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U-M conference focuses on women and economic security
Contact Eilisha Dermont, (734) 764-6005, firstname.lastname@example.com
DATES: May 14-16, 2014
EVENT: National experts will join University of Michigan researchers at a three-day conference focusing on potential practice and policy changes that would enable impoverished women to seek economic security and mobility and reduce the barriers to good jobs.
Women comprise the majority of U.S. citizens living in poverty, and multiple barriers restrict their ability to escape poverty. This conference will develop policy recommendations regarding these barriers, as well as possible supports.
The featured keynote speaker is Sheryl WuDunn, co-author with Nicholas Kristoff of "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide." Her talk, which is free and open to the public, begins at 6 p.m. May 14 at Rackham Auditorium.
During the following two days, researchers Barbara Gault of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, Ruth Milkman of City University of New York and U-M's Sandra Danziger and other academics will engage in dialogue with practitioners and labor leaders, including Saru Jayaraman of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Cindy Estrada of the UAW, Kim Bobo of Interfaith Workers Justice and Pamela Moore of Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation. A panel of Michigan state legislators and executive branch representatives will discuss policy implementation.
LOCATION: Rackham Graduate School, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor. Central Campus map: http://campusinfo.umich.edu/article/central-campus-map
SPONSORS: U-M's Center for the Education of Women and Re:Gender, a national coalition of institutional centers conducting research on women
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Pro jQuery Mobile
(If any tax is payable it will be calculated and shown at checkout.)
Preview (read now) Add to my own site Give this ebook to a friend Add to my wishlist Author's page Publisher's page
moreYou need to build an app, and you need it to run everywhere. And you need it now! jQuery Mobile gives you the ability to write once and run everywhere using jQuery and jQuery UI. Pro jQuery Mobile will teach you how to create themable, responsive, native-looking applications for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and more.
- Discover what sets jQuery Mobile apart from other mobile web development platforms
- Walk through practical examples of jQuery Mobile features, including design elements and event handling
- Dig into the jQuery API, integrate web services, and learn how to publish to app stores with Phone Gap
jQuery Mobile is a framework for delivering cross-platform mobile web applications with a unified interface. jQuery Mobile combines responsive layouts with progressive enhancement to render the best possible user experience from a single code base. With Pro jQuery Mobile, you'll be creating amazing mobile apps in no time.less
Apress; January 2012
260 pages; ISBN 9781430239673
Read online, or download in secure PDF format
Title: Pro jQuery Mobile
Author: Brad Broulik
260 pages; ISBN 9781430239673
Read online, or download in secure PDF format
Title: Pro jQuery Mobile
Author: Brad Broulik
Buy, download and read Pro jQuery Mobile (eBook) by Brad Broulik today!
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Java For Everyone 2012 US$ 52.00 831 pages
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Cambridge IGCSE ICT 2015 US$ 35.18 439 pages
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
So what?
Published March 8, 2013 1:01 am
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The federal government is expected to spend approximately $3.8 trillion this year. The sequestration measure that went into effect on March 1 imposed $85 billion in spending cuts. That amounts to a reduction in annual government spending of approximately 2.2 percent.
Would any reasonable person question whether the U.S. government could reduce its spending by 2.2 percent without it leading to the end of the world as we know it?
David Draper
Reader comments on sltrib.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Salt Lake Tribune. We will delete comments containing obscenities, personal attacks and inappropriate or offensive remarks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. If you see an objectionable comment, please alert us by clicking the arrow on the upper right side of the comment and selecting "Flag comment as inappropriate". If you've recently registered with Disqus or aren't seeing your comments immediately, you may need to verify your email address. To do so, visit disqus.com/account.comments powered by Disqus
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Along the beach.: Bars, pubs and clubs in the hotels.
You can find some cafes in golden village. But mostly of the pubs and clubs are in the best hotels.
Hyatt regency has a good English pub and Sheraton has a good nightclub and the best arabic bar of Oman.
You cannot loss the arabic bars from Oman. It's a unforgetting experience.
Women from Oman don't go out at night, in nightclubs there are only a little of turist women but mostly of girls are chinese prostitutes.
Dress Code: Try to wear good clothes.
Numerouse Turtle Beaches!: Take a spell in the Turtle Delivery Room
If you get the chance go watch the turtles lay their eggs! These fantastic animals come into certain beaches at night, dig a couple of huges holes (one to confuse the desert fox!) and then lay large numbers of eggs (depending on how old the turtle is). We visited a prtoected beach at Ras Al Had. After a short talk from the expert we followed the (large) group of other tourists down to the beach to watch our Turtle (lets call her Tina) lay her eggs. After the obligatory poking of some of less cultured tourist counterparts, Tina who was completely exhausted (more so than at the conception I would bet) slowly made her way back to the see. I mean after digging a huge hole and giving birth why not go for a swim - eh ladies?? Anyway, it was all very dark which added to the excitement, alas it did not add to the qualit of my photo - apologies!
Clubs, Bars & Hedonism
So hopefully you read this before you booked your ticket for a period of bar hopping, pub crawling or general drunkeness. Oman is not a 'dry' country and alcohol is available (outside times of religious festivals) however you wont find strips of bars or nightclubs dotted around the place. If you want to socialise with alcohol then head to one of hotel locations. Whether you are in Muscat or Nizwa or somewhere else you can pretty much be sure that you will find some form of social drinking. Neverthless i'm sure it will be pretty different to any of you from more 'westernised' countries! However still very enjoyable!
Dress Code: Depends on locale
Intercontinental: Dancing
The only true place in the country to dance, drink and meet other expats is at this 5 star hotel. The dance music is sub par but occasional nights they seem to get away from the 80s music not to mentio the techo stuff. If you ask the DJ to play something he will generally do it as long as you dont bother him too much! If you are doubting the music scene then call ahead and they will give you a listing of who is playing as this place must have a band most nights to stay open late. The drinks are pricy as hell 2.5 rials for a pint (6.5 US dollars) but if you go to the cheaper hotels on the corniche you can drink for half the price and then go out dancing. Good times.
Stars: Camping
One of the absolute best things you can do at night in Oman is to take in the stars. You dont have to go far and if you do make it out of the cities you will be rewarded with some spectacular views. It is a great way to relax and get away from the hussle of life but Arabian stars are in a league of their own. Just make sure you dont go too far off the beaten track because it is easy to get lost at night in the desert.
Marina Hotel: Hot summer nights
If you get the chance to spend some time in Muscat you should really take the opportunity to relax on the top of the Marina hotel near the corniche. It probably has the best view of old Muscat in the city and you sit there and have a cold drink while taking in the views. The food is recommended and the waiters are top notch. It was one of my favorite places to go while in Muscat and the nighttime view is stunning.
Roadside views: Watch mosques glowing in the night.
We were told by our Omanese friends that being an Islamic country, Oman does not have open pubs, discos, cabarets and bars. The best thing to do is to enjoy all such facilities within the hotel compounds. However, this information has recently been challenged by a westerner living in Oman.
Other than the above, the best thing to do is to do window shopping in Souks (marketplace) or see the mosques. Oman definately has most beautiful mosques of all the countries.
Mosques by night are the most beautiful scenes. Every city/town of Oman has a grand mosque in the name of its ruler, His Highness Sultan Qaboos. Suhar has a beautiful mosque built by Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Alnahayan of the UAE as a gift to the people of Oman.
Since we were visiting Oman from the UAE, which is a duty free country, we had no interest in shopping. Therefore, we decided to go for dining out and found that Arab and Pakistani food offered in various restaurants in closer to the original than it is in the UAE.
Dress Code: Be conservative in dressing, but inside the hotel compounds, any dress may be worn.Related to:
- Arts and Culture
- Architecture
- Road Trip
Muscat: Party in Muscat
As an Australian living in Muscat for 3 years, I've searched for all the bars and clubs in muscat.. They include Safari(grand Hyatt),Sinor Picos and English Pub(intercontinental) The Lounge nightclub(Oasis by the sea - next to intercont). Copacabana nightclub(Hyatt). Trader Vics(next to intercont). The mexican-(mondays at MQ). Dolphin club Bausher. Chedi Hotel Pool bar.Saba nightclub(sheraton ruwi) Irish pub (al bustan palace). Marina outdoor bar. (marina)The cellar pub(radisson hotel)There are 3 shangri la hotels being built at the moment..... with more spots coming. Cheers!
Dress Code: Wear what you like at night- it doesnt matter for ladies, For men, dress code applies like usualRelated to:
- Music
- Beer Tasting
- Wine Tasting
Dunes Internet Cafe: Surfing Whilst Serenaded
Here I am in Muscat forced to use an Internet cafe as the PC at work won't let me log on to Yahoo! What can I say - Dunes typifies Oman: smart interior, slightly outdated computer hardware, the frying of chips at the counter filling the cafe with a not so unpleasant smell (the sound is annoying though), a gaggle of locals in for a chin wag, and to top it all, the manager gets up on a stool with a guitar and gives us an excellent segue of songs. Only in Oman!
