On December 29, 1918, the Spartakus League, a Marxist revolutionary movement, rose up in Germany calling for an end to class rule by the bourgeoisie. Massive demonstrations followed and more than 500,000 Berliners took to the streets in January—only to be crushed by police and anticommunist paramilitary troops. Several leaders of the League were killed and the revolt was quashed. Through a detailed reconstruction of the events of that bloody winter, historian and critic Furio Jesi recasts our understanding of a (...) foundational political difference—revolt or revolution? Drawing on a deep reserve of literary sources like Brecht, Eliade, Dostoyevsky, and Mann, Jesi outlines a uniquely incisive phenomenology of revolt that distinguishes between the purposeful historical temporality of revolution and the suspension of time that marks a revolt. And with the addition of an essay on the politics of time and revolution by Rosa Luxemburg, a founding leader of the Spartakus League, this volume becomes a crucial text at the intersection of history and philosophy. (shrink)

On December 29, 1918, the Spartakus League, a Marxist revolutionary movement, rose up in Germany calling for an end to class rule by the bourgeoisie. Massive demonstrations followed and more than 500,000 Berliners took to the streets in January--only to be crushed by police and anticommunist paramilitary troops. Several leaders of the League were killed and the revolt was quashed. Through a detailed reconstruction of the events of that bloody winter, historian and critic Furio Jesi recasts our understanding of a (...) foundational political difference--revolt or revolution? Drawing on a deep reserve of literary sources like Brecht, Eliade, Dostoyevsky, and Mann, Jesi outlines a uniquely incisive phenomenology of revolt that distinguishes between the purposeful historical temporality of revolution and the suspension of time that marks a revolt. And with the addition of an essay on the politics of time and revolution by Rosa Luxemburg, a founding leader of the Spartakus League, this volume becomes a crucial text at the intersection of history and philosophy. (shrink)

The reductionist conclusions of some evolutionary theorists are countered by appealing to the transformation of feeling-traces from our evolutionary origins. Presupposed to the science of evolutionary biology is the capacity to get at the truth of things, and to live by values, which Rahner terms “spirit”; its appropriation comes about through the process of moral and intellectual “conversion” (Lonergan), extended into the realm of feelings and the psyche (Doran). This allows a non-supernaturalistic way of understanding the saving interpersonal transaction at (...) the heart of Christian belief; framed as a personal journey, it implies a less conceptual and more imaginal approach to faith. (shrink)

This study analyzes the symbols present in the sacred image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, contextualizing their meanings in the context of catholic christian symbology and nahuatl symbology, and seeks to relate this symbolic identification of the Virgin with the process of christianization of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, mediated by the theoretical and critical assumptions of interreligious dialogue. The methodology adopted consisted of a bibliographical revision of primary and secondary sources, in order to understand how the socio-cultural (...) construction of devotion was carried out during the first two centuries of its existence and its relation with the conversion of indigenous peoples to catholic faith. The main reference consulted was Nican Mopohua, the first document to bring the account of the apparitions of Our Lady to the indian Juan Diego in 1531, published in 1649 as part of the Huei tlamahuiçoltica, in nahuatl language. The motivation of the work was to understand how Guadalupe devotion, represented symbolically with elements of the nahuatl culture, contributed to the christianization of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, using theoretical presuppositions of interreligious dialogue, such as inculturation and syncretism. From the double interpretation of symbols, it was possible to understand the dimension of the process of inculturation of the Christian faith in Mexico and the use of Marian devotion to influence the Christianization of the Aztec nation, as well as to identify whether or not there was a dialogue among religions in this sense. Along the way, we can see the importance of the Virgin of Guadalupe cult not only for the colonization process, but also for the legitimacy of the culture and nationalism of the Mexican people. (shrink)

Victor Turner's comparative symbology provides a description of liminality, marginality, and liminoid genres that can be usefully applied to positioning theology in a theory of practice, determining its social location, and assessing its future meaning. This paper argues not only that theological marginality is a result of the secularization of culture but also that the breach with theology's pubiics reflects a more significant internal breach that is essential to theology as a liminoid form of public reflexivity. The paper draws (...) from deconstructionist philosophy and defines the interpretive task of theology as a deconstructionist hermeneutic. (shrink)

