9780999157008
9781912808502
We have all found ourselves involuntarily addressing inanimate objects as though they were human. For a fleeting instant, we act as though our cars and computers can hear us. In situations like ritual or play, objects acquire a range of human characteristics, such as perception, thought, action, or speech. Puppets, dolls, and ritual statuettes cease to be merely addressees and begin to address us—we see life in them.
How might we describe the kind of thought that gives life to the artifact, making it memorable as well as effective, in daily life, play, or ritual action? Following The Chimera Principle, in this collection of essays Carlo Severi explores the kind of shared imagination where inanimate artifacts, from non-Western masks and ritual statuettes to paintings and sculptures in our own tradition, can be perceived as living beings. This nuanced inquiry into the works of memory and shared imagination is a proposal for a new anthropology of thought.
How might we describe the kind of thought that gives life to the artifact, making it memorable as well as effective, in daily life, play, or ritual action? Following The Chimera Principle, in this collection of essays Carlo Severi explores the kind of shared imagination where inanimate artifacts, from non-Western masks and ritual statuettes to paintings and sculptures in our own tradition, can be perceived as living beings. This nuanced inquiry into the works of memory and shared imagination is a proposal for a new anthropology of thought.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: On Living Objects and the Anthropology of Thought
Chapter 2: Primitivist Empathy: Intensifying the Image and Deciphering Space
The Stakes of Formal Borrowings
Carl Einstein, or Immobile Ecstasy
Primitivism without Borrowing: Imaginary Filiation
Iconography and Gaze-Games
Chapter 3: The Universe of the Arts of Memory
An Exercise in Methodology
Amerindian Arts of Memory: A Case Study
Pictography and Memory: A Model
Eponymous Animals: Northwest Coast Visual Culture
Pictograms and Andean Khipus
Principles of Mnemonic Encoding
Chapter 4: Authorless Authority: Forms of Authority in Oral Traditions
Evidentials, Pragmatics, and Artifacts
The Fang Mvet: Singer, Song, and Harp
Rethinking the West African Nail Figure
The Complex Artifact
Chapter 5: Giving Voice: When Images Speak
Speech and Ritual Images
Here-Now-I: Demonstrative Images and Speech Acts
Kolossoi and Kouroi; or The Pragmatics of Images
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Becoming Patroclus: Funerary Rituals and Games in The Iliad
The Image Through the Text: Identification, Hierarchy, and Prefiguration
Funerary Games as Quasi-Rituals
Reflections on Funeral Rituals among the Wari’
The Universe of Object-Persons
Chapter 7: The Anthropology of Abstract Art
Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Anthropology of Art
Principles of Analysis: An Example from Kandinsky
Visual Strategies in Abstract Art
Chapter 8: Chimeric Space: Perception and Projection
The Visible and Invisible in Works of Art
Perception and Projection in the Gaze
Symbolism and Transitional Space
Chimeras and Ambiguous Images
Wayana and Yekuana Iconography: Chimeras in the Amazon
Conclusion
Chapter 9: The Semblance of Life: The Epistemology of Western Perspective
A Science of Description: Imitare and Ritrarre
Models of Truth
Poetry Without Words or Blind Painting?
The Counterfactual Image
New Meditations on a Hobby Horse
Perspective and the Anthropology of Images
From Presence to the Active Gaze
The Witness-Figure and Capriccio
Chapter 10: On Irrefutable Hypotheses
Kūkai’s Vision
Levels of Cognition
Anthropology and Pragmatics
Ethnography and Thought
Levels of Cognition
Anthropology and Pragmatics
Ethnography and Thought
Chapter 2: Primitivist Empathy: Intensifying the Image and Deciphering Space
The Stakes of Formal Borrowings
Carl Einstein, or Immobile Ecstasy
Primitivism without Borrowing: Imaginary Filiation
Iconography and Gaze-Games
Chapter 3: The Universe of the Arts of Memory
An Exercise in Methodology
Amerindian Arts of Memory: A Case Study
Pictography and Memory: A Model
Eponymous Animals: Northwest Coast Visual Culture
Pictograms and Andean Khipus
Principles of Mnemonic Encoding
Chapter 4: Authorless Authority: Forms of Authority in Oral Traditions
Evidentials, Pragmatics, and Artifacts
The Fang Mvet: Singer, Song, and Harp
Rethinking the West African Nail Figure
The Complex Artifact
Chapter 5: Giving Voice: When Images Speak
Speech and Ritual Images
Here-Now-I: Demonstrative Images and Speech Acts
Kolossoi and Kouroi; or The Pragmatics of Images
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Becoming Patroclus: Funerary Rituals and Games in The Iliad
The Image Through the Text: Identification, Hierarchy, and Prefiguration
Funerary Games as Quasi-Rituals
Reflections on Funeral Rituals among the Wari’
The Universe of Object-Persons
Chapter 7: The Anthropology of Abstract Art
Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Anthropology of Art
Principles of Analysis: An Example from Kandinsky
Visual Strategies in Abstract Art
Chapter 8: Chimeric Space: Perception and Projection
The Visible and Invisible in Works of Art
Perception and Projection in the Gaze
Symbolism and Transitional Space
Chimeras and Ambiguous Images
Wayana and Yekuana Iconography: Chimeras in the Amazon
Conclusion
Chapter 9: The Semblance of Life: The Epistemology of Western Perspective
A Science of Description: Imitare and Ritrarre
Models of Truth
Poetry Without Words or Blind Painting?
The Counterfactual Image
New Meditations on a Hobby Horse
Perspective and the Anthropology of Images
From Presence to the Active Gaze
The Witness-Figure and Capriccio
Chapter 10: On Irrefutable Hypotheses
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