Dress Code: No shorts. No skimpies.Related to:
- Theme Park Trips
silent nights
Oman is a very traditional islamic country. I saw no place for a nightlife activation. Maybe there are some in bigger tourist hotels, i don't know.
Oman is not the place to make a party in the night. If you want this - don't go there.
Kargeen Restaurant & Bar: Desert Nights
The Kargeen is a bit hard to categorize: It's a restaurant, it's a tea & coffeehouse, and it's a place to come to smoke a waterpipe. Sometimes it has live Arab music, sometimes not. But ultimately, it's just a great place to hang out. Whether you order a full meal and drinks or just a tea or a coffee, you'll never be hurried, and you won't be hassled.
Dress Code: None to speak of.
If all your knowledge of...
If all your knowledge of Nightlife in the Arab world comes from time spent in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, you're in for a treat. Alcohol is allowed in Oman. The western hotels usually have a bar and lounge. There's a great British Pub in the Intercontinental Hotel in al-Khuwair. There are even places to go dancing.
Desert: arabian night
Is there any better thing then to experience an arabic desert night, typical arabic dance with camel meat and lots of traditional music and dances.
Dress Code: Nothing specific for foreignors.Related to:
- Adventure Travel
- 1
Oman Hotels
InterContinental Al Bustan Palace Muscat
If you have a chance to visit this prestigious hôtel , you will not regret it. Outstanding...more
Hilton Salalah
People might find it difficult to believe this, but I rerouted my Miami to Brussels flight on...more
Sur Plaza Hotel
This is pretty much the only hotel in the area... Supposedly a 4 stars hotel, I still don't know...more
Top Oman Hotels
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- 99 Reviews - 256 Photos
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Book your room at Best Western Prairie Inn & Conference Center
Get an overview of this hotelFamily-friendly hotel with 2 restaurants and indoor pool
This family-friendly Galesburg hotel is within 3 mi (5 km) of Discovery Depot Children's Museum and Knox College. Carl Sandburg Mall and Carl Sandburg College are also within 9 mi (15 km).
Hotel Features
2 restaurants, an indoor pool, and a fitness center are available at this smoke-free hotel. Free WiFi in public areas and free self parking are also provided. Additionally, a bar/lounge, a 24-hour business center, and a conference center are onsite.
Room Amenities
All 113 rooms provide free WiFi and free wired Internet, flat-screen TVs with cable channels, and conveniences like refrigerators and microwaves. Room service, coffee makers, and free newspapers are among the other amenities available to guests.Information missing or incorrect? Tell us!
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
Best Western Prairie Inn & Conference Center features an indoor pool and a fitness center. Dining is available at one of the hotel's 2 restaurants. A bar/lounge is on site where guests can unwind with a drink. A computer station is located on site and high-speed wired and wireless Internet access is complimentary.
Business-related amenities at this 3-star property consist of a 24-hour business center and meeting rooms. Event facilities include a conference center and conference space. This family-friendly hotel also offers a garden, a picnic area, and coffee/tea in the lobby. For a surcharge, a roundtrip airport shuttle during limited hours is offered to guests. Onsite self parking is complimentary.
Best Western Prairie Inn & Conference Center is a smoke-free property.
- 24-hour business center
- 24-hour front desk
- Airport transportation (surcharge)
- Bar/lounge
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Coffee/tea in lobby
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Computer station
- Conference center
- Conference space
- Express check-out
- Fitness facilities
- Free RV, bus, truck parking
- Free self parking
- Free WiFi
- Free wired high-speed Internet
- Garden
- Indoor pool
- Meeting rooms
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
- Number of floors - 2
- Number of meeting rooms - 4
- Number of restaurants - 2
- Picnic area
- Pool sun loungers
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Smoke-free property
- Total number of rooms - 113
- Wedding services
Family Friendly Amenities
- Cribs/infant beds (complimentary)
- Free Wi-Fi
- Indoor pool
- Microwave
- Refrigerator
- Rollaway/extra beds available
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi , Free wired high-speed Internet
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi , Free wired high-speed Internet
Free self parking, Free RV, bus, truck parking
Room Amenities
- Air conditioning
- Cable TV service
- Climate control
- Coffee/tea maker
- Free newspaper
- Connecting/adjoining rooms available
- Free cribs/infant beds
- Daily housekeeping
- Desk
- Flat-panel TV
- Free local calls
- Free WiFi
- Free wired high-speed Internet
- Hair dryer
- Iron/ironing board
- Microwave
- Phone
- Private bathroom
- Refrigerator
- Rollaway/extra beds available
- Room service (limited hours)
- Shower/tub combination
Where to Eat
Cooked-to-order breakfasts are available for a surcharge and are served each morning between 6:30 AM and 10:30 AM.
Homestead Room - This restaurant serves breakfast and dinner. Guests can enjoy drinks at the bar.
Prairie Inn Cafe - This restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Room service (during limited hours) is available.
Nearby Things to Do
Recreational amenities at the hotel include an indoor pool and a fitness center.
- Golfing nearby
To make requests for specific accessibility needs, complete the "Special or Accessibility Requests" section of "Trip Preferences" when you book your hotel.
- Accessible bathroom
- Accessible path of travel
- Accessible parking
- In-room accessibility
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 15:00:00
Check-out time is 11:00:00
Payment types
Children and extra beds
- Children are welcome.
- Kids stay free! Children under 17 years old stay free when using existing bedding.
- Rollaway/extra beds are available for USD 10 per night.
- Free cribs (infant beds)!
Pets allowed, Only dogs and cats are allowed, Maximum number of pets per room 2, Pet maximum weight in lb is 80
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
No elevators
- A 13 percent city/local tax will be charged
Optional extras
- Pet fee: USD 20 per accommodation, per night (maximum USD 100 per stay)
- Pet deposit: USD 25 per night
- Refrigerator fee: USD 10.00 per day
- In-room microwave fee: USD 10.00 per night
- Rollaway bed fee: USD 10 per night
We should mention
Children 17 years old and younger stay free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding. The property has connecting/adjoining rooms, which are subject to availability and can be requested by contacting the property using the number on the booking confirmation. The property allows pets in specific rooms only and has other pet restrictions (surcharges apply and can be found in the Fees section). Guests can arrange to bring pets by contacting the property directly, using the contact information on the booking confirmation.


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Creative Reading
"As academics we are expected to write and publish, but we are not supposed to waste our time reading". This remark by a colleague - as absurd as it is true - inspired me to start this blog. Yes: as an academic in the field of the Humanities I spend much of my time reading, and on this blog you can see how that works. If scholarly writing has any value at all, then the reading that precedes it deserves respect as an integral part of the creative process that leads to knowledge and understanding.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
On the Death of Khaled Asaad
After having neglected my blog for a year, this news hit me so hard that I felt I needed to write about it. But what is there to say? As with all the previous news about the atrocious horrors perpetrated by IS, my overwhelming feelings are grief and fury, combined with a debilitating sense of powerlessness. The Nazis have returned in our midst, only this time they do not do their torturing and killing behind barbed wire fences or prison doors but proudly display them on the internet. We are watching it on TV and reading about it in the newspapers, and then move on to our daily business. Because what can we do?
Just one thing. Speaking out about the values that we represent, or should represent, and mustering the courage to fight for them in word and deed, wherever we have a chance of doing so. This goes for everybody, anywhere in the world. But having been raised in a European country and devoting my life to studying, writing, and speaking about its cultural traditions, I may perhaps be excused for focusing on Western civilization. We are told that Khaled Asaad was murdered for the crime of "overseeing 'idols' in the ancient city" and "attending 'infidel' conferences as Syrian representative". This makes him one of the most recent casualties in a culture war that has been raging for thousands of years: that of exclusive monotheism against its mortal enemy, "pagan idolatry". We should not delude ourselves: historically, our "own" dominant Western culture has not been on Khaled Asaad's side but overwhelmingly on the side of his murderers. The idea that paganism and idolatry is the ultimate abomination that must be rooted out and destroyed, along with anybody who practices or sympathizes with it, goes to the heart of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic identity (though it should be added that while Christianity and Islam gained the power to put the idea into bloody action, post-biblical Judaism never had that chance and rather found itself on the receiving end of atrocities, as we know all too well). Moreover, (pace Peter Gay c.s.) it goes to the heart of Enlightenment rationalism as well, which inherited the Protestant view of paganism and idolatry. This story is not well known, precisely because our dominant cultural institutions are grounded in the very same bias and therefore prefer to tell the story differently. But the painful truth is that, culturally and historically, we are hardly in a position to mount our high horse and condemn IS for continuing our very own battle against the religious culture of the ancient world and everything it stood for. "We" have been every bit as brutal and cruel as they are being now, and until much more recent times than we care to remember.
