Elemental Ethnography: A Proposition

This article discusses Sergei Bulgakov’s theological view on gender and examines the extent to which his Trinitarian approach can be considered a response to the feminist charge of essentialism, or the view that there are properties women qua women or men qua men share which unify them, respectively. In the process, it also evaluates various charges against Bulgakov. The interpretation offered in this paper suggests that Bulgakov’s theological view is essentialist in one sense, but without evidently falling prey to the commonly voiced charge of essentialism. In order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Bulgakov’s view, the article outlines his Trinitarian approach along the following systematised propositions: (1) Human beings are created in the image of God. (2) All human beings share the same human nature. (3) Human nature participates in the divine nature. (4) Some human beings are male, some are female. (5) Male and female are two hypostases of human nature. (6) As male and female, human beings are created in the image of the triune God. (7) In the triune God, there are three hypostases of one divine nature: the Father (first hypostasis) revealing himself in the Son (second hypostasis) and in the Holy Spirit (third hypostasis). (8) Male human beings are created in the image of the second hypostasis of God (the Son); female human beings are created in the image of the third hypostasis of God (the Holy Spirit). (9) The fullness of the image of the triune God is present only in the duality and union of male and female human beings. (10) The relation between the two hypostases of human nature—male and female—reflects the relation between the two revealing hypostases of the divine nature, the Son and Holy Spirit, but not vice versa; the former are the images, the latter the proto-images. (11) As created in the image of the triune God, male and female human beings are the bearers of, and constituted by, male and female principles. (12) These male and female principles have both a spiritual and bodily form (that correspond to each other). (13) In the spiritual form, each human being consists—unconfusedly but inseparably—of both male and female principles. (14) As a bodily (form of the male and female) principle, biological sex is secondary to, and an authentic embodiment of, the spiritual (form of the male and female) principles. The article concludes that if one takes Bulgakov’s view one step further, one might reach the conclusion that gender has a two-fold nature: one theological and the other social—and both are related to sex, albeit in different ways.

A Beaked and Feathered God

Lecturing is the only educational form inherited from the universities of the middle ages that is still in use today. However, it seems that lecturing is under threat, as recent calls to do away with lecturing in favour of more dynamic settings, such as the flipped classroom or pre-recorded talks, have found many adherents. In line with the post-critical approach of this book, this chapter argues that there is something in the university lecture that needs to be affirmed: at its best, the university lecture functions as a technique for thinking together or for making collective thinking happen in a lecture hall. The lecture offers the set-up, both technological and architectural, to forge a common experience that binds together the listeners and the speakers; that experience can be characterised as visualising ideas or seeing things as if they had taken on a ‘bodily form’. By looking at several examples of lecturing moments experienced by Gadamer as a student and later recounted in his autobiography, we can better understand the paradigmatic experience that characterises the lecture – as an ideal to be sought, even if, perhaps, not always actualised in everyday lectures.

<i>Robyn Malo</i> Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England<i>Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England</i>. Robyn Malo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. vii+298.

‘Wisdom that walks in bodily form’

This paper examines the characteristics of the illustrations in Heo Jun’s Dong’ui’bo’gam (Treasured Collections of an Eastern Physician), which are the sole distinctively Korean pictorial representations in the history of Korean medical texts. Those anatomical images differ from earlier East Asian anatomical charts in three important ways. First, they embody the view that Daoist practices for preserving health and vitality (yangsheng) are closer to the essence of life than is medicine. Second, unlike existing medical texts, which mainly focused on the organs inside the body and the channels on the surface of the body, they emphasise building up systematic outer ‘bodily form’. Third, they reflect Heo Jun’s regard for the anatomical content of the earlier Inner Canon and the Classic of Difficulties rather than the contributions of positivistic anatomy from and after the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the diagrams of the five zang- organs are devised in accord with such a view. In my view, these three points in Treasured Collections of an Eastern Physician (hereafter Treasured Collection), the most influential medical book since its publication, provides clues to understanding the very conservative character of traditional Korean medicine in the seventeenth century and thereafter.

What leads to Jesus' crucifixion? He has enemies, including the Pharisees. In Jerusalem, he clashes with the Temple elite over his claims to speak and act on God's behalf. Even more threatening is his popularity with ordinary people. Before he dies, Jesus speaks of his imminent departure as a divine necessity — to save mankind from sin. At the final Passover meal, he refers to the bread and wine as his body and blood of ‘the new covenant’, heralding a new beginning. Following his death, according to Mark's Gospel, female eyewitnesses discover the empty tomb, and subsequently many people encounter Jesus in bodily form — their testament to his resurrection.

