FALL 2022

This semester we look at the place of art in anthropology. Does anthropology, in all its branches, have an aesthetic basis? Is it a oneness of aesthetic opposites that are in the world itself and in art? And are WE anthropological—are we aesthetic situations ourselves? The immediate answer is Yes. A fuller answer will be in the whole semester. In it we shall see this principle of Aesthetic Realism in action: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” We take as our beginning point the lecture by Eli Siegel in which he discusses a groundbreaking review of 5 books beginning with “Researches into the Physical History of Mankind.” He tells us:

I shall deal with [this] 1850 Quarterly Review article,* which I regard as one of the most important articles that ever appeared in any journal.**

This review article has passion. It opposes racism. It has some of the best thought and feeling in humanity. Two of the books reviewed in the article were written by James C. Prichard who wrote: “I have maintained that all mankind constitutes but one race.” [The Natural History of Man, 1843]

• Sep 14  How Are Even the Most Different People Related to Each Other, to Us? 

For most of human history no one knew all men and women, of every color and shade, every different culture, have a common origin. Their great differences were used to justify slavery and prejudice. This review article—nine years before Darwin proved the existence of evolution in Origin of Species—says all humans truly are ONE SPECIES. This magnificent oneness of Difference and Sameness—of ONE species with countless variations, Eli Siegel states in this lecture, is poetic.

• Sep 28  Like of the World—How Universal!

The unquenchable desire to like the world is the greatest thing in humanity and is shared by us all—every human of every race and variation—in cities and forests, in the veldt, sea, and tundra. We look at samples in this class—starting with the Americas and a tangible love for the kindness of the world in Corn Maiden, White Buffalo Woman, Hiawatha; and criticism of its foolishness and injustice in Nanabozho, Coyote, Windigo.

• Oct 12  Is Every Society a Battle between Taking Care of Just Me and Justice?

The opposites of (1) taking care of ourselves and (2) being fair to others at the same time are an aesthetic situation at the center of every society—from its beginnings in the family igloo, or hut, or apartment; to the village, to the tribe, to the nation, to the United Nations. How urgent it is for these two opposing purposes to be made one the way they are made one in art! Starting with the Inuit of the Arctic and the Mbuti of Central Africa, we study this battle.

• Oct 26  Technology & Ethics Trying to Be One—Then & Now

In several million years technology grew from broken rocks to refined artifacts of flint and even copper—as humans evolved who welcomed more knowledge and were kinder. “Moral institutions and ideas were in development even while human beings were working with early adzes, crude fishnets, various pitchers,” writes Eli Siegel in The Aesthetic Nature of the World. “It is clear that widening notions of other people took place as there was a larger, more efficient knowledge of wood, stone, metal.” [Pp. 858, 859] A question: Do we need that oneness of technology and ethics now?

• Nov 9  Contraction & Expansion in the Anthropological Mind

Eli Siegel wrote, “In anthropology one can see a struggle between the possible contraction of the human mind and its desire for a larger scope.” [The Aesthetic Nature of the World, p. 859] Seeing the unfamiliar as to be shunned or attacked, and also hoping to explore and see more—and more deeply—people, birds, plants, animals, the Unknown: both are in the mind of a Papua New Guinea warrior and a Columbia University sophomore.

• Nov 27 [SUNDAY 11-12:30] Joint Class taught by Marcia Rackow & Arnold Perey

The Visual Arts and the Opposites class meets with Anthropology Is about You and Everyone to study Maya art via Zoom, viewing the Met Museum exhibition “Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art.”

• Dec 7  An Anthropological Festival: Papers Written by Students in this Class