But here is the paradox. In spite of everything, I deeply care about this same Western culture, for it has richly provided us with all those ultimate values that IS is trampling upon. In spite of all its horrors, a deep commitment to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True runs through the story of Western civilization as well - and this tradition is deeply indebted to the very culture of classical antiquity and Hellenistic civilization that IS would like to destroy. But I'm afraid that during the last couple of decades, we have rapidly been losing touch with these foundational values on which our very culture and civilization were built. Most of us no longer know who we are, what we are supposed to stand for, or why we should. The Good has been made subject to the laws of the marketplace (economic value trumps moral values: the question of what we should do is irrelevant if it cannot be paid for, right?). The Beautiful has been reduced to esthetics and leasure time activities (likewise for sale, of course). And as for the True - the province of science and scholarship, my own domain of activity - well, that is just a matter of opinion, isn't it? This is why the Humanities are declining, and too many of us (academics included) find it hard to see any difference between knowledge and information. This is why we have lost our ability to explain what we are all about. I don't mean to be cynical, but I'm afraid that this is the point of history at which we have now arrived as a culture and a society: we are in decline, and we know it. No wonder that we feel so vulnerable. No wonder that for so many people (not just "elsewhere" but at home as well) "Western civilization" no longer inspires admiration and respect but is becoming an object of hatred, contempt, or simple indifference. I hate to say it, but IS has a story. We don't.
Back to Khaled Asaad. From all that I can tell, I think that he was "one of us". By this I mean that he belonged to all of us who want to devote our lives to real values: knowledge, understanding, generosity, love, beauty, awe. It won't do to respond to his death only with some academic reflections on culture and civilization, although that must be done too (after all, those were the values he deeply cared about and that ultimately cost him his life). We must take our stand next to him, for his horrible death has made him a symbol of everything that is being threatened today and needs to be defended by us, at whatever cost.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
On Reading Email (Once a Week)
I remember it very well. One day in the early 1990s I was reading the weekly journal of the University of Utrecht, where I was a student, and came across a small column that announced the invention and introduction of a brand-new way of communication. It was called "e-mail" (that stands for "electronic mail", the note explained), and was extremely cheap because it used the telephone line to transmit entire text messages in just a fraction of a second. I was impressed. Could it really be true that instead of incurring expensive telephone bills for calling my friends at the other side of the Atlantic or of Europe, I could tell them everything I had to tell them for almost nothing? It seemed too good to be true. Surely there was a catch, and the telephone companies would find some other way to make us pay.
That is now more than twenty years ago, and I have forgotten what those early emails even looked like. Email has become so normal and omnipresent that we find it hard to imagine how people got anything done before the nineties. What did you do if you were organizing an international conference, for instance, and needed to communicate with your colleagues about all kinds of tiny details, correct misunderstandings, create
consensus, and so on? Well, there is an answer. We sat down to write letters. And having finished them, we had to go out and put them in a physical mailbox, or find a fax machine somewhere, in cases of great hurry. Or we made a phone call, in spite of the costs, and it all took a lot of time. Didn't we have anything else to do than wasting hours and hours on such laborious and time-consuming procedures? Well, there's an answer to that too. We could find the time, for a very simple reason. We did not need to spend hours every day reading email and responding to it.
consensus, and so on? Well, there is an answer. We sat down to write letters. And having finished them, we had to go out and put them in a physical mailbox, or find a fax machine somewhere, in cases of great hurry. Or we made a phone call, in spite of the costs, and it all took a lot of time. Didn't we have anything else to do than wasting hours and hours on such laborious and time-consuming procedures? Well, there's an answer to that too. We could find the time, for a very simple reason. We did not need to spend hours every day reading email and responding to it.
When email was first introduced, its benefits seemed a bit similar to those of voicemail. Instead of having to deal with phonecall interruptions all the time, you could quietly read your messages at a moment of your own convenience. If people wanted to speak with you right away, well, bad luck for them, they just had to wait. But as email took over as the dominant means of communication, along with the introduction of visual and auditory cues ("you got mail!" - nowadays abbreviated as "bleep" or "boink" or just a number, for of course you got mail!) this quickly proved to be an illusion. Nowadays, email looks more like a wide open door that gives direct access to your home, with a large invitation over it:
WELCOME! Everybody, known or unknown, may enter here at any moment, day or night, twenty-four hours a day. Feel free to walk straight into my study whenever you feel like it, and start talking to me about anything that's on your mind, important or unimportant. I might be busy trying to concentrate on something when you enter, but no need to worry about that. Just start talking anyway. I'll do my best to interrupt everything I'm doing right away, I'll listen to whatever you have to say, and will do what I can to answer immediately.
How normal is it, really, that we now find this normal? Should we even be surprised when scientists find that email increases mental stress and decreases our ability to concentrate? Or that our continuous exposure to internet, twitter, or texting cues causes our brain to get addicted to them, for straightforward chemical reasons based upon dopamine? As a result of that mechanism, known as a dopamine loop, the stream of interruptions gets even bigger: for if we are left in peace for a little while, this very fact makes us so nervous that we start interrupting ourselves.
In his important and predictably controversial book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr begins with an observation that I trust will sound familiar to many of us:
I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I feel it most strongly when I'm reading. I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article. My mind would get caught up in
the twists of the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. [...]
the twists of the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. [...]
I think I know what's going on. For well over a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web's been a godsend to me as a writer. [...] The boons are real. But they come at a price. [...] [W]hat the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I'm online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it [...].
Carr provides hard neurological evidence. Our brain is very flexible: it quickly learns in response to whatever we ask it to do – and unlearns what we neglect to ask it. At present, we continuously train ourselves to get better and better at those skills that allow us to use the Internet quickly and effectively. And boy do we get good at it! But it goes at the expense of other skills that the Internet just doesn't require, or even discourages. Notably those skills of deep and prolonged concentration on one single piece of text – without continuous hyperlinks that move us instantaneously to another text, full of other hyperlinks that again move us elsewhere, and so on. The fact is that we are systematically training our brain not to concentrate on a line of thought, an argument, a narrative. We are training it in the art of breaking our concentration.
Reading Dave Eggers' novel The Circle (yes, that's a hyperlink! Please stay with me anyway) made me aware of another dimension of email: that of guilt and social pressure. It is already bad enough that my concentration gets shattered whenever a new visitor walks into my study and issues a beep to interrupt what I'm doing. And it is even worse that when nobody walks in for five minutes, my dopamine compels me to get up and walk to my door to check whether anyone is coming yet, and that when I'm back at my desk, I am distracted because my brain keeps wondering why nobody is there to disturb me. When will the next beep come? Have they forgotten me? But the process does not stop there. When new visitors come in, as they invariably do, they expect me to answer quasi-immediately and are likely to take offense if I don't. I have received the email, haven't I? I have the technical means to respond, don't I? So then why the f@#$%^&! do I not respond? What is it that's keeping me? And even this can get worse. Similar to what happens in the dopamine loop (first you get interrupted by others, but eventually you don't need them anymore: you've started doing it all by yourself), even if nobody is blaming me for being slow with my answers, I end up feeling guilty all by myself. I don't want them to think I'm impolite and egoistic. They might think I'm some arrogant ass (those professors, you know...) who finds his own stuff so important that he just can't be bothered to take an interest in others and respond to their needs. Too busy? What nonsense! They get as many emails as I do. No cause for me to complain, as if I'm in some special category. If they can answer their emails, so can I.
I have been thinking about these problems for a long time and have come to a clear decision. I refuse to be manipulated and disciplined into conformity with the logic of The Circle, and most importantly: I reserve the right to protect my own brain. I don't want to expose it systematically to conditions that limit my ability to do what I do best: concentrate. From now on (July 2014) I will therefore be reading my email once a week, and will disable it entirely during the rest of the week. I know that many people will find this incredibly radical, or preposterous, and some will get angry with me - so let me explain. It is really very simple. My core business as a scholar in the Humanities requires the ability of deep "concentration and contemplation" (as formulated by Carr). That is what I need most when I'm studying books, articles, or primary sources. I have a responsibility, to myself and to society, to protect and cultivate those skills, for if they wither and decline then the quality of my work will suffer. I know very well that even this brief explanation sounds like a justification or even an excuse. Perhaps it is. But if so, it nicely illustrates the very point I've just been making: like everyone else, I'm by no means immune to the guilt-inducing magic of The Circle.
Now I'm well aware that, even though these general problems of concentration/interruption, dopamine loops, or social pressure by the internalization of guilt are real and universal, something that doesn't work for me might work better for others. Different people have different mental constitutions, not everybody responds in the same way to stress, and quite some friends and colleagues do not experience email as a problem the way I do. Some people are able to switch quickly from one task to another, and that's great for them, but I have never had that ability: I just happen to be a deep concentrator with a long and slow curve. Some people enjoy digital socializing, and that's great for them too, but I don't: I find it empty and superficial and prefer meeting people face to face. Some people like to focus on information, and that's fine too, but my interest is in knowledge, which is not the same thing.
