Ontological confusion: Eshu and the Devil dance to "The Samba of the Black Madman" (original) (raw)
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Noting that while our contemporary society vitally depends on global capital markets and financial speculation, these practices seem to conspicuously lack an aesthetic, moral or spiritual ground, this paper explores the “economic theology” of Joseph Penso de la Vega’s The Confusion of Confusions. Set in the context of the 17th-century Amsterdam community of conversos and the rise of the stock exchange spawned by the Dutch East India Company, the book compares the passions of the stock exchange to those of religion. De la Vega draws on the contemporary Messianic movement of Sabbateanism and the traditional Jewish Kabala. The anticipation of continued growth in share prices is allegorically associated with the religious movement’s expectation that the world would end and Sabbatai Zeti become the Messiah. Furthermore, De la Vega associates the shares with fragments of the cosmos by way of Philo’s reading of the Tower of Babel. The significance of de la Vega’s “economic theology” emerges from these sources: the financial speculator is an antinomian figure who, through the seeming chaos and perils of his ongoing speculation, must break the law in order to uphold it and regenerate the society. The end of the paper develops a conception of financial speculation after the death of God.
In a World of Paradoxes, Conflicts and Contradictions the Need for Disambiguation
Clinical Orthopaedics and Trauma Care, 2021
Today we begin to have the knowledge that allows us to face man in a dynamic and dialectic perspective, as we have long desired (see, for example, the definition of health by the World Health Organization, 1948, as a state of equilibrium – therefore dynamic). However, an intention is not enough. We have to better understand the phenomena, of course. And differently. There is a need for a rupture in strategies, methodologies, instruments (conceptual and material), an adequate conception and with the appropriate degrees of freedom. This work intends to be as a contribution to this rupture (see Thomas Kuhn). Not only in health, but in general, because man is always, (as a phenomenon, as a sign or as the observer), a fundamental part of our visions. In this article we propose two conceptual tools: ARAT (aggression / reaction / adaptation / transformation - as a factor of transformation) and Mental Schemes (as a factor of stability - which, therefore, goes beyond a centralization in the ...
Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity: on the art of getting beyond identity politics
Galáxia (São Paulo)
Inspired by Antonio Gramsci, sociologist Pascal Gielen defines the last decade as one of ‘organic crisis’. In such periods many (economic, political, ecological) crisis follow each other while the hegemonic order cannot deal with them anymore in a convincing way, and a new political paradigm that can sufficiently deal with them is not yet invented. In such a period the oppositions between left and right, between different ethnic groups, or between genders start to become more black & white. That’s why Gielen thinks also identity politics is problematic, or has at least a very problematic flip side that is contra-productive for finding solutions for this crisis. Instead we need to develop a so-called ambiguity politics inspired by ambiguity aesthetics, that could deal in a better way with the problems and contradictions of this contemporary world of rambling causalities. Such a politics is based on the recognition of the Other in ourselves, and on the understanding of ourselves and o...
Kingdom Come, but Who is the King? Essay on the Concept of Ambiguity as Claimed by Er LEACH2
anthroserbia.org
I discuss analytic purpose of the term ambiguity, as used by E. R. Leach, for the issues concerning identification with cultural heroes. Cultural heroes represent cultural cognitive models, which are unquestionable concerning norms and values they stand for in the real life, no matter some contradictions could be noted within them by the external observer. People striving to improve their status-as Leach has put it-by identifying with the figures of cultural heroes do not take into consideration such contradictions, taking the model and its representative, cultural hero, as granted form for the object of their identification. If we study what those people think and how they behave accordingly, and not that what we the anthropologist think they think and do, I argue that the term ambiguity is analytically obsolete.
This master's thesis discusses the topic of linguistic ambiguity, by comparing the view of Ludwig Wittgenstein to that of ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, a medieval Arabic thinker.
Atlantic Journal of Communication, 2005
This article is a reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "An Unpublished Text" (1964a), as an exemplar of communicative praxis. As a poetic, "stylistic" account of the body of his life's work, this text self-signifies his potential as an "authentic" scholar. Employing a motivated logic that is abductive , he argued for an appreciation of our phenomenological and semiotic circumstances of existential ambiguity. Furthermore, from this phenomenal ground, he articulated the pragmatic conditions of authenticity that inhere within every communication engagement with an Other. My interpretation of the Etre Au Monde of his philosophy depicts authenticity as human potentiality in the context of an existential dialectic between personal consciousness and sociocultural experience. We find that ambiguity and authenticity implicate one another as philosophical issues and thus remain highly relevant for a postmodern philosophy that problematizes our constitution as communicative beings.
'Lost in Translation' Meets Political Thought
From the Tower of Babel to the European Union, political discourse has been mistranslated, misperceived and misunderstood. This paper analyzes some aspect of present-day and historical cases of misperception in the particular contexts of political discourse.
Afterword: In the Aftermath of Doubt
Ethnographies of doubt: Faith and uncertainty in contemporary societies, 2013
Th e chapters in this volume attest the importance and centrality of doubt to everyday life. Doubt aff ects social relations and political commitments. It shapes -and is shaped by -religious action. Doubt and uncertainty, several authors have demonstrated, can challenge cosmological conceptions, co-constitute the effi cacy of ritual, or be intimately implicated in epistemological and ontological frameworks and categorizations. Th e ethnographic material in these chapters illustrates that doubt is something that all our interlocutors experience and are ultimately forced to resolve -or not, as some authors assert that doubt can be 'managed' by avoiding, accepting or ignoring it. Doubt, it seems, is everywhere and one wonders how as anthropologists we got along without closely examining it.