ANTHROPOLOGY IS ABOUT YOU & EVERYONE
Taught by Arnold Perey, PhD
Through the Aesthetic Realism method, anthropology is a means to understand yourself more richly and deeply. In this class you’ll see what you have in common with people whose cultures can seem very different.
People, everywhere in the world, from the grasslands of Africa to the Pacific Islands, from the tents of Asia and Native America to New York City, are understood through the principles of Aesthetic Realism: we are all trying to like the world aesthetically, as a oneness of opposites — and yet we also want to look on it with contempt. We are kind and cruel, accurate and wild, powerful and delicate—trying to put together opposites in ourselves. Through Aesthetic Realism, anthropology becomes essential for us to know ourselves, see our unquestionable kinship to people everywhere, and do away with prejudice.
Winter 2018
Even after 6 million years of evolution, we human beings need urgently—more urgently than ever—to learn how to like the way we see people. To do so we study Aesthetic Realism and People by Eli Siegel this semester, with world-wide samples.
January 24: Seeing Oneself in Another: African American Folklore.
February 7: Going for Love—True and False: Continental Africa & NYC
February 21: Evolution, or: “All the Past Is in Us.”
Saturday March 17: What Is Precious?
We meet at the Met Museum 11AM with the Visual Arts and the Opposites class—to study the Golden Kingdoms exhibition.
April 4: Seeing a Person from Within: Central Australia
April 18: Papers by Students on the Aesthetics of Anthropology
Source text: “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana” by Eli Siegel
See Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective for Anthropology and Sociology and his novel Gwe: Young Man of New Guinea—a novel against racism.
Three instances of how Aesthetic Realism shows people of different cultures are more alike than has been known:
[1] What Big Mistakes Do Even Smart Men Make? With a consideration of the African story “Maliane and the Water Snake” from Lesotho.
[2] About the Ethical Unconscious. The myth of the flood: discussing anthropology, the anthropologist, and a representative American woman, Daphne Baker. [3] “How Much Feeling—and What Kind—Should a Man Have?” Discussing my life, the life of Fusiwe, a head man of the Yanomami People, and men of the United StatesAlternate Wednesdays, 6:00 – 7:30 PM
Beginning date of this class: Wed, May 23
Fee: $60 per semester (7 classes)
Fee for auditing a class: $12
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