Am I too naive or optimistic in thinking that this could actually work? I'll have to see how it works out in practice, especially as the new academic year begins. But one thing is clear: reading email once a week means that once I sit down to do it, I will be concentrating on it. 100%.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Exterminate all the Idols
|The Fall of the Hermetic Idols
I've been reading a lot of different things lately, and not everything will find its way into this blog. But I definitely need to write about my experiences with a somewhat older book by two French scholars that I bought second-hand and devoured from cover to cover: Carmen Bernand's & Serge Gruzinski's De l'idolâtrie: Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Of idolatry: An Archeology of the Humanities, 1988). I have long been puzzled by the fact that whereas one can easily fill a library with academic books about "magic", there are so few systematic studies of "paganism" as a category in the study of religion and even less that focus on what was traditionally seen as the core practice of pagan religion – "idolatry". The rare exceptions to this rule, such as Moshe Halbertal's & Avishai Margalit's Idolatry (1992), focus mostly upon Judaism. One searches practically in vain for authoritative monographs about the notion of idolatry and its significance in monotheist religions generally.
And yet, that significance is enormous. If Jan Assmann is right, as I think he is, then monotheism defines its very identity not so much by its focus on One God (after all, it shares the focus on one deity with many "pagan" religions, and normative Christianity believes in a triune deity, not to mention angelic hierarchies and so on) but by its radical and uncompromising rejection of pagan "idolatry" – the worship of gods incarnated in images or statues – as the unforgivable sin par excellence. The history of how idolatry has been discursively constructed as monotheism's "other" in the history of the three "religions of the book", and the real-life effects of that discourse, should be a major concern for scholars. Anybody who finds such a statement too radical will perhaps change his mind after reading Bernand's & Gruzinski's study of the 16th-century colonialization of Mexico and Peru.
|Garcilaso de la Vega
One learns from these authors that the Spanish conquerors used the "paganism" of late antiquity as their model for understanding the beliefs and practices they encountered in the New World. The cults of the Indians represented a phenomenon that seemed universal to them, since it appeared to exist in the Americas just as it had existed in the Roman Empire: that of a "natural religion" born from an inborn human desire for knowing and worshiping God (homo religiosus), but deprived of divine Revelation and hence an easy prey for infiltration by the devil and his legions of demons, who are always busy trying to convince human beings to worship them in lieu of the true God. The central reference for Bernand & Gruzinski is Bartolomé de Las Casas' Apologética Historia sumaria (1550), but they discuss a range of other major authors as well. I was particularly fascinated by the cases of Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), nicknamed "the Inca", whose perspective on the Amerindian religions (in his Comentarios reales, 1609) appears to have been strongly influenced by the Renaissance Platonic Orientalist tradition of prisca theologia in the wake of Marsilio Ficino and Leone Ebreo; and by that of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1568/1580-1648), who seems to have taken a somewhat similar perspective, describing the philosopher, poet and ruler Nezahualcoyotl (1402-1472) as "a sage even wiser than the divine Plato, and who alone managed to raise himself up to the knowledge of a single 'creator of visible and invisible things'" (p. 136).
If I understand Bernand & Gruzinski correctly (I'm not always sure, for unfortunately their writing is sometimes less than clear), the relevance of the "ancient wisdom discourse" of the Renaissance – a major fascination of mine: see Esotericism and the Academy ch. 1 – reaches even much farther than European culture alone. The early modern European discourse about "paganism" seems extremely relevant for understanding the attempts by intellectuals to justify the brutal realities of colonialist expansion; and moreover, it is crucial for understanding the emergence, in early modern culture, of "religion" as a general and universal concept born from the encounter and hence the comparison between Christian and "native" cultures.
|Peter Paul Rubens, The Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry
Chapter 6 of De l'idolâtrie is titled "Extirpations" and discusses the systematic campaign of exterminating pagan idolatry in the New World. It starts with a reference to Peter Paul Rubens' "Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry", which once again shows that Europeans were incapable of thinking about Amerindian "idolatry" otherwise than through the prism of Hellenistic paganism. It is impossible to discuss the shocking effects of the conquests – by 1625, only 5% of the indigenous Mexican population had survived! (pp. 146-147) – separately from the conquerors' ideological conviction that idolatry in all its forms had to be destroyed by any means necessary, together with anyone suspected or potentially capable of practicing it. In the canon De Haereticis of the 3rd Mexican Council (1585), indigenous idolatry was discussed as equivalent with "apostasy" and "heresy" (p. 156): not as a rival form of religion, therefore, but as an intentional rejection of Christian truth.
The penalty was death.
|Sven Lindqvist
In parallel with De l'idolâtrie, I was reading Sven Lindqvist's brilliant travelogue "'Exterminate All the Brutes'", an impressive attempt at understanding the origins and foundations of that famous sentence from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Lindqvist does not discuss idolatry, but he reveals in chilling detail how the doctrine that "primitive peoples" and their cultures must be exterminated was a necessary and integral part of the "progress of civilization" as understood by mainstream 19th-century popular and intellectual European culture. If anyone might think that "necessary and integral" is a bit of an exaggeration here, Lindqvist's analysis may come as a shocking revelation. I will give just two examples, although Lindqvist gives many more, showing that such statements were not the exception but the rule. Herbert Spencer claimed that "imperialism ha[d] served civilization by clearing the inferior races off the earth" (Lindqvist, 162): "the forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way ... Be he human or be he brute – the hindrance must be got rid of" (Social Statistics (1850). Eduard von Hartmann's formulations were even more brutal: "As little as a favor is done the dog whose tail is to be cut off, when one cuts it off gradually inch by inch, so little is their humanity in artificially prolonging the death struggles of savages who are on the verge of extinction. ... The true philantropist, if he has comprehended the natural law of anthropological evolution, cannot avoid desiring an acceleration of the last convulsion, and labor for that end" (Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. II, 12). These theoretical convictions were taken quite literally by the conquerors who took it upon themselves to advance the noble cause of civilization by "exterminating the brutes" – with such thoroughness and cruelty that one cannot but assent to Lindquist's controversial comparisons with the horrors of the Nazi genocide. We all know about the Holocaust, as we should. But how many of us are familiar with (to give one more example, not covered by Lindqvist) what happened during the "rubber boom" of the decades before and after 1900, when the Amazon Putumayo region was transformed into a "death space" (as formulated by Michael Taussig in his Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man) of random torture and murder where the lives of "Indian savages" were worth less than nothing?
|Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us (1897)
De l'idolâtrie ends with a demonstration of how the religious campaign against idolatry was taken up and continued by the Enlightenment (rather similar to my argument in ch. 2 of Esotericism and the Academy), and one might say that Lindquist traces the same story of "extirpation" or "extermination" forward through the history of colonialism and far into the 20th century. Extirpation of idolatry in the name of Christianity, and extermination of savages in the name of progress and civilization: isn't it obvious that the two are intimately related both conceptually and historically, as the former created the essential ideological foundations on which the latter could build its deadly mission of civilizing the globe? If there is just a grain of truth to this comparison, then isn't it time for scholars to start taking a serious look - and I mean a very serious one - at the history of the Western campaign to "exterminate all the idols?
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Fatima's Knight
Tripping with Allah (an "adventure book for academics to chew on", p. 30) is the most recent of a series of nine volumes that document Knight's continuing search for his personal, religious, and (not in the last place) masculine identity. Right from the outset, we encounter him at the intersection of various overlapping cultural contexts and discourses, including traditional Islam (both Sunni and Shia), the cool hip hop Muslem culture associated with the Five Percenters, Religious Studies as practiced at Harvard Divinity School, superhero video games and TV comic series such as the 1970s series Transformers, the parallel universe of American wrestling and, last but not least, the (neo)shamanic practice of drinking ayahuasca. Having heard about the spectacular visionary and healing powers of this famous psychoactive brew from the Amazon forest, Knight decided to try it – hoping perhaps to see visions of "Muhammad on a flying jaguar" (p. 4) or perhaps, far more seriously, to find a way of healing his traumas and find answers in his spiritual quest.
A major theme in Tripping with Allah is the acute conflict between Knight's quest for religious meaning and belonging, and the implications of his academic training in the study of religion. In the first chapter ("Cybertron Kids") we find the author and his friend Zoser watching and "building" (in Knight's delightful rendering of Five Percenters' lingo) on an early Transformers episode called "Dinobot Island", in which some kind of time warp phenomenon opens up portals through which life forms from other time periods enter and start messing with our world. In Knight's narrative, Dinobot Island becomes a metaphor for contemporary religion and the pervasive phenomenon of decontextualization in a globalized media context: for young Muslims like Zoser and himself, and whether they like it or not, Islam has essentially become a reservoir of traditional materials and stories to pick and choose from at will, and available for being combined creatively with anything else that is available, whether it's hip hop, science fiction, wrestling, shamanism, or popular comics. In Knight's words, "'Muhammad' is a superhero template, his sunna functioning as a How to Be the Perfect Human kit that you'll never finish: Muhammad as M.H.M.D., or Masters His Motherfucking Devils." (p. 9).