ABSTRACTSwiss‐born embryologist Wilhelm His, Sr. (1831–1904) was the first scientist to study embryos using paraffin histology, serial sectioning and three‐dimensional modelling. With these techniques, His made many important discoveries in vertebrate embryology and developmental neurobiology, earning him two Nobel Prize nominations. He also developed several theories of mechanical and evolutionary developmental biology. His argued that adult form is determined by the differential growth of developmental primordia. Furthermore, he suggested that changes in the growth parameters of those primordia are responsible for generating new phenotypes during evolution. His developed these theories in his book ‘Our Bodily Form’ (Unsere Körperform). Here, we review His's work with special emphasis on its potential importance to the disciplines of evolutionary developmental biology (evo‐devo) and mechanobiology.

According to the Western metaphysical philosophy, human species is supposed to be superior to the nonhuman animals with respect to the former’s physical space, bodily form, possessing mind, being able to reason, having a distinctive and complicated language as well as being susceptible to pain and death. Such kind of an approach encourages humans to deny animals some basic intrinsic rights, such as living. However, as far as the recent research and philosophical/ethical discussions point out, human superciliousness is out of question. This study will dwell upon certain research made in the field of animal studies that refute the assumptions of Western metaphysical thought. It will refer, among others, particularly to the research conducted by Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Jacques Derrida, Michael Allen Fox &amp; Lesley McLean, Peter Singer and Cary Wolfe. Then, within this context, it will denote the anthropocentric representations of animals in the mystery plays, which were created and performed in medieval Britain out of the stories in the Old Testament. But at the same time, it will draw attention to a number of rational, talking, living, respected animal portraits in these plays and assert that medieval English mystery plays, though produced under the influence of the Old Testament in which God announces human beings’ ascendance, call forth a harmonious life with our animal companions.

While violence among the fans of competitive sports has received much scholarly attention (e.g., Elias &amp; Dunning, 1986; Giulianotti, 2005), far less has been written about aggression targeted at community athletes like public runners. Yet accounts of such harassment figure prominently in runners’ own narratives. This article explores the phenomenon of runner harassment through these accounts and my own experiences as a long-time public runner, drawing first from the literature on fan aggression and second, from sociological work concerning behavior in public places more generally (e.g., Gardner, 1980, 1995; Goffman, 1963). It argues that jogger harassment can be understood in relation to the particular bodily form that running takes—that is, to the sweating, disheveled, panting body of public running—which both violates rules of public vs. private bodily display and signals an unacceptable degree of “involvement” (Goffman, 1963) in the activity and, ultimately, the self.

Normate hermeneutics is the interpretation of the Bible based on unconscious and implicit beliefs on what is “normal”. The label “disabled” is itself often contrasted with the idea of normalcy in biblical interpretation. A hermeneutic of disability allows the experience of those labeled disabled to frame biblical analysis. Building on Brian Brock’s hermeneutic of disability I show how the body imagery of 1 Corinthians 12 helps to understand the redeemed social dynamics of the church and how each member is understood to be part of Christ’s resurrected body in the world unrelated to their bodily form in life. God gives greater honor to those body parts or body types the world degrades. The relevance of this understanding reaches beyond the categories of abled or disabled. The vulnerable body of the crucified Christ is God’s chosen form to reveal God’s wisdom. In both his body and his actions Jesus subverted social norms that exclude. My concern is those whose bodies may not be considered disabled, but whose experiences of their bodies might be best understood in light of disability hermeneutics. I suggest that God creates all bodies fit for relationship, and God does not see some as more weak or unpresentable than others, which suggests that the disability hermeneutic is relevant to all marginalized bodies. I argue that this disability hermeneutic has a liberating effect for more than just those labeled disabled, but provides affirmation for anyone whose body is considered weak or inferior, disabled or deviant in their society.

