In this paper I attempt to sketch a preliminary framework for understanding the cognitive basis of the engagement of the mind with the material world. I advance the hypothesis that contrary to some of our most deeply-entrenched assumptions the relationship between the world and human cognition is not one of abstract representation or some other form of action at a distance but one of ontological inseparability. That is, what we have traditionally construed as an active or passive but always clearly (...) separated external stimulus for setting an internal cognitive mechanism into motion, may be after all a continuous part of the machinery itself; at least, ex hypothesi. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

Archaeology, like most sciences that rely on stratigraphic excavation for studying the past, tends to conceptualize this past as lying deep underneath the ground. Accordingly, chronologies tend to be depicted as a movement from bottom to top, which contrast with sciences that illustrate the passage of time horizontally. By paying attention to the development of the visual language of disciplines that follow stratigraphy, I show how chronologies get entangled with other temporalities, particularly those of writing. Relying on recent ethnographic work (...) with archaeologists, the analysis reveals that excavation emerges as a double vertical movement of downward destruction and upward reconstruction that coincides with a systematic dissociation of time and space that has important effects for the understanding of the formation of sites. I conclude by looking at some of the implications of this dissociation for contemporary theoretical discussions, particularly those that emerged after the phenomenological push to horizontalize the discipline. Challenging this dissociation, I argue that the conceptualization of time in science should be understood as a process that depends on the body and unfolds in movement. (shrink)

One of the most significant contributions of archaeology to the studies of human-animal relations is the concept of the “domestication” of non-human animals. Domestication is often seen as a specific human-animal relation that explains the ways people and animals interact. However, I argue, that “domestication” does not explain anything but has to be explained or “reassembled” by focusing on the many historically specific ways human and animals live together. Thus, the paper tackles the emergence of a “herd”, an assembly of (...) animals, humans and things that appeared in the Neolithic, by following the ways the different agencies—human, animal, material and composite—are involved in the creation of new sociality. Living with animals is always already a material practice. It includes material culture, bodies, gestures, actions, habits, and body skills. It requires new practices and skills of flocking, herding, closing, observing, separating, amassing, and forming a queue; skills to be learned and employed by the participants. However, numerous resistances and translations are encountered and employed along the way, changing everybody in the process. In this way new bodies and persons—human and animal—are created, ultimately leading to the “herd”, a new way of association of animals, people, and things. From this perspective the agency and power is distributed and not confined to one species or group. There is no single locus of power and agency and no hegemony or “domination” but power and resistance that works from everywhere. Living with animals is not a matter of management, control or domination, but it is about making hybrid society work, a matter of politics, for all the parties involved. (shrink)

This study explores the concept of rhythm and the relation of rhythm to the environment. Rhythm is not conceived of simply as a linear sequence of beats and pauses, but as a formative dynamic principle operating in all living systems. Following the rhythmanalysis of H. Levebvre and C. Regulier, phenomenological analyses of rhythm in Schutz and Richir, and a deleuzian processual approach to rhythm and milieu, this study attempts to address rhythm in terms of polyrhythmic bundles, which may be in (...) states of eurhythmia or arrhythmia. Specifically, the study focuses on three types of polyrhythmic arrangements – individual organism, garden, and city, on which it shows several types of rhythmic formations and rhythmic principles, whose interplay or discrepancy determines the formation of distinct types of living environment. (shrink)

A close reading of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE), an anonymous captain's manual written in everyday Greek, provides ways of thinking about broader questions concerning the connectedness of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. It is located primarily in the Red Sea, an interstitial zone between the two large seas, and concerns long-distance networks of exchange between South Asia, the Arabian peninsula, the Horn of Africa, Alexandria, and beyond that the Mediterranean. Among the issues to emerge (...) are the linear nature of spatial experience and the means by which commodities are mapped. A goal of the article is to identify ways in which to link the practice and representations of travel. (shrink)

The main purpose of the following inquiry is to emphasise the importance of a phenomenon long neglected by the majority of the human sciences, the artefact; each one of us, no matter what age, sex or culture, is in contact with artefacts every moment of our lives yet despite this they have received scant attention. The study begins by outlining a definition of the artefact, highlighting those characteristics which, in combination, ensure its centrality to social life before, through a discussion (...) of Popper's ideas, proceeding to see how material culture can be conceptualised as meaningful. In order to understand how meaning becomes attached to the artefact the notion of objectification will be analysed and, consequently, so shall the importance of both the type of activity and the physical nature of the materials involved in the artefact's production. Picking up on the theme of materiality this aspect of material culture will be shown to pose major problems to any interpretation of the artefact along semiological lines; language and material culture are evinced to possess fundamentally distinct characteristics which make comparisons between them far from straightforward. These differences will be analysed further, concentrating specifically on the role of context in the establishment of meaning. This leads on to the proposal that our understanding of artefacts can occur on three levels; three forms of knowledge are thus described of which a linguistically formulated type constitutes just one kind. The penultimate chapter tackles the ways in which artefacts affect us, how they are active elements in our relationships with them; therefore, a dialectical position is postulated in which both artefacts and agents take part. Finally, the study concludes by stressing some of its wider implications and suggests a few of the practical situations to which it can be applied. (shrink)