And that, of course, is what the book is ultimately all about. While building up a narrative to prepare the reader for his encounter with ayahuasca, Knight offers erudite and sometimes brilliant reflections on a variety of relevant topics, such as the popular depiction of both drugs and Islam as the demonized "other" of white American identity ("Civilization Class"), the history of Islamic attitudes towards drugs, including coffee ("Islam and Equality" - "equality" being a code for hashish - ; "Coffee consciousness"), prophecy and visionary consciousness according to Avicenna and al-Ghazali ("Avicenna and the Monolith"), and the intellectual and existential dilemmas of studying religion academically at Harvard while also practicing it as a Muslim ("Jehangir Allah", "Scholars and Martyrs"). Last but not least, there is the conflict between his emerging identity as a professional scholar of religion and the primal forces that drive him as a writer. Identifying with one of his heroes, a brutal wrestler known as "Bruiser Brody", Knight is worried that the politically correct attitudes and pseudo-intellectual language (for some edifying examples of mindless cultural studies lingo, see pp. 134-135!) that seem to dominate American academia might finally end up killing his soul:
"Two years have passed at Harvard, and now I try to picture Bruiser Brody obsessed with explaining himself, apologizing for himself, justifying his existence through the use of a larger tradition and perhaps a grounding in theory, trying to find legitimacy as a public intellectual. I see Bruiser Brody understanding himself through Roland Barthes, wearing a corduroy blazer and tying back his hair and insisting, "I'm so much more than just a psychotic chain-swinging freak, if you read me in my proper context," dipping out of the personality game while he's still ahead and focusing on pure scholarship from this moment on – Bruiser Brody with his forehead full of scars disappearing into the quiet soft darkness of those Widener Library stacks and never coming back out" (p. 145-146).
Eventually, Knight has an intake meeting with an American member of the Brazilian Santo Daime church, which uses ayahuasca as its sacrament ("Bumblebee"; for the origins of the church, founded by a Brazilian rubber tapper after his visionary encounter with the "Queen of the Forest", see his informative chapter "Church Fathers and Mothers"). He finally gets to drink ayahuasca at a Santo Daime meeting in a private home, but I will not spoil the book for you by describing how that experience turns out for him. Let me just note that Knight's mind and subconscious, filled with Islamic imagery, does not match very well with the predominantly Christian Catholic setting. It is only at his third attempt, in a "Western shamanic" setting, that he has a full ayahuasca experience.
Verbal depictions of entheogenic experience are notoriously boring, but Knight's account is an exception to that rule. The 17th chapter of his book ("Al-Najm", "the Stars": see the account of Muhammad's ecstatic ascent/descent described in the Quran, Sura 53:1-18) contains a uniquely precise, impressive, and moving description of visionary therapeutic healing through ayahuasca – more convincing and instructive than any similar account that I know from the literature. Clearly it is not enough to have a powerful experience: to bring it across requires a powerful writer as well. Again, therefore, one needs to read this in the original, but given Knight's biography it will perhaps come as no surprise that this decisive visionary sequence was grounded in Islamic imagery and mythology and went straight for what he needed most: "Out of nowhere, the drug interrupted my book about drugs and spoke instead about broken masculinities" (p. 257). Traumatized through extreme male violence, Knight's life had been one desperate quest for masculine role models, from the frankly demonic exemplar that had raped him into existence, through the caricatural "He Men" of American wrestling, to the supreme male superheroes of his religious imagination: Muhammad the prophet, Ali the warrior, Husayn the martyr (p. 206). But by the time he drinks ayahuasca, he seems to have reached the end of that road: "It feels like I can't go anymore; I'm like Macho Man at the end of his run" (p. 186, referring to Randy "Macho Man" Savage, the greatest professional wrestler of the 1980s: see chapter "Macho Madness"). And so it is fitting that the divine saviour/healer and psychopomp ("guide of souls") who meets him in his vision and shows him the source of true power is not yet another muscle man, but a woman: Fatima, the daughter of the prophet, wife of Ali, and mother of Husayn.
In an interview with Deonna Kelli Sayed, Knight remarks that his Al-Najm chapter is "possibly the most heretical, blasphemous, challenging stuff that I've ever written. I don't spare any of the details". And that is true: the visionary episodes are sexually explicit, and put an intensely personal spin on traditional Islamic myth and imagery. In other words, the entire healing process would seem to happens on Dinobot Island, through a remarkable collaboration between Santo Daime's Queen of the Forest and the Islamic Daughter of the Prophet - bien étonnés, no doubt, de se trouver ensemble... And yet, in the same interview, Knight continues by noting that the experience "leads me to this somewhat conservative place, because where I'm at right now, I pretty much just want to read hadith all day".
Perhaps this will prove to be just a phase in Knight's continuing story. But then again, he might well be in the process of leaving Dinobot Island, with Fatima's help: "You can deconstruct Islam, but at some point you have to put it back together. Get your readings grounded in something" (p. 7). In what? The answer seems clear: Knight finds it in an intensely personal experience of divinity, or gnosis, mediated or facilitated by a "tradition", with all the stories and images that it can provide. He does not find it in the intellectual practice of Quranic exegesis, so attractive and seductive "for the boys" (p. 224, 226, 238), but in a direct encounter with divine Otherness - with a presence, in other words, that is so different from his own identity that it can speak to that identity with unquestionable power and authority. Tripping with Allah may be all about Islam, Drugs, and Writing - but first and foremost, I would suggest, it is a primary source of Islamic mysticism.
In an interview with Deonna Kelli Sayed, Knight remarks that his Al-Najm chapter is "possibly the most heretical, blasphemous, challenging stuff that I've ever written. I don't spare any of the details". And that is true: the visionary episodes are sexually explicit, and put an intensely personal spin on traditional Islamic myth and imagery. In other words, the entire healing process would seem to happens on Dinobot Island, through a remarkable collaboration between Santo Daime's Queen of the Forest and the Islamic Daughter of the Prophet - bien étonnés, no doubt, de se trouver ensemble... And yet, in the same interview, Knight continues by noting that the experience "leads me to this somewhat conservative place, because where I'm at right now, I pretty much just want to read hadith all day".
Perhaps this will prove to be just a phase in Knight's continuing story. But then again, he might well be in the process of leaving Dinobot Island, with Fatima's help: "You can deconstruct Islam, but at some point you have to put it back together. Get your readings grounded in something" (p. 7). In what? The answer seems clear: Knight finds it in an intensely personal experience of divinity, or gnosis, mediated or facilitated by a "tradition", with all the stories and images that it can provide. He does not find it in the intellectual practice of Quranic exegesis, so attractive and seductive "for the boys" (p. 224, 226, 238), but in a direct encounter with divine Otherness - with a presence, in other words, that is so different from his own identity that it can speak to that identity with unquestionable power and authority. Tripping with Allah may be all about Islam, Drugs, and Writing - but first and foremost, I would suggest, it is a primary source of Islamic mysticism.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Butchering the Corpus Hermeticum: Breaking News on Ficino's Pimander
In the spring of 2002, a group of devoted Ficino aficionados met at the home of Prof. Sebastiano Gentile to discuss the need for modern critical editions of the great Florentine Platonist's writings. One of the young scholars present at this meeting, Maurizio Campanelli, decided to take a closer look at Ficino's famous translation of treatises I-XIV of the Corpus Hermeticum, first published in Treviso in 1471 as Hermes Trismegistus' book on the Power and Wisdom of God (De Potestate et Sapientia Dei) but better known by its alternative title Pimander. He was in for an unexpected surprise. Although certainly no beginner in Latin anymore, he notes, 'the number of passages of which I failed to really understand the significance followed one another at a disquieting pace'. In other words, much of the text just didn't make sense at all. Clearly something was wrong – but what was it? Since the Greek original is perfectly comprehensible, the initial suspicion fell on Ficino himself: could it be that his famous translation, finished in 1463, had in fact been so bad as the edition would seem to suggest? But no: a crucial manuscript from 1466, heavily annotated with corrections in Ficino's own hand, showed otherwise. Apparently the problem was with the famous Treviso edition of 1471 itself, on which the great majority of 16th-century editions would later be based.
Now all of this may not seem like such a big deal to general readers. For anyone familiar with scholarship of Renaissance Hermeticism, however, the implications are far-reaching, even bordering on the sensational. Ever since Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), countless scholars and popular authors have been telling us that the revival of the "Hermetic Tradition" began with Ficino's Pimander of 1471, and that ever since, throughout the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth, Hermes's writings had become a very significant factor in the development of Renaissance religious and intellectual life. Presumably, this means that people had actually been reading Hermes's writings. But if so, had nobody noticed that Ficino's Pimander was, in fact, an incomprehensible muddle? And if they had noticed, what had they done about it? Perhaps most importantly: was it at all possible, for such Renaissance readers, to distill the actual contents of the Hermetic writings from the translations available to them? If not, what did "Hermetism" actually mean for them? And what about all those modern scholars who have written large books and learned articles about Renaissance Hermetism? One cannot help wondering how many of them ever bothered to sit down and actually read he foundational classic of the entire tradition.