This book explores C.G. Jung's complex relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche through the lens of the so-called 'visionary' literary tradition. The book connects Jung's experience of the posthumously published Liber Novus with his own understanding of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and formulates the hypothesis of Jung considering Zarathustra as Nietzsche's Liber Novus –– both works being regarded by Jung as 'visionary' experiences. After exploring some 'visionary' authors often compared by Jung to Nietzsche, the book focuses upon Nietzsche and Jung exclusively. It analyses stylistic (...) similarities, as well as explicit references to Nietzsche and Zarathustra in Liber Novus, drawing on Jung's annotations in his own copy of Zarathustra. The book then uses Liber Novus as a prism to contextualize and understand Jung's five-year seminar on Zarathustra: all the nuances of Jung's interpretation of Zarathustra can be fully explained, only when compared with Liber Novus and its symbology. One of the main topics of the book concerns the figure of 'Christ' and Nietzsche's and Jung's understandings of the 'death of God.'. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze, from a Bakhtinian perspective, the grotesque construction of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s body through a religious worldview. Therefore, we analyze two of her self-portraits, taking into account the dialogic relations constructed between the grotesque representations and Catholic symbology. The analyzed utterances, in which the specificities of the creative competence of the author-creator in her aesthetic activity are inferred, showed that a dialogue is established between the painting El venado herido and Catholic Saint Sebastian (...) and between the painting Las dos fridas and the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. (shrink)

The Guggenheim’s spring retrospective of the seminal Swedish painter, Hilma Af Klint, has, naturally, evoked a multitude of art critics and visual culture scholars who laud her radical abstraction which, at the beginning of the 20th century, preceded Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian. Yet, where much attention has been given to the symbology and motifs riddling Klint’s work – bold, private, untethered and nonrepresentational as they are – there has been a modicum of nuanced thought on how, exactly, esotericism and theology (...) fomented Klint’s pedagogical projects. Jillian Steinhauer, for instance, has underscored Klint’s naturalistic watercolors; featuring flowers and lifelike drawings of women; Summer Landscape (1888) suggests Klint’s technical aptitude for rendering light. Jadranka Ryle, in a clever article titled “Reinventing the Yggdrasil,” invokes Klint’s motif of the Yggdrasil, or the holy tree of Norse mythology, as a political axle for Nordic romanticism. Ryle makes the claim that by redirecting the Yggdrasil towards androgynous abstraction, Klint’s engagement with Norse mythology subverts the nationalist and patriarchal romanticism that previously characterized the nineteenth century’s use of the Yggdrasil. Others have adroitly uncovered biographical fragments from Klint’s life, detailing how she and four friends formed De Fem (“the Five”), an exclusively female coven that met weekly, praying, meditating, and holding seances to commune with spiritual guides. Rather than poise the Swedish maverick within the cannon of abstraction qua a political praxis, feminist subject-being, or historiography – projects that have been exhaustively overwrought, to the point of rendering Klint’s work both mute and reductively technical– I would like to take this time to closely examine simply one of Klint’s paintings and foreground it as an axiomatic modernist injunction between metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to promote an analysis of the intercultural experience carried out through the exchange of letters with children from the city of Ninomiya, Kanagawa Province – Japan, with children from the Municipal Education Network of the Veranópolis, Rio Grande do Sul – Brazil. The exchanges take place annually through the Post and Telegraph service in Brazil and Japan, between students from the 3rd to 9th years of this network. Japanese children write to Veranians and vice (...) versa. They tell facts about their routine, their city, peculiar aspects of their daily lives, including photos and geographic and cultural characteristics specific to each local space. This experience invites us to expand our gaze on the importance of thematizing, in the educational process, sociocultural aspects of different peoples, social groups, customs and ways of being and living together. We challenge ourselves to reflect on how this practice of exchanging letters, between children from two very different countries, both socially and culturally, manages to raise awareness about issues related to interculturality as a field of debate about identity processes that constitute an environment. Furthermore, it allows us to analyze issues related to the ease of writing and the symbology used to describe aspects related to the daily life of each child, as well as the subjectivity in each message in the exchange of letters. The reciprocity in exchanges, the care with the details present in each report, the richness that makes up the writing and how everyday life presents itself with similarities and differences in the life of each student, whether here or in Japan, are essential components in the construction of this analysis. Keywords: Local history. Interculturality. Education. Global citizenship. (shrink)

