The Empusium: a Health Resort Horror Story (Book Review)
I finished reading a few days ago, and can still feel my admiration building. In many ways traditional in structure, it is a tale of a character transformation, from the point a young man...
Category: ritual
The Cultural Toolbox: Book Review
Anton Treuer, The Cultural ToolBox: Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2021 I am not Ojibwe. That is, I’m not one of the readers this book explicitly addresses. Still,...
The Man Made of Words (N. Scott Momaday): Book Review
The book is a collection of short pieces that are between or about or in addition to fiction, but not themselves fiction, the kind of book I always hope will illuminate the nuts and...
Why Art Does Not Exist
This title is adapted from Why Fish Don’t Exist [1] which in turn draws on Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s taxonomy study Naming Nature[2] to support its startling contention. Everyone knows what fish are. But today,...
Art as Ritual
Flusser felt that the term “art”– in the West — was almost always understood either as “work”–intended to change the world—or as “communication”—intended to share something with another person. He thought both were wrong....
Flusser and Habits
Flusser uses the word “habit” [Gewohnheit] almost exclusively to mean something that is not conscious, something that in fact obscures or inhibits conscious reflection. He frequently referred to habits as “veils,” obscuring possibilities of...