Spurred on by his initial discovery, Campanelli began working on a critical reconstruction of Ficino's original Pimander, and the final result has been published with an Italian publisher in 2011. It is a very impressive example of painstaking philological scholarship, and a good reminder that, in the world of textual research at least, der liebe Gott lebt im Detail. So bear with me. In the first chapter of his 260-page Introduction, Campanelli analyzes Ficino's repeated attempts at sketching a profile of Hermes Trismegistus, concluding that he was mostly trying to flatter his maecenas Cosimo de' Medici by providing him with all the attributes of the ancient Egyptian sage, or the reverse (p. XLI, LIX). Campanelli then gets down to his real core business, analyzing all the editions of the Corpus Hermeticum that were published during the Renaissance. It is important to realize that Ficino himself never tried to get the Pimander published: the Treviso edition, published on 18 December 1471, was the unauthorized initiative of two humanists, the Flemish Geraert van der Leye (Gherardo de Lisa) and his Italian colleague Francesco Rolandello, who seems to have provided the manuscript. And it is here that something went awfully wrong, for the printed version is so corrupt that Campanelli does not hesitate to speak of an 'authentic textual disaster' based upon 'scandalous negligence' (p. CX-CXI). Most likely, according to his analysis, the printers were working under such heavy time pressure that they made countless errors, and neither van der Leye nor Rolandello ever took the trouble to check and correct the proofs… The troubling fact is that precisely this butchered version of the Pimander became, nevertheless, the basis for the great majority of later editions of the Corpus Hermeticum: the 3rd one (Venice 1481), the 4th (Venice 1491), the 5th (Venice 1493), the 6th (Paris 1494), the 7th (Mainz 1503), the 8th (Paris 1505), the 10th (Venice 1516), the 12th (Lyon 1549), and the 14th (Basle 1551). This does not mean that the text remained unchanged. On the contrary: from one edition to the next, and especially since the 1494 version of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, successive editors tried to improve the text, thus creating a wide range of variant readings of an original that had been wholly corrupt in the first place. Hence it is hardly surprising that when Gabriel du Preau was preparing his French translation (published in 1549) he admitted being 'vexed & tormented' by all the contradictions he discovered between the three Latin versions at his disposal (Mercure Trismegiste Hermes … de la puissance & sapience de Dieu, Introduction).
What then about the other editions, absent from the list above? The 2nd edition (Ferrara, 8th of January 1472: just a few weeks after the 1st) was based upon a separate manuscript of Ficino's translation; but although it is much more reliable than the princeps, it seems to have remained a "stand-alone" edition without much further influence. The 9th edition (Florence 1513), edited by Mariano Tucci, was again based upon a separate manuscript of Ficino's translation and became the basis for two later editions: the 11th (Basle 1532, edited by Michael Isengrin) and the 16th (Cracow 1585, edited by Annibale Rosselli, with huge commentaries). And finally (not counting vernacular versions such as du Preau's), we have three editions independent of Ficino's text: the 13th Corpus Hermeticum edition in succession consists of the first publication of the Greek original by Adrien Turnèbe (Paris 1554); the 15th was a new Latin translation by François Foix de Candale (Bordeaux 1574); and finally, the 17th was yet another new Latin translation by Francesco Patrizi (Ferrara 1591). This certainly suggests that interest in the Hermetica was growing during the second half of the sixteenth century, especially its last three decades; but Campanelli claims that, in fact, none of these three new editions had any success at all, leaving Ficino's Pimander as 'almost the only vehicle of the Corpus Hermeticum in Europe' in this period (p. LXXXIII). One might want to question that point, but it seems clear that van der Leye and Rolandello (and of course their printers) created a mess that would continue to create enormous confusion about the Hermetic message throughout the sixteenth century.
What then about the other editions, absent from the list above? The 2nd edition (Ferrara, 8th of January 1472: just a few weeks after the 1st) was based upon a separate manuscript of Ficino's translation; but although it is much more reliable than the princeps, it seems to have remained a "stand-alone" edition without much further influence. The 9th edition (Florence 1513), edited by Mariano Tucci, was again based upon a separate manuscript of Ficino's translation and became the basis for two later editions: the 11th (Basle 1532, edited by Michael Isengrin) and the 16th (Cracow 1585, edited by Annibale Rosselli, with huge commentaries). And finally (not counting vernacular versions such as du Preau's), we have three editions independent of Ficino's text: the 13th Corpus Hermeticum edition in succession consists of the first publication of the Greek original by Adrien Turnèbe (Paris 1554); the 15th was a new Latin translation by François Foix de Candale (Bordeaux 1574); and finally, the 17th was yet another new Latin translation by Francesco Patrizi (Ferrara 1591). This certainly suggests that interest in the Hermetica was growing during the second half of the sixteenth century, especially its last three decades; but Campanelli claims that, in fact, none of these three new editions had any success at all, leaving Ficino's Pimander as 'almost the only vehicle of the Corpus Hermeticum in Europe' in this period (p. LXXXIII). One might want to question that point, but it seems clear that van der Leye and Rolandello (and of course their printers) created a mess that would continue to create enormous confusion about the Hermetic message throughout the sixteenth century.
Having established the history of the printed editions, Campanelli proceeds to delve deep into the 'vast archipelago' (p. CXXI) of surviving manuscripts of the Pimander (those that were used for the first two editions of 1471 and 1472 are no longer extant). Demonstrating great philological expertise and attention to technical detail, he finally ends up selecting fifteen manuscripts most suitable for reconstructing Ficino's original translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, published in a meticulous critical edition on pp. 1-111 of his book. In the final chapter of his Introduction, he goes into considerable detail about the nature and quality of that translation. His conclusions are very interesting. Ficino appears to have been much concerned with improving the literary style of the Greek original, trying to make it all more elegant and beautiful. Sometimes he changes the original meaning (see esp. CCXLVIIff for what looks like intentional modifications), and his formulations tend to be far more expansive and dramatic than the wording of the Greek text (not least in cases that reflect his own hostily towards the body: p. CCXXVII). More importantly, he tends to read the Hermetic content through his own lense of Neoplatonic Christianity (p. CCXXXVII); and one can see that, understandably enough, he looks to the Latin Asclepius as a model for his own translation (p. CCXLVII).
In conclusion, even the most reliable version of Ficino's Pimander turns out to have been quite different from what we find in the Greek manuscript that had been brought to Florence by Leonardo da Pistoia (p. CCL). But what really messed up things for the thrice-greatest was the famous 1471 edition. In the wake of that disaster, and as the number of editions increased, the original meaning of the Corpus Hermeticum was bound to get buried under an ever-expanding number of mistranslations, misinterpretations, and well-meaning but counterproductive emendations. Hence, what we have is a lively Renaissance discourse about Hermes, but no Hermetic Tradition.
In conclusion, even the most reliable version of Ficino's Pimander turns out to have been quite different from what we find in the Greek manuscript that had been brought to Florence by Leonardo da Pistoia (p. CCL). But what really messed up things for the thrice-greatest was the famous 1471 edition. In the wake of that disaster, and as the number of editions increased, the original meaning of the Corpus Hermeticum was bound to get buried under an ever-expanding number of mistranslations, misinterpretations, and well-meaning but counterproductive emendations. Hence, what we have is a lively Renaissance discourse about Hermes, but no Hermetic Tradition.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Of Essences and Energies
For some reason I am fascinated (dare I say "obsessed"?) by the history of the conflict between "paganism" and Christanity. Some years ago, when I discovered Gore Vidal's novel about the 4th century pagan emperor Julian and his battle with the "Galileans," I just couldn't put the book out of my hands. This summer, sitting in the sun on my balcony and playing with my cats, I experienced a similar sense of excitement and fascination while reading a brandnew monograph about paganism and Christianity in the late Byzantine Empire. Niketas Siniossoglou's Radical Platonism in Byzantium (Cambridge University Press 2011) is a provocative analysis of the Platonist philosopher / closet pagan George Gemistos Plethon and his battle with the Hesychast orthodoxy associated with Gregory Palamas. According to the Hesychast tradition, human beings are able to experience God's "energies" in the world but not his ineffable "essence," which exists beyond the boundary of Nature or the sphere of Being. The "supra-essential," uncreated Light of the godhead could, nevertheless, be experienced in one's heart and seen with one's eyes, through radical psychophysical experiences of illumination (modeled after the experience of Jesus' three apostles on Mount Thabor) that were supposed to be given by God's grace in response to intense practice of spiritual techniques such as respiration control, concentration, uninterrupted prayer, and invocations of the name of Jesus. Siniossoglou argues that this perspective clashed with a hidden tradition of Platonic paganism that had been present in Byzantium for centuries and culminated in the writings of Plethon. Hesychasts aspired to a bodily experience of "entering within the uncreated light, seeing light and becoming light by divine grace" (p. 95), whereas Platonists aspired to "intellectual union with the divine, that is to say, the ecstatic ascent of the intellectual part of man alone, a process coinciding with the separation of soul and body (psychanodia)" (ibid.). The Hesychast attempt to keep Creator and Creation apart by distinguishing God's uncreated essence from his energies was unacceptable for "pagan" Platonists: God's energies could not be separate from his essence, and hence God could not transcend the sphere of Being but somehow had to be part of it. As such, he was not above nature, and his very essence should be accessible by the human mind or intellect in a state of "rational" ecstatic contemplation. In short, God could be known by the human mind's natural faculties, whereas the Hesychasts claimed that God's radically unknowable essence could only be experienced in a sensual but non-rational fashion through divine grace.