"German--and particularly French--sources of the revolution that has occurred in literary theory during the past thirty years have long been recognized. The Russian contribution to these events has been hinted at previously, but Cassedy documents in detail the extraordinary work of Potebnya, Veselovskij, and other figures virtually unknown in the West.... An important contribution to intellectual history and literary theory."--Michael Holquist, author of Dostoevsky and the Novel "An astonishing number of complex movements and ideas--from Humboldt through Russian and French Symbolists (...) to Heidegger, Husserl, Roman Jakobson and the deconstructors, from symbology to logology and iconology--begin to fit together in this wide-ranging and provocative book.... Cassedy's book will outrage some readers, delight others, and enlighten all."--Caryl Emerson, author of Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme. (shrink)

This study focuses on the altars of the major annual Hopi ceremonials which display ritual objects, the possession and use of which give religious and secular power. With the importance of such objects in mind, an iconographic study of Hopi religion is particularly illuminating. This study aims to demonstrate how to view Hopi altars and is supplemented by a theory of the mechanics of efficacy in the Hopi altar context. The text provides a general introduction to Hopi religious practice and (...) distinguishes three levels of information: 1) the calendrical and ritual contexts of Hopi altars, 2) the functions of these altars within those contexts, and 3) the iconography and iconology of the altars, understood here in a literal sense as the study of the forms and structures of the altars on the one hand and the study of the implicit and explicit symbology of the altars on the other. The book provides keys to understanding through exemplification and typology, and is meant to be of particular use to museums and research libraries. (shrink)

Visual representations have often played a crucial role in imagining future urban forms. In the aftermath of the Second World War, a noteworthy new genre of urban plan was published in Britain, most deploying seductively optimistic illustrations of ways forward not only for the reconstruction of bomb-damaged towns and cities but also for places left largely undamaged. Visual representations have often played a crucial role in imagining future urban forms. In the aftermath of the Second World War, a noteworthy new (...) genre of urban plan was published in Britain, most deploying seductively optimistic illustrations of ways forward not only for the reconstruction of bomb-damaged towns and cities but also for places left largely undamaged. This paper assesses the contribution of visual elements in this,process with a detailed case study of the maps, statistical charts, architectural drawings and photographs enrolled into the 1945 City of Manchester Plan. The cultural production of these visual representations is evaluated. Our analysis interprets the form, symbology and active work of different imagery in the process of reimagining Manchester, but also assesses the role of these images as markers of a particular moment in the cultural economy of the city. This analysis is carried out in relation to the ethos of the Plan as a whole. (shrink)

This article discusses the world’s most oppressed people, the Muslim Rohingya of Burma through the lens of “state symbologies and critical juncture”. It further argues the amalgamation of Burmese-Buddhist ethno-nationalism and anti-Muslim hate speech have become elements of Burma’s state symbology and components. Colonialism established conditions in which ethno-religious conflict could develop through policies that destroyed the civic religious pluralism characteristic of pre-colonial states. Burmese Buddhist ethno-religious nationalism is responsible for a series of communal conflicts and state repression because (...) it did not recognize Muslims and other minorities as full and equal participants in the post-colonial national project. Therefore, the cycles of violence and the complexities of inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations indicate that Burmese political culture has become increasingly violent and genocidal. (shrink)

This article discusses the implications of the symbology of Kali from a different and fresh perspective and positions the worship of Kali in the bigger picture of the divinisation of everything in Sanatana Dharma. It also discusses the needless marginalisation of so-called 'ugly' and 'terrible' and how these prejudices have to be overcome to realise the Divinity innate in all.

