An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computers and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Augé calls "non-space" results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Augé uses the concept of "supermodernity" to describe a situation of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating essay he seeks to establish an intellectual armature for (...) an anthropology of supermodernity. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the ideas of three of the most important theorists of the Twentieth Century, Max Weber, Michel Foucault and Eric Voegelin. Their ideas on the distant roots and sources of modernity are discussed.

The trickster motive is a highly peculiar phenomenon in political thought. Its first appearance is traced before Machiavelli’s famous Prince , which gives advice to political rulers how to gain control over his subjects. The Trickster in Renaissance Political Thought is the hero of political games, striving for power, the double-natured politician who is guided exclusively by icy calculation given the actual situation. This figure, however, appears much before Machiavelli, in the Renaissance genius Leon Battista Alberti’s Momus around 1450. This (...) paper gives an account about the circumstances for the emergence of such a figure and also a detailed description about its tricks and manners as it appeared in Alberti’s book, emphasising the theoretical significance of its particular qualities. (shrink)

The transformation of mathematics from ancient Greece to the medieval Arab-speaking world is here approached by focusing on a single problem proposed by Archimedes and the many solutions offered. In this trajectory Reviel Netz follows the change in the task from solving a geometrical problem to its expression as an equation, still formulated geometrically, and then on to an algebraic problem, now handled by procedures that are more like rules of manipulation. From a practice of mathematics based on the localized (...) solution we see a transition to a practice of mathematics based on the systematic approach. With three chapters ranging chronologically from Hellenistic mathematics, through late Antiquity, to the medieval world, Reviel Netz offers an alternate interpretation of the historical journey of pre-modern mathematics. (shrink)

This article argues that the modern world is not only produced by, and is promoting, processes of rationalization and disenchantment, but is also the site of `enchanting' influences that are genuinely `charming' or `magical'. Such modes of influencing rely increasingly on the power of images, and on theatre-like performances of words or discourses. The impact takes place under conditions that, following Victor Turner's work, could be called `liminal', and which can be turned through `imagemagic' into a state of `permanent liminality'. (...) A path-breaking analysis of such influences can be found in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, written at a highly liminal moment in European history, the end of the Renaissance and the unfolding of the Reformation. It is argued that the central problem of the play is the source of the power that motivates, from the inside, human beings. Shakespeare attributes this power to images through which human beings can be incited to act, in particular to fall in love, and assigns a decisive role in the manipulation of such images to the Trickster figure of folk-tales and myths. Such image-magic makes its victims believe that they gained enlightenment, maturing to reason, exactly when succumbing to its influence; while its lasting impact is the confusion of the senses, or the power to distinguish and discriminate. (shrink)

This article considers `critique' as performative, being on the one hand a reiterative performance, that enacts the `critic' through the act of critique, and on the other hand reflecting the constitution of the subject. While this approach takes on the conceptual framework of Judith Butler's work, it differs by refusing critique — or its correlates; parody, subversion or similar — any special status. Like any other performance critique is taken here as a cultural practice, as a Foucauldian `technique of self', (...) though the complex genealogy of such a technique lies outside the scope of this article. In order to illustrate this argument I interpret a number of Butler's prefaces, interviews and digressions which diverge from her own theoretical framework, and argue that these `fictions' arise from critical `disavowals': that is, a `self-transformative' turn against power. The subjective `crisis' that prompts critique is then elaborated by comparison to Girard's work on imitation and sacrifice. (shrink)