The Exile of Greek Metis: Recovering a maternal divine ontology Pp 41-76, Chapter 2 in Ontologies_of_Asylum.pdf. Poligrafi (original) (raw)
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The Ashgate Research Companion to Human Ecology. Williams, L., McIntosh, A. & Roberts, R. (Eds.). UK.: Ashgate, pp. 73-88., 2012
Warnings of great transformational moments in the affairs of humankind that have echoed down through the ages signalled periods of profound change from which result either great, evolutionary leaps forward or cataclysmic destruction, regression, and ultimately extinction. In the case of the first scenario, these are often marked by what cultural historian Thomas Berry (1991, p.1) calls great overarching movements of people who arise to fulfil what he described in 1999 as the "Great Work of a people" adding each time new layers of human understanding, organization and consciousness. He includes in these the emergence of the Humanist tradition of the Greeks with its understanding of the human mind, the Great Work of Israel in giving voice and expression to a new experience of the divine, the Great Work of Rome in the gathering of all the peoples of the Mediterranean world and in Western Europe, the bringing about of ordered relations with one another. In the land known as China arose one of the most elegant and great civilisations ever known, and in the Americas, he says, (as in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and many other parts of the world), the Great Work carried out by the First Peoples was the establishment of an intimate relationship with the powers that brought the continent into existence. This chapter is concerned with the nature of that intimate relationship with these powers as it relates to the great crisis of this moment
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A re-reading of the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey emphasizes the perfect homonymity between "non-identity" (mē tis) and "wisdom, craftiness, counsel" (mētis) in order to test the limits and expand the scope of Aristotle's discussion of homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy in the opening chapter of his Categories and subsequently in his Metaphysics. The reading not only demonstrates how Aristotle's conceptions oscillate uneasily between logical and metaphysical considerations, but also shows to what extent the Homeric example undermines the very distinction between a purely linguistic and a decidedly metaphysical account of intended ambiguity.
Co-existing Indigenous and Settler Worlds: Ontological Styles and Possibilities 1
Settler colonialism involves processes of destruction and substitution aiming to replace indigenous with European/western worlds. But indigenous worlds persist in numerous spaces, moments and interactions where distinct ontologies and ways of being-in-the-world prevail. In Aotearoa New Zealand these spaces of the Māori world persist most obviously on marae. Māori and western worlds also briefly come together in public contexts where Māori protocols are used to mark openings of various sorts, temporarily governing public space and sociability. In this paper, I explore a different case where, I argue, Māori and western worlds are entangled or knotted together in the carved pou in the atrium space of a new community building in Kaitaia. The old woman stopped short of the sliding glass doors, pausing to examine the strong profile of a Māori warrior. I saw her lips move, a greeting perhaps … The doors parted and she entered the atrium. Her gaze travelled upwards to the migratory birds suspended from the ceiling, drifting back down to the ancient stingray illustrated on the floor. Again, her lips moved, slightly, slowly … She walked towards the carved pou at her right and stopped short, admiring, acknowledging. She moved forward and raised her right hand, placing it gently at the side of the carving, standing silently for a short time before moving on to the next pou. In the same manner she repeated her greeting at each carving, until the final pou stood before her … A deep sigh left the old lady and she straightened. Something appeared to shift; she nodded, and an almost palpable energy emerged between them. She seemed united with this pou in a way somehow different from the others, her incantation increasingly audible. After a time she approached the pou, engaging the grand carving in a hongi, pressing her nose against it/him and sharing her breath with that of her ancestors, those who had walked this ground for centuries before her. Later I had the pleasure of speaking with her. She was raised in the area, but had moved away and lived elsewhere. She had returned to visit her son and his family, and wished to return permanently to her home community and the land of her ancestors. The old lady had been told of Te Ahu by friends, and made a special journey that day to see for herself, and to share what she found with her grandchildren. The pou reminded her of the stories of her own grandparents, the stories of the beginnings of her own people. Was it by chance, or by design, that the last pou she greeted was that of her own people? I still wonder. She said she knew as she stood before that pou that the spirit of her people was finally before her, for in this pou, she could hear her ancestors' voices when she had not heard them in the others. 2
Anthropos: International Review of Anthropology and Linguistics, 2005
In Albanian tradition, the essential attributes of the mythological figures of destiny seem to be symbolic interchangeable representations of birth itself. In addition, their mythical combat is but the symbolic representation of the cyclic return in the watery and chthonian world of death, leading, like the vegetation, to the cosmic revival of a new birth. Both protective and destructive positions of the attributes of birth, symbolized by the amniotic membranes, the caul and other singular markers, or by the means of the symbolism of maternal water, would be only two antinomic oppositions, two complementary and interchangeable terms of the mythopoeic opposition of the immanence of universal regeneration. One could bring closer to the Albanian figures certain mythological representations in Scandinavian and Slavic traditions. At any case, the ambivalent representations of soul and destiny are not isolated in Albanian tradition. There are especially those which have also a function of assistance to childbirth, close to Greek representations of the destiny, personified there by the Moires, in Scandinavian and Germanic traditions by Nornes and in the Albanian tradition by other local figures.