É objectivo do presente estudo introduzir a uma reinterpretação das visões imagéticas. simbólicas e dramáticas que fascinam. apaixonam e obcecam a alma do pregador como indicadores proféticos do iminente advento da plenitude teândrico-cósmica e escatológica que designou como Quinto Império ou Reino de Cristo na terra consumado. A partir do levantamento dos seus fundamentos teológico-filosóficos, problematizando-os a partir do que o próprio autor designou como "tentações da esperança, visamos assim averiguar até que ponto na objectivação histórico-institucional e terrena da escatologia (...) quinto-imperial se não projecta e refracta. inconsciente de si mesma. uma experiência mais autêntica da alma, em seu místico e visionário confronto com a simbologia do Infinito e da Totalidade. /// This essay aims to be an introduction to a reinterpretation of the imagetic visions, both symbolic and dramatic, that fascinate, impassionate and obsess the preacher's soul as prophetic signs of the impending coming of the theandric-cosmic and eschatological fulness that he called the Fifth Empire or Christ's Kingdom inaugurated on earth. On the basis of its theologic-philosophical foundations, which he questioned based upon what the author himself called "hope temptations", we aim to investigate to what extent a more authentic experience of the soul, in its mystic and visionary confrontation with the symbology of the Infinit and of the Totality, is projected and refracted, unconscious of itself, on the historic-institutional and worldly objectitication of the eschatology of the Fifth Empire. (shrink)

The ostensive definition, based on ostensiveness, aims to indicate that human language is based only on gesture and indication. In this sense, such linguistic theory largely excludes the considerable eminence of symbology and internalization inscribed in the dynamics and interiority inherent to human language. Thus, the ostensible definition, with the intention of being a paradigmatic thesis about human language, would not explain or synthesize in itself all the richness present in human language. Before that, or this article intends to (...) reflect on the ambiguity of the ostensive definition and the convergence between Wittgenstein and Augustine. Both, temporarily distant, do not endorse the ostensible definition as the basis of their theses about human language. Also, first, a concept about the ostensive definition will be presented. Deepen Wittgenstein's critique of such a linguistic concept and, finally, consider that Augustine did not have an ostensible definition as the basis of his conception of language. (shrink)

Based on Nelson Goodman?s conception of language and of pragmatically inherited meaning, this book looks at the arts as systems of particular symbols. The author offers an approach to kalology as a metaphysical implication of symbological functioning.

Nowadays hypermedia constitutes, with its singular characteristics, a new language whose structure seems to be complex because it includes features such as multiple simultaneous paths, multiplicity of voices, the simultaneous manifestation of ordinary and scholarly languages and the mixture of means, genres and verbal, visual and aural languages. However, behind its complexity, hypermedia can reveal simple structures of order. Comprehending its nature, we can better construct using its language. This has great potential for creating narratives understood as universal manifestations of (...) human discourse through which people share their comprehension of the world. Using a parallel between the narrative structure of hypermedia and that found by the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss in South-American indigenous mythical narratives, I looked for an alternative perspective for the comprehension and manipulation of the hypermedia logic structure and the resources it mobilizes to form a coherent whole, such as the temporality and spatiality of narratives, symbology and metaphors and its own alternative means of producing meaning. (shrink)

The term “aesthetics” is misleading when applied in the classical Indian philosophical context. Before the modern period, there is substantially no body of speculation on the pleasurable responses to created objects, as such, or on their formal capacities to induce such responses. What we do have, on the other hand, are: (1) several partly distinct traditions having to do with the elements out of which are constructed such objects – including literary “objects” – according to prevailing canons of symbology (...) and use that have a ritual or religious basis; and (2) an intensely developed set of speculations on the narrower question of the observed power (often judged in emotive terms) of the dramatic work to transform us, its spectators. This second problematic, in time, comes to be seen as paradigmatic for all “art,” including poetry, music, and the plastic arts. The first set of traditions focuses on what we might call the semantics of the work, contrasting it, in the case of the written work, with “ordinary” symbolical and ritual uses of language “how does it mean what it means?”; the second set deals with the restorative or transformative capacity of dramatic and other “fictive” works, vis‐à‐vis those that immediately and practically provide, or presume to provide, a transcendent solution on human problems – most importantly, of course, the essentially religious problem of human suffering caused by the bondage of cyclic existence “how does the work of art also accomplish human ends?”. (shrink)