Butoh is a dance and somatic movement approach that emerged in Japan in the 1960s and today is practiced around the world. Due to its stylistic idiosyncrasies and lack of a formalised movement vocabulary, butoh is often referred to among its practitioners and in the literature as an indeterminate or ‘formless’ dance. While ‘metamorphosis’ has been recognised as butoh’s core aesthetic trait (Fraleigh 2010; Baird and Candelario 2019), what this entails in practice has been little explored.This video article examines metamorphosis in butoh dance from a sensory anthropology perspective which attends to the micro-phenomenological dimensions of the practice. The author, a dancer-anthropologist, focuses on a practice of ‘becoming a caterpillar’ that she learnt at a butoh workshop given by Semimaru of the company Sankai Juku in London in 2014. Through a praxeography of selected exercises, integrated by a somatic or ‘from the body’ perspective (Farnell 1999), the author argues that the same techniques ‘scaffold’ (Downey 2004) metamorphosis by emphasising fluidity of bodily movement as well as the ‘isolation’ of body parts. Perceptual aspects of the practice are explored and reflected upon multimodally through a combination of textual, graphic, dance, and performance reenactments. Responding to ongoing debates on the value of integrating multimodality in anthropological research, practice and dissemination of scholarship, the article proposes that multimodality can extend the conceptual and methodological reach into experiential dimensions of bodily practice by foregrounding both sensory and imaginal aspects of doing.Drawing on anthropological studies of perception in ritual action, the video article argues that butoh metamorphosis relies on a principle of ‘illusion’ whereby a change in the dancer’s kinetic organisation engenders a visual impression of their bodies transforming into something else. This metamorphic logic is by no means exclusive to butoh but is found in other styles of performance, including puppet theatre. Kapferer’s (2004) notion of virtuality is mobilised here to highlight how the reconfiguring of perceptual patterns through performative action can effect transformation by means of ‘modulating reality’ and ‘adjusting its dynamics’.As shown by the example of the caterpillar, in butoh dance the transformation is double: on the optical and imaginal level of the dancer’s bodily form, as coinciding with a ‘view from the outside’, and on the somatic level of the practitioner’s lived body as experienced ‘from the inside’. It is further argued that a butoh dancer’s propension to somatically relate to imaginal dimensions of the practice relies on the phenomenological principle of sensory reversibility, whereby tactility-kinaesthesia ‘merges’ with the sense of vision.

During the thirteenth century, Aristotelian hylomorphism became the cornerstone of scholastic natural philosophy. However, this theory was fragmented into a plurality of interpretations and reformulations, sparking a rich philosophical debate. This article focuses on Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), one of the earliest Latin philosophers to directly engage with Aristotle’s natural philosophy. Specifically, it delves into Grosseteste’s perspective on hylomorphism, emphasizing two controversial doctrines that characterized British scholasticism in the late thirteenth century: universal hylomorphism and formal pluralism. The former claims that all substances, whether bodily or spiritual, are hylomorphic compounds, that is, they are made of matter and form. Formal pluralism, in turn, maintains that hylomorphic substances possess more than one substantial form simultaneously. After a brief introduction, the paper proceeds, first, to examine the type of hylomorphism endorsed by Grosseteste, shedding light on an obscure passage that seems to suggest universal hylomorphism. Second, the examination expands on Grosseteste’s theory of bodily form and emphasizes the apparent contradiction of this theory with universal hylomorphism. The discussion then turns to Grosseteste’s endorsement of formal pluralism and the functionality he envisioned being expressed by the bodily form. Finally, the paper draws conclusions about Grosseteste’s revised hylomorphic account.

Recognition and the Forgotten Senses in the Odyssey Melissa Mueller (bio) Introduction Recognition in the Odyssey typically hinges on a visual or visualizable sign of some sort. There are, however, three recognition scenes—between Odysseus and his dog, his Nurse, and his bow—which turn instead on nonvisual triggers. Touch occasions Eurycleia’s recognition of her master, as it does Odysseus’s reunion with his bow, while there are strong hints that his sharp sense of smell is what enables Argus to detect his master behind the ragged appearance of a beggar. These three scenes, based as they are on senses other than sight, expose the fissures in Odysseus’s otherwise flawless disguise, and reveal his surprising vulnerability. As David Howes (2005, 10) observes in Empire of the Senses, how the senses are valued in any given society is not only culturally determined but also hierarchical: The senses are typically ordered in hierarchies. In one society or social context sight will head the list of the senses, in another it may be hearing or touch. Such sensory rankings are always allied with social rankings and employed to order society. The dominant group in society will be linked to esteemed senses and sensations while subordinate groups will be associated with less-valued or denigrated senses. In the West, the dominant group—whether it be conceptualized in terms of gender, class, or race—has conventionally been associated with the supposedly ‘higher’ senses of sight and hearing, while subordinate groups (women, workers, non-Westerners) have been associated with the so-called lower senses of smell, taste, and touch. The gendered social valuation of the senses in the Odyssey is in line with what Howes describes as typical for Western societies: sight and sound are allied with social prestige, while touch and smell are more prevalent among subordinate groups, particularly women and animals. Argus and Eurycleia mobilize these ‘lower’ senses during their interactions [End Page 1] with Odysseus. Women, moreover, are often the first to notice bodily sêmata, perhaps because of their involvement in rituals of hospitality which brings them into close contact with the physical self.1 And as weavers, women are practitioners of a supremely tactile art.2 This may mark them as closer to ‘nature’ and supposedly less suited for positions of political power, but their tactile expertise is also what allows female characters in Homer to ‘see through’ the superficially altered appearances that confound their male counterparts.3 Even Odysseus, a hero of mêtis (cunning) rather than bia (force), resorts to uncharacteristic aggression when he is confronted with Eurycleia’s discerning touch. The forgotten senses of touch and smell thus reinforce, at the same time that they call into question, the Odyssey’s gendered and political status quo. By pointing up the dangers of discovery that Odysseus barely escapes, such seemingly loose ends in the ‘disguise’ strand of the epic hint at alternative outcomes to the hero’s nostos. Odysseus’s is a homecoming whose precarious reliance on the dynamics of vision-centered reintegration could easily have been overwritten by a single sleight of hand or nose. Recognition and the Senses There are two main types of recognition in the Odyssey, each of which performs a distinctive narrative function. I refer to these as anagnôrisis and noêsis, even though those particular nouns do not occur in Homer.4 Recognition scenes involving anagnôrisis tend to be framed by a social relationship that requires reactivation. Through the agency of a visualizable sign (e.g., a particular bodily form [demas]; the shape of the head, hands, or feet; a scar; a special token; or the smooth surface of a weapon), a connection is re-established between Odysseus and some member of his domestic inner circle.5 The scar on his thigh is the sign (sêma) that is most often summoned to confirm recognition (anagnôrisis) of Odysseus; as such, it is an externalization of a durative social identity. The scar contains a twofold story—the history of Odysseus’s naming by his grandfather, Autolycus, and his wounding by a boar on Parnassus as part of a coming-of-age hunting expedition. But the scar itself cannot speak...