Siniossoglou appears to think in terms of mutually exclusive binary opposites: it's either essentialism or historicism (although admittedly he doesn't use that term), either Christianity or paganism, either rationality or irrationality, and so on. As regards both his "essentialist" and his "rationalist" agenda, I would argue that this leads him to overlook the possibility of intermediary "third term" options. He is right that a methodology of extreme historicist relativism will ultimately leave us blind to fundamental deep structures and categorical distinctions that are at work in intellectual history; but on the other hand, if we take essentialism to an extreme, we end up with no more than theoretical abstractions divorced from historical reality and its messy complexities. To be honest, I suspect that Siniossoglou is too good a historian to be really the essentialist he professes to be: his actual approach seems quite compatible with the kind of history of ideas, or intellectual history, associated with Arthur O. Lovejoy's methodology, which manages to avoid both horns of the dilemma (for my basic line of argument in that regard, see this article, especially pp. 2-3 and 19). In short, Siniossoglou's basic point is well taken, but I do not think he needs essentialist approaches to make it. As regards his rationalist agenda, I would question the double assumption that Hesychast mysticism had nothing to do with "knowledge" (because it was "irrational") while Pagan/Platonic philosophy had nothing to do with "mysticism" (because it was "rational"). This simple opposition seems a projection of post-18th century Enlightenment assumptions back onto late medieval intellectual culture. Siniossoglou is certainly right in emphasizing that Plethon's monist worldview left no room for a "super-essential" divine essence separate from Being, with the implication that human beings are not dependent on divine grace but possess an inborn, natural ability for gaining higher or absolute knowledge. But I'm not so convinced that this "epistemological optimism" is necessary "rational" in a sense that is reminiscent of Spinoza or the Enlightenment. We are dealing here with some form of ecstatic contemplation more akin to Platonic manía, as admitted by Siniossoglou himself. As an alternative to both Christian "faith" and philosophical "reason," I would range it under a third category that could be referred to as "gnosis."
Given his agenda of highlighting Plethon's rationalism, it comes as no surprise that Siniossoglou seeks to downplay the relevance of authors such as Suhrawardi, who has often been mentioned as a background influence on Plethon, but who claimed that the Platonic quest culminated in visions that sound peculiarly similar to those of… the Hesychasts: "let [the philosopher] engage in mystical disciplines … that perchance he will, as one dazzled by the thunderbolt, see the light blazing in the Kingdom of Power and will witness the heavenly essences and lights that Hermes and Plato beheld" (Suhrawardi, The Philosophy of Illumination, Walbridge & Ziai ed. [1999], 107-108). Again, it would seem to be the same rationalist agenda, combined with his essentialist methodology, that forces Siniossoglou to conclude that many later Platonists, such as Proclus, were not really Platonic, and not really "pagan" either! Their "introvert, defeatist and passive late antiquity Neoplatonism bordering on obscurantism" (p. 191) is, again, too close to Hesychasm for his taste, and too different from his idealized picture of a wholly rational Plato. Of course, Siniossoglou knows that there's a different side to Plato as well, which would seem to imply "that man's intellectual resources are not sufficient to know 'the divine and lofty things' but require 'some sort of inspiration' (ἐπίπνοια) that will illumine him and uplift him to that high level" (p. 177). Apparently, however, he seems prepared to draw the conclusion that whenever he falls short of the rationalist ideal, even Plato himself is not "really" a Platonist…
Be that as it may, and regardless of what one may think of its essentialist and rationalist subtexts, Radical Platonism in Byzantium is an eye-opener that deserves to be read and re-read. Apart from Plethon and Palamas, it introduced me to a whole range of deeply intriguing thinkers whose very names I had never heard before, let alone that I knew anything of their work or their ideas. If realizing the extent of one's ignorance is the beginning of wisdom, then this book is for anyone who aspires to become wise.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Alt & Neumann on Hermetismus
There is a popular stereotype about academics: they spend far too much of their time bickering endlessly about the meaning of terms. Shouldn't they better dispense with such tedious foreplay and get straight on to their real business, addressing the topics themselves that they are supposed to be studying? It is not so easy to explain to non-academics that this is a naïve request, because those topics themselves are often not there in the first place, but are constructed by the very discourse in which they are being discussed. Take "Hermeticism", or "the Hermetic Tradition". Are we thinking here only of the Corpus Hermeticum and its commentaries, or do we also mean to include a whole range of alchemical writings attributed to the legendary author Hermes Trismegistus? Is such authorship essential for something to be "Hermetic", or do we assume that since alchemy is known universally as "the Hermetic art", Hermes does not even need to be mentioned? But if so, do alchemy and the Corpus Hermeticum really have that much in common, apart from the name? If so, what is it that they have in common? And what do we do with texts about astrology or natural magic attributed to the Thrice Greatest? Do they suddenly become "Hermetic" too, just because of that attribution, while texts with perfectly similar contents that happen to be attributed to some other author are not? That seems quite arbitrary. But then again, if we conclude that therefore we do not need a reference to Hermes to call something "Hermetic", then what do we need in order to do so? Presumably something that all of these texts and traditions have in common, setting them apart from all others. But imagine that we will manage to establish some such common features (by which criteria? established by whom? why? with which arguments?), then will we still have any reason to call those common denominators "Hermetic" at all?
And so on, and so forth… I'm afraid that such a seemingly endless string of questions will only add more fuel to the already dim view that outsiders tend to have of academic discourse. And yet we really have no other choice than to deal with these terminological issues seriously. While reading a recent book by Peter-André Alt, Imaginäres Geheimwissen: Untersuchungen zum Hermetismus in literarischen Texten der frühen Neuzeit [Imaginary Secret Knowledge: Studies of Hermetism in Early Modern Literary Texts], I was reminded that the problem gets complicated even further by the contingencies of how scholarly traditions have developed in different disciplines as well as in different countries and linguistic domains. In anglo-saxon research, the legacy of Frances A. Yates is absolutely unavoidable even for scholars (like myself) who disagree with almost everything she said; but for some reason, Yates' seminal Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) never got translated into German, and neither the book nor all the discussions around it seem to have had much impact on the German debate. An entirely different scholarly tradition has emerged here in the field of literature instead, with entirely different arguments and assumptions, strongly influenced in this case by the pioneering work of Hans-Georg Kemper – who never got translated either, and remains almost unknown to non-German scholars. As a result, instead of an international scholarly debate about "Hermeticism" we have a series of local networks that hardly care to listen to what the others have to say. In the Humanities at least, this kind of provincialism is much more widespread than we might think: the Germans read German, the French read French, the Italians read Italian, the Russians read Russian, and so on – and none of them gets read by the English-speaking world. Of course I'm exaggerating a bit for the sake of argument, but the pattern is a real one.
In discussing how he plans to use the term Hermetismus in his book, Peter-André Alt, too, appears to think entirely in terms of German academic discourse. He takes his cue mostly from Hans-Georg Kemper and Wilhelm Kühlmann (p. 13, 15), both of them very impressive scholars whose work would deserve to be much better known beyond the German domain. Now Kühlmann appears to understand Hermetismus in a very broad sense, as including more or less everything that tends to be discussed in current English-language research under the label of early modern "esotericism" (see his programmatic article 'Der "Hermetismus" als literarische Formation: Grundzüge seiner Rezeption in Deutschland', Scientia Poetica 3 [1999], 145-157), but Alt rejects that terminology because he finds it anachronistic. While he expresses some objections to my way of approaching the problems of definition and categorization, I suspect that my recent work (Esotericism and the Academy, published in the same year as Alt's book and hence not accessible to him at the time) might perhaps put some of them to rest. Be that as it may, I think that Alt's resistance against the "esotericism" label has to do not only with a (quite justified) fear of anachronistic reasoning, but at least as much with the simple fact that his own field of specialization is restricted to the early modern period. As a result, he and his colleagues do not need to bother about the longue durée of the traditions they study, and can dispense with the problem of finding a term that covers all of it. In a solid discussion written by Alt in collaboration with Volkhard Wels, published in a multi-author companion volume Konzepte des Hermetismus in der Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit(2010), this point is acknowledged explicitly (p. 8).
What then is Alt's approach? On the one hand, he wants to use a much more restrictive and precise definition of Hermetismus than Kühlmann: he emphasizes repeatedly that his book will be grounded in 'a determination of Hermetism based on exact source-philological criteria … based strictly on the Corpus Hermeticum and its topoi' (p. 21). On the face of it, then, his book will be concerned exclusively with the reception history of the C.H. in early modern literary texts. The reception of alchemical materials, including the Tabula Smaragdina, is strictly excluded (p. 21). However, it would seem that this ambition of applying great philological/source-critical rigour suffers shipwreck immediately, for a simple reason: it just so happens, Alt points out, that we rarely find any 'direct textual references' to the C.H. in early modern literature at all (p. 16)! Instead, we are seldom dealing with more than indirect 'allusions [Anspielungen] and the hidden use of central patterns of argumentation' (pp. 16-17, cf. 23). If this is the case, then doesn't it make Alt's apparently so severe program of a quellenphilologisch exakte Bestimmung des Hermetismus (p. 21) impossible from the outset? It would seem hard to draw any other conclusion, until one realizes that Alt has opened a narrow escape route in the final words of the quotation given above: '… based strictly on the Corpus Hermeticum and its topoi'.
