De L’Infini : A Foreigner’s Metaphysics
Book I — Foreigner, There : History of a Political Capture
— Introduction
What is the history of ‘foreigner’? The question is obvious, and fundamental…
Tag: History
Behind the Glim — Part 1
The dual concept of pre-modernity and modernity is a curious object of historiography. Not just original, it becomes double-edged, as soon as one realises its repercussions. Sufficiently unquestioned in our days, it can support an array of divisive, reductive and ideologically oriented positions…
Behind the Glim — Part 2
Centuries from now, when the monopoly of post-Enlightenment western values, imaginations and institutions will have shied away before what will have become, hopefully, multi-centered global cultures, we will probably remember the Enlightenment project as a serpent that ended up biting its own tail…
Behind the Glim — Overture
At this stage, we need, perhaps, to insist that not all conceptualisations of historical phases lead to grave reductions. Without them, no historical discourse would be possible…
“… form has acquired its own content: tacking back and forth between the vernacular near and the cosmopolitan far, and the vivid sense of commensurability this modulation generates, are the objective correlates of a much larger politics of culture” (Sheldon Pollock)…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Introduction
History and lie. Fifth century B.C. Herodotus is equally known as the ‘Father of History’ and the ‘Father of Lies’. His chronological and causal accounts of the Persian Wars may have marked the beginning of history as a discipline, but it was ignored by none, from his contemporaries to his most postmodern commentators, that Herodotus also included in his records some factually questionable episodes…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.1
Father of history, father of lie — but fortunately contemporary commentators do not refer to Herodotus’ name only to highlight the lack of rigor, or even the credulousness of the man. His writing and approach to historical recording was a rather large improvement from the logographers or tellers of tales, and even during his lifetime, this was certainly already realized…even during his lifetime…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.2
One needs to scratch the outer skin of Herodotus’ historical account of Egypt to start noticing the more ideological, if not political, perspectives of his discourse. We could first notice how Herodotus, quite regularly, describes at length ethnographic observations or stories containing sexually explicit, if not trash material.
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.3
Finding the first Orientalist is a matter of importance. It is aiming at discovering the roots of what became later a major part of world history, one that determined world dynamics in the recent centuries and, according to Saïd, still does today as an after-effect of colonialism and in the surviving forms of Orientalism…
While it is a well-known fact that the whole lifestyle of Ancient Greece was entirely imbued with theological elements, via the importance of the Greek pantheon, it is more rarely clarified that this spiritual life was a very unique type of religion. The understanding and practices revolving around the relations between humans and God was such that calling it a “religion” is in itself a controversy…