El psicoanálisis existencial es una de esas críticas constructivas derivadas del psicoanálisis empírico que intenta abrirse camino como alternativa, renovación y modelo de terapia psicoanalítica. Ha encontrado una fundamentación óntico-ontológica desde la cual mostrar al ser descrito tal como se manifiesta en tres estadios concretos: el para-sí, en-sí y para-otro, para llegar a ver que las relaciones con los otros son las que nos provocan esos desequilibrios psíquicos. Nuestro psicoanálisis se plantea como una superación al psicoanálisis empírico en el rechazo (...) al postulado del inconsciente y en la elección que renuncia a suponer una acción mecánica del medio sobre el sujeto considerado a abandonar la simbología utilizada hasta entonces. El psicoanálisis existencial deberá ser enteramente flexible y amoldable a los menores cambios observables en el sujeto, ya que se trata de descubrir una elección no un estado. Como el psicoanálisis existencial tiene como objeto descubrir una elección, deberá tener siempre presente que su objeto no es algo hundido en las tinieblas del inconsciente, sino una determinación consciente y libre. Finalmente, la propuesta es una terapia psicoanalítica ya que la persona es una constante proyección en el mundo, el método existencial, se orienta desde el principio hacia una comprensión del ser y no debe asignarse otro objetivo que encontrar el ser y la manera de ser del ser frente a ese ser.Existential Psychoanalysis is one of the most constructive critics based on empirical psychoanalysis which attempts to open up new paths as an alternative, renovation and model of psychoanalytical therapy. An ontic-ontological foundation has been discovered from which it can be described in 3 different concrete states: for someone, in someone or for someone else, to be able to see that our relationships with others are those which cause psychic unbalance. Our psychoanalysis overcomes empirical psychoanalysis in rejection to postulate from the unconscious and in the election which renounces to suppose a mechanical action from the medium on the subject considered to abandon the symbology used until then. Existential psychoanalysis should be completely flexible and changeable to the minor changes which can be observed in the subject, now that it is a case of discovering an election not a state. Due to the fact that the psychoanalysis has as objective to discover an election, it should always have present that its objective is not something united in the darkness of the unconscious, but more of a conscious and free determination. Lastly, the proposition is a psychoanalytical therapy now that the person is a constant projection in the world, the existential method, which is oriented from the beginning towards an understanding of the being and another objective should not be assigned other than find ways of being and the way of being against that being. (shrink)

The symbols of the Feminine throughout the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale are the object of study of the article. It is argued that feminine symbology is a unifying thread that makes possible an analysis of the main features of dystopian societies and the possibility of a critical dystopia. The category of analysis is the symbol understood from the perspective of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols, which proposes that the understanding of a text should be based on what they pretend (...) to say. Therefore, the symbols of the Feminine make possible the resistance within dystopian regimes, and without resistance there is no dystopia. As a result, it is possible through the symbols of the Feminine to interpret the main features of dystopias and, particularly, to develop the possibility of a feminist critical dystopia. (shrink)

O presente artigo desenvolve questões sobre o estudo das marcas de água dos séculos XV a XIX, procurando clarificar as especificidades de uma terminologia própria, e evidenciando a importância da sua interpretação e descodificação. Só assim toda a simbologia contida na marca de água, ou na(s) contramarca(s), se revela como uma fonte para o conhecimento da arte de fazer papel.

English manuscript version of Afterword to German translation of Victor Turner's The Ritual Process. The Ritual Process is a pivotal book in the body of Victor Turner's works. The first three chapters, drawn from Turner's Henry Morgan lectures at the University of Rochester, reveal the richness and subtlety of his analysis of tribal ritual and social life. In the third chapter, he concentrates on the aspects of liminality and communitas found in Ndembu ritual and expands these in the remainder of (...) the book to universal categories of human experience. His masterful ethnography opens up to reveal the fundamental reality of the subjunctive mood in human affairs: the ritual process. In Turner's analyses of the Isoma and Wubwang'a rituals of the Ndembu of Northwestern Zambia, one sees the fantastic interplay between human affliction and symbolic renewal, between human communities and a natural environment teeming with signification. The Ndembu are revealed to be a people with a deep appreciation of the complexity of existence, and endowed with a sophisticated technics of meaning, a vast architectonic of felt, expressive forms through which to journey to those borderlands beyond human comprehensibility: death, the dead, the call of the mother-line, fecundity, transformation, the interstices of social structure. Turner reveals himself to be an initiate, not only to the rites revealed to him by the Ndembu, but to the centrality of ritual itself in tribal society and human affairs. Trained in the British structural-functionalist approach to social anthropology, Turner notes how the incessant call of the drums made him feel that he "was always on the outside looking in." Soon, however, Turner and his wife and collaborator Edith discarded their theoretical ear-plugs and answered the invitation of the drums. As observers and co-participants in Ndembu ritual the Turners' began to blaze a trail toward a new anthropology. (shrink)