So what are those topoi? Alt first mentions three criteria of what he, for reasons best known to himself, considers to be particularly "Hermetic" (the logos doctrine, the central function of inspiration, and the special importance of doxa transmitted from teacher to pupil [21]), and continues by mentioning some 'specifically literary topoi through which Hermetic traces are passed on: to these belong secrecy, reading the Book of Nature, androgyny, the self-reflection of poetic production or the brooding silence of melancholy' (p. 23). Judging from such a description, I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Kühlmann's wide and inclusive understanding of Hermetismus has silently returned through the back door. For if all these "topoi" are supposed to be "Hermetic" – but unfortunately, Alt never explains what it is that makes them "Hermetic", or in what sense –, then the term Hermetismus becomes so vague and all-encompassing as to be virtually meaningless. In short, I'm afraid that Alt's laudable project of a quellenphilologisch exakte Bestimmung based strictly on the Corpus Hermeticum vanishes into thin air even before it is put to the test.
In some other respects, too, the quellenphilologische foundations are less secure than one might think at first sight. I would not dare to question Alt's expertise in early modern German literature, in which he undoubtedly knows his business, but it must be said that his knowledge of the Corpus Hermeticum and its early modern reception is rather flimsy, and the same goes for his familiarity with non-German scholarship in this domain. Amazingly, Alt never seems to have noticed that the C.H. consists not of 'insgesamt 18 Traktate' (p. 25, 26, 27) but of only seventeen (the first editor of the Greek text, Adrien Turnèbe, created a fifteenth treatise out of some Hermetic excerpts from Stobaeus, but this was seen as artificial by later editors, who left it out again but kept the numbering: hence the absence of a C.H. XV). And although Lodovico Lazzarelli (the translator of the final three treatises of the C.H., not included in Ficino's Pimander) figures prominently in the very title of Alt's Chapter 2, it seems that all he knows about this figure – who is in fact crucial when it comes to the quellenphilologische foundations of Renaissance Hermetism – is taken indirectly from Hanns-Peter Neumann's problematic review (in Scientia Poetica 12 [2008], 315-322) of the main contemporary monograph on Lazzarelli, published by yours truly in collaboration with Ruud Bouthoorn in 2005. I really need to set the record straight here, for almost everything that Alt writes about Lazzarelli and my own work is wrong.
Most of Alt's mistakes have their origin in Neumann himself, who, for reasons unknown to me, seemed determined to present our book on Lazzarelli in the most negative light possible. Sitting on a very high horse, he complained first of all about the 'Lässigkeit und Mangelhaftigheit' of our 'incomplete and partly incorrect' bibliography (p. 318). What was the problem? Well, we appear to have overlooked one title: Alselm Stoeckel's 1582 edition of Lazzarelli's Crater Hermetis (attached to his Epithalamion and therefore easy to miss). There is no reason, however, why we should have mentioned all the later reprints of Lefèvre d'Étaples' famous 1505 edition, although Neumann thinks we should; and most importantly, before accusing us of a mistake as elementary as getting the date of Gabriel du Preau's French translation wrong, he should have taken the trouble to consult the book itself. It was first published in 1549, exactly as indicated in our bibliography, and not in 1557 as claimed by Neumann on the basis of the French National Library Catalogue. So much for the 'Lässigheit und Mangelhaftigkeit' of our bibliography, which then inspires Neumann to express doubts about the quality of our translations as well (but what is the connection?) only to end up concluding, apparently to his surprise, that those doubts are unfounded and we do know our Latin after all... As for Lazzarelli's Corpus Hermeticum translation, known as the Diffinitiones Asclepii, Neumann's knowledge of it does not reach as far as the information that, as already noted above, it contains no C.H. XV (p. 316, 319); and if he had read our sloppy and faulty bibliography a bit better, he would have known that the Diffinitiones were published by C. Vasoli in E. Castelli's Umanesimo e esoterismo in 1960. Hence his claim that we have failed to grasp the chance of 'doing pioneering work' on these translations (p. 319) rests on nothing. Not a word of appreciation, by the way, about the series of critical editions and annotated translations of previously unavailable texts, including several manuscripts, that we did publish in our book.
Incompetent reviews [sometimes written by competent scholars, as happens to be the case here] are a fact of academic life, and are better ignored in most cases. They become a problem if renowned scholars take them seriously, and rely on them in lieu of reading the book itself, particularly if this happens in a monograph. Unfortunately, such is the case here. A relatively minor issue is that Neumann and Alt both present me as ignoring the "neoplatonic" nature of the Corpus Hermeticum while attributing neoplatonic interpretations only to Ficino (Neumann p. 320; Alt p. 26 nt 39): in doing so, they seem to conflate the well-known middle-Platonic backgrounds of the C.H. with properly neo-Platonic interpretations in the wake of Plotinus. More serious is Alt's completely incorrect claim that Lazzarelli's Crater is about 'the idea of transmigration' (Alt p. 26), quod non, or his misleading description of Lazzarelli as 'a pupil of the alchemist Giovanni da Correggio' (it is only at a very late stage that both men seem to have developed an interest in pseudo-Lullian alchemy: Correggio was essentially a wandering apocalyptic prophet and miracle man). In fact, these few mistaken statements are all that we get to read about Lazzarelli at all. Nothing indicates that Alt ever read our book, and hence he misses quite some information that could actually have been useful to some of his later arguments, for instance about Poimandres as the Logos (cf. pp. 30-31).
I prefer not to go into detail about a range of further statements, later on in the same chapter, about the Corpus Hermeticum and its contents: this blogpost is already getting far too long. The points I have been trying to make are simple. Firstly: Hermeticism is an extremely complicated topic, both historically and conceptually, and the sine qua non in writing about it consists in careful study of the primary sources in their original languages together with equally careful study of the secondary sources in their original languages. And secondly: the imperative of always going ad fontes pertains not only to the former category, but to the latter as well.
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You hold in your hands an artifact from a time now vanished forever a compendium of portals into worlds unknown. A three-disc set that controls over 14 hours of transmission from the 1964-65 series, this vessel has sought you out for one specific purpose: to expand your mind to "The Outer Limits"!
Despite forced changes in executive and creative personnel, plummeting ratings and the constant threat of cancellation, the truncated second season of The Outer Limits (1964-65) yielded some of the series' finest episodes. While The Twilight Zone was fading fast on CBS, the bean-counters at ABC used focus groups and ratings statistics to enforce their previous mandate for a "monster of the week" format for their flagging science-fiction series, and after a few promising episodes early in the season, Outer Limits settled into a regrettable routine of reduced budgets and rubber-suit creatures that wouldn't pass inspection at a drunken Halloween party. A former network executive with minimal creative input, Perry Mason producer Ben Brady struggled to keep the doomed series alive while coproducer Seeleg Lester sought legitimacy by courting respected writers and material.
As Harlan Ellison observes in David J. Schow's indispensable book The Outer Limits Companion, weak ratings allowed quality episodes to slip under the radar of ABC executives. Ellison's own classic teleplays--"Soldier" (which would later inspire The Terminator and subsequent legal squabbles) and "Demon with a Glass Hand"--yielded the season's finest stand-alone episodes, while the two-part "The Inheritors" (featuring the young Robert Duvall) fulfilled the series' neglected potential for longer-form plotlines. While these highlights redeem the season, "Wolf 359" (a title that would later factor in Star Trek: The Next Generation) is eerily effective despite low-tech restrictions, and "Behold Eck!" is the "best" (relatively speaking) of the tepid monster-themed shows that ABC demanded. It wasn't enough: After 17 episodes against the Saturday-night dominance of The Jackie Gleason Show, the greatest science-fiction anthology series of the 1960s was mercifully canceled, primed for phenomenal success in syndication and eventual revival as the "new" Outer Limits in 1995. --Jeff Shannon
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This has always been a great show growing up as a child. I was GLUED to my chair. "Very Scary". . .Published 7 months ago by Tim O'Connor
Super good sci fi show of the 1960s and I'm glad I got the set.Published 8 months ago by Mark Chocianowski
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TA to meet Hicks, Bayou Friday
"Today is a new day. We have three games left, and we need to finish strong for the two seniors we have," Tunica Academy Head Football Coach John David Weeks said on Tuesday.
The Blue Devils will meet conference rivals Bayou Academy on Oct. 11 at Robby Sartin Field. Kick off is set for 7 p.m.
Weeks said Bayou will likely be a good team, as they are led by former Blue Devils Head Coach Jimmy Hicks.
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ConExpo-Con/Agg Supplement
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