Freud between Oedipus and the Sphinx MIRIAM LEONARD Areproduction of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s neo-classical painting Oedipus and the Sphinx famously hung over Freud’s couch in his consulting room at Berggasse 19 [figure 1]. Nobody doubts the significance of the figure of Oedipus to the development of Freud’s thought, arion 28.3 winter 2021 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, (1780–1867). Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808. Oil on canvas. Photo Credit : Scala/ Art Resource, NY. 132 freud between oedipus and the sphinx but the presence of the Sphinx in this picture raises a series of questions about Freud’s interests which have not been as extensively explored. Indeed, this is far from being the only depiction of the Sphinx which graced Freud’s study. A large etching of the Sphinx at Giza was displayed amongst his bookshelves and a terracotta figurine was amongst his most prized objects.1 These representations of the Sphinx testify to Freud’s broader fascination with Egyptian culture—a fascination which, as we have seen, manifests itself both in his writings and his collection of antiquities. Judith Butler and George Steiner have wondered: “what would happen if psychoanalysis were to have taken Antigone rather than Oedipus as its point of departure?”2 I want to reformulate their question to ask, what would happen if Freud had taken the Sphinx rather than Oedipus as his point of departure? With this counterfactual, I hope to deepen the exploration already undertaken in the previous two articles about Egypt as an origin myth for psychoanalysis—an origin both for the development of the self and for the history of humanity. One possibility, suggested by Edward Said in his last work, Freud and the Non European, is that Freud’s turn to Egypt opened psychoanalysis to a less Eurocentric perspective. For Said, Freud’s foregrounding of Egypt and his interest in the crossover of “non-European” and “European ” cultures testified to his openness and his frustration with the nationalist and racist theories which were so prevalent at the end of his life.3 Said’s claims are compelling but as he would have been the first to note, Freud’s Egyptomania could equally be captive to orientalizing fantasies.4 In what follows I trace the evidence for Freud’s fascination with Egypt and, reading it hieroglyphically (as he would invite us to do), I speculate about its possible impacts on psychoanalysis as art and / or science. Ingres’s first version of Oedipus and the Sphinx—the painting whose reproduction Freud displayed—was completed in 1808. Ingres originally painted the picture in Rome where Miriam Leonard 133 he was studying at the French Academy. In common with other students at the academy, Ingres was required to produce figure studies and the original version of this painting was focused on Oedipus and the representation of his bodily form. Ingres had asked his model to use the same pose as the classical statue of Hermes with the Sandal which is displayed in the Louvre. As François de Vergnette writes: “The clarity of the contours, the muted use of chiaroscuro and the slight surface relief given to the figure of Oedipus add an archaic flavor to the picture. This archaism had its roots in Ingres’s taste for Greek vases.”5 But it is the impact of a different Mediterranean culture which can be felt in Ingres’s depiction of Oedipus’ counterpart. While Oedipus embodies the Winckelmannian Hellenic ideal, the Sphinx is represented in all her oriental glory. Ingres painted this image just ten years after Napoleon had lead his troops and “savants” into Egypt. Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign gave rise to a widespread fascination with ancient Egyptian culture and its impact on the arts was immense. In choosing to represent Oedipus in his encounter with the Sphinx, Ingres was able to draw on this new aesthetic of orientalism.6 Even before Napoleon ’s expedition, the Sphinx had become a potent visual representation of the mystery of ancient Egypt and of ancient Egypt as mystery. Ingres reworked this image during the course of his career and gave the Sphinx an ever greater prominence. In Ingres ’s depiction, the Sphinx’s orientalism...