic capitalism. Boris Yeltsin's (and Yegor Gaidar's and sundry others’) actions were cheered on by western governments and most western observers. This article, which has not previously appeared on the net, was written from a very different perspective.

Research paper thumbnail of Sebastian Job Notes on Two Human Sciences in Russian forum contribution

Research paper thumbnail of Globalising Russia? The neoliberal/nationalist two-step and the Russification of the West

Third World Quarterly, Jan 1, 2001

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the major ideological dynamic of the post-cold war era is the con... more ABSTRACT This paper argues that the major ideological dynamic of the post-cold war era is the conflictive complicity of neoliberalism and various authori-tarian and racist nationalisms. This is nowhere more apparent than in post-Soviet Russia. Indeed, far from being ' ...

Research paper thumbnail of S.Job Russia the Silence of the Lambs

Research paper thumbnail of Without Ends Facing the End: of Aztec Revivalists and Anthropologists

"This paper opens a discussion of anthropology’s relationship to mythic practices endeavouring to... more "This paper opens a discussion of anthropology’s relationship to mythic practices endeavouring to bring contemporary urbanites into a more harmonious relationship with the natural world. I give a summary account of one such mythic practice, the dance of the contemporary danzantes (popularly known as Los Concheros) of Mexico City. My argument will be that the danzantes (no doubt like many others), can help us to better grasp that the present ecological crisis is just as much an existential and metaphysical crisis, and that if an epochal shift in its relation to nature is on the cards for modern or postmodern society, an epochal shift in our thinking about reality is on the cards for the social sciences. In anthropology, however, this metaphysical shift is yet to come properly into view. Its necessity may be obscurely felt, but words have not been found. This paper is an attempt to evoke that necessity and to point in a likely direction. Beginning with a sketch of much of contemporary anthropology’s bamboozlement in the face of a sharpened existential predicament, it does no more than attempt to suggest that there could be an end to at least the present version of that bamboozlement.

Keywords: Mexico, danzantes, anthropology, myth, alienation, environment, reality, universal, metaphysics, apocalypse
"

Research paper thumbnail of The Rise of a Global God-Image? Spiritual internationalists, the international left and the idea of human progress

Abstract For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, ... more Abstract
For a period that endured so long it came to seem coextensive with Western modernity, durable barriers stood between those who sought political liberation and those who sought spiritual liberation. We are now emerging from that period. The barriers never operated in the same way or to the same extent in all countries, for much the same reason that 'secularism' differed in its effective meaning from country to country. But even in secularism's Anglo-European heartland the division between spirit and politics no longer feels self-evident. This shift cannot help but resonate throughout progressive politics. What we lack are conceptual means for illuminating the shift. The progressive spiritual-political terrain will hardly come into view if it is conceived only in terms of mutual concerns, or shared ethical values, or common campaign work. Pragmatic considerations must be grounded in conceptions of the current world process. Conceptions of the world process must be capable of generating new and fertile responses to many of the deep moral and metaphysical questions which become more insistent in times of rapid—not to say cataclysmic—change. Only in this way can 'progressive social forces', whether belonging to the tradition of the left or to spiritual and religious traditions, help to open up the human vista at a time when 'progress' is pursued nearly everywhere in its narrowest and most lethal forms. This article takes up these issues, emphasising the need for a reorientation of political thought in the face of a world scene stalked by apocalyptic anxieties. The best child of these anxieties may well be an internationally integrative structure which we can refer to as a 'progressive global God-image'. Putting forward this idea as an interpretive key both to the possibilities inherent in the progressive spiritual-political encounter and to important aspects of the contemporary planetary situation, the idea is then illustrated by summarising the key claims of a specific group of 'spiritual internationalists'. In conclusion I suggest that, in so far as the spiritual-political encounter is not joined, contemporary progressives of a spiritual and a traditional leftist kind will continue to represent two forms of 'unhappy consciousness'. The option that beckons, meanwhile, is for each to discover in the other the resources they need to creatively respond to their own limitations.