Anthropology and the Making One of Opposites

First, I quote this important statement about anthropology by Eli Siegel in the lecture* we are studying:

The one thing bringing together anthropological man and cultivated man (who goes to a public library or a concert), what is in common, is that every person, no matter how seemingly uncultivated, wants to put together opposites in his or her life. I haven’t seen any document having to do with the primitive world—anything about taboo, totemism, myth, ritual, custom— that doesn’t have the idea of opposites becoming one….All anthropology is about the making one of opposites.  

• May 14   Beginning with Humanity’s Greatest Need

Asking “What knowledge does every person need to have?” Eli Siegel gave this tremendous answer: “The thing people want to know most is how to put together selfishness and concern for others.” Being human is to want most to know how to be ethical. And, despite all the complications of individual cultures and ways of seeing the world, the greatest place in our unconscious thoughts is occupied by those fundamental opposites: Selfishness and Concern for Others.

• May 28   Does Taboo Always Have Opposites—For Example, Reverence and Diminishing?

Across the world—people, including ourselves, use the taboo idea, “This is Forbidden! Keep away!” We’ll look at samples that range from Polynesia, to Africa, to the surprising local taboo of not stepping on a crack in the sidewalk. Can even a perfume called “Tabu” tell of the allure of the forbidden?

• Jun 11   We Learn about Ourselves from Myth

For example, of the ancient Greek myth of Medusa Eli Siegel writes “Medusa is the likelihood in any girl of her taking self-maintenance to be forbiddingness or the defeat of others….The human being can freeze, petrify, forbid…” This is from the essay “Medusa Is a Nice Girl” in the Aesthetic Realism Online Library.

• Jun 25   The Devil & His International Counterparts, Including Coyote & Water Snake

Is there someone, everywhere in folklore, standing for Evil and its attraction? Or Evil as defeated? Or Evil as smart and dumb? In this class, humanity’s mix-up about good and bad in the world and in one’s own dear self is studied.

• Jul 9   Ritual & the Fight for a Fair Way of Seeing!

People often have felt something quiet and something stimulating in rituals. We’ll look for something in common in (1) the rites for a new canoe to launch from a Pacific Island and (2) a family saying grace before a meal in an American city. We’ll discuss this, by Mr. Siegel in the lecture we’re looking at: “Ritual by itself is a mingling of something emphatic and something symmetrical. It is like mime—you make a lunge, and there’s an order, a geometry about it.”

• Jul 27   (Sunday, instead of Wednesday Jul 23)
  Title to be announced

The Joint Art and Anthropology Class will meet at 11 AM.

• Aug  6   Anthropological Thought Freshly Goes On: Papers by Students in the Class

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* This semester we’ll study aspects of the lecture by Eli Siegel titled What Might the Casual Say about Great Books? [Sept. 6, 1972]. The subjects of these classes this are closely related to important themes across human history taken up in great books–and described in this lecture.