Log24

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Communitas

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:31 pm

(Continued)

For Annie Kinsella

Friday, May 4, 2012

That Krell Lab (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“… Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one  of us
 gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost.”

— American adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest , 1956

From "The Onto-theological Origin of Play:
Heraclitus and Plato," by Yücel Dursun, in
Lingua ac Communitas  Vol 17 (October 2007)—

"Heraclitus’s Aion and His Transformations

 The saying is as follows:

αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων·
παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη

(Aion is a child playing draughts;
the kingship is the child’s)

(Krell 1972: 64).*

 * KRELL, David Farrell.
   “Towards an Ontology of Play:
   Eugen Fink’s Notion of Spiel,”
   Research in Phenomemology ,
   2, 1972: 63-93.

This is the translation of the fragment in Greek by Krell.
There are many versions of the translation of the fragment….."

See also Child's Play and Froebel's Magic Box.

Update of May 5— For some background
from the date May 4 seven years ago, see
The Fano Plane Revisualized.

For some background on the word "aion,"
see that word in this journal.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Community*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Monday in Cuernavaca—

… and in Cambridge—

* See the Latin version in this journal.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Friday June 20, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
Drunkard's Walk
In memory of Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst Brewster Yale Beach,
who died on Tuesday, June 17, 2008
"A man walks down the street…" — Paul Simon, Graceland album

NY Times obituaries, Tuesday, June 17, 2008-- Tony Schwartz, Walter Netsch, Tim Russert

Related material:

In the above screenshot of New York Times obituaries on the date of Brewster Beach's death, Tim Russert seems to be looking at the obituary of Air Force Academy chapel architect Walter Netsch. This suggests another chapel, more closely related to my own experience, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Some background… Walter Netsch in Oral History (pdf, 467 pp.):

"I also had a book that inspired me– this is 1947– called Communitas by Percival and Paul Goodman. Percival Goodman was the architect, and Paul Goodman was the writer and leftist. And this came out of the University of Chicago– part of the leftist bit of the University of Chicago…. I had sort of in the back of my mind, Communitas appeared from my subconscious of the new town out of town, and there were other people who knew of it…."

Center of Town, Cuernavaca, from Paul Goodman's Communitas
Log24, Feb. 24, 2008:

Candela's 'Capilla Abierta' chapel, Cuernavaca, Mexico

Chapel, Cuernavaca, Mexico

"God As Trauma" by Brewster Yale Beach:

"The problem of crucifixion is the beginning of individuation."

"Si me de veras quieres, deja me en paz."

Lucero Hernandez, Cuernavaca, 1962

A more impersonal approach to my own drunkard's walk (Cuernavaca, 1962,
after reading the above words): Cognitive Blending and the Two Cultures
An approach from the culture (more precisely, the alternate religion) of Scientism–
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives— is sketched
in Today's Sermon: The Holy Trinity vs. The New York Times (Sunday, June 8, 2008).
The Times illustrated its review of The Drunkard's Walk with facetious drawings
by Jessica Hagy, who uses Venn diagrams to make cynical jokes.

A less cynical use of a Venn diagram:

  "No se puede vivir sin amar."  

  — Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano  

 

Photo by Gerry Gantt

(March 3, 2004)

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Thursday May 10, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm
Riverdance

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The above scene from
The Best of Riverdance
furnishes an exercise in
what Victor Turner has called
comparative symbology.”

The circular symbol at top
may be seen as representing
the solar deity Apollo,
Leader of the Muses.

The nine female dancers
may be seen as
the nine muses,
with Jean Butler
at the center
as Terpsichore,
Muse of Dance.

Related Material —

ART WARS:
To Apollo

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“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect

For another look at
Terpsichore in action,
see Jean Butler at
CRC Irish Dance Camp.

For those who prefer
a different sort of camp
there is of course
Xanadu.

I prefer Butler.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Tuesday May 8, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm
The Public Square

Center of Town, Cuernavaca, from Paul Goodman's Communitas

On the words “symbology” and “communitas” (the former used, notably, as the name of a fictional field at Harvard in the novel The Da Vinci Code)–

Symbology:

“Also known as ‘processual symbolic analysis,’ this concept was developed by Victor Turner in the mid-1970s to refer to the use of symbols within cultural contexts, in particular ritual. In anthropology, symbology originated as part of Victor Turner’s concept of ‘comparative symbology.’ Turner (1920-1983) was professor of Anthropology at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and finally he was Professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Virginia.” —Wikipedia

Symbology and Communitas:

 From Beth Barrie’s
  Victor Turner
“‘The positional meaning of a symbol derives from its relationship to other symbols in a totality, a Gestalt, whose elements acquire their significance from the system as a whole’ (Turner, 1967:51). Turner considered himself a comparative symbologist, which suggests he valued his contributions to the study of ritual symbols. It is in the closely related study of ritual processes that he had the most impact.

The most important contribution Turner made to the field of anthropology is his work on liminality and communitas. Believing the liminal stage to be of ‘crucial importance’ in the ritual process, Turner explored the idea of liminality more seriously than other anthropologists of his day.

As noted earlier Turner elaborated on van Gennep’s concept of liminality in rites of passage. Liminality is a state of being in between phases. In a rite of passage the individual in the liminal phase is neither a member of the group she previously belonged to nor is she a member of the group she will belong to upon the completion of the rite. The most obvious example is the teenager who is neither an adult nor a child. ‘Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial’ (Turner, 1969:95). Turner extended the liminal concept to modern societies in his study of liminoid phenomena in western society. He pointed out the similarities between the ‘leisure genres of art and entertainment in complex industrial societies and the rituals and myths of archaic, tribal and early agrarian cultures’ (1977:43).

Closely associated to liminality is communitas which describes a society during a liminal period that is ‘unstructured or rudimentarily structured [with] a relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders’ (Turner, 1969:96).

The notion of communitas is enhanced by Turner’s concept of anti-structure. In the following passage Turner clarifies the ideas of liminal, communitas and anti-structure:

I have used the term ‘anti-structure,’… to describe both liminality and what I have called ‘communitas.’ I meant by it not a structural reversal… but the liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc., from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses (1982:44).

It is the potential of an anti-structured liminal person or liminal society (i.e., communitas) that makes Turner’s ideas so engaging. People or societies in a liminal phase are a ‘kind of institutional capsule or pocket which contains the germ of future social developments, of societal change’ (Turner, 1982:45).

Turner’s ideas on liminality and communitas have provided scholars with language to describe the state in which societal change takes place.”

Turner, V. (1967). The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co.

Turner, V. (1977). Variations of the theme of liminality. In Secular ritual. Ed. S. Moore & B. Myerhoff. Assen: Van Gorcum, 36-52.

Turner, V. (1982). From ritual to theater: The human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ Publications.

Related material on Turner in Log24:

Aug. 27, 2006 and Aug. 30, 2006.  For further context, see archive of Aug. 19-31, 2006.

Related material on Cuernavaca:

Google search on Cuernavaca + Log24.

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