=
×

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
Ritual
Log In to post a reply
234 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
gyrus
gyrus
41 posts

Re: Ritual
Jan 16, 2006, 14:24
I think this is a problem of the reductionist attitude in science and academia. Reductionism is a useful tool, but a terrible worldview. (And I'm talking about all forms of reductionism here, whether materialist, spiritual, psychological, or whatever: the "it's all down to X" attitude.)

I don't think Lewis-Williams is being a "trance reductionist", at least not as much as his detractors (stand up Paul Bahn) claim. I think people who are habitually reductionist from one perspective tend to see other perspectives that are presented to them as being offered in a reductionist spirit. I once defended the wave of focus on the shamanic trance theory of rock art thus:

"Not every study of rock art has to deal with every possibility; people are, by and large, astute enough to blend singular perspectives into the wider picture. And when one hugely important area of interpretation is lacking in the field, there is space for some specific focus on it, to fully drag it into the interpretative spectrum."

But yes, we shouldn't lose sight of the other theories, such as hunting magic. As I said, I'm no fan of reductionism in any arena, but when it comes to inherently unknowable arenas like prehistory, it's just plain bad news.

I'm fascinated by "human origins" theories, and two that have interested me are the "plant psychedelics" view championed by Terence McKenna (among others), proposing that proto-hominid apes ate shrooms and evolved human self-consciousness and language, and the "origins of culture in menstruation" theory put forward by Chris Knight in 'Blood Relations' (far too complex for me to sum up here!). They both have their for's and against's, but in the end we just have to hold them, together with the other ideas, as possibilites.

There's a great talk by Peter Lamborn Wilson over at archive.org:

http://www.archive.org/details/Peter_Lamborn_Wilson_lecture__Plowing_th_94P005

He deals a lot with "origin" theories, and does a great job of juggling different ones. (He gives the one of the most convincing expositions of a "gender conflict" theory of the origins of culture I've heard, and then confesses that he wouldn't believe it even if it was true.) He says:

"But there's a kind of paranoid defensiveness on the part of archaeology as an academic and professional science, in which the wild interpretations that were given in the 19th century, which pretty much all proved to be wrong, about the past and especially about prehistory, have been such a traumatic experience for archaeology that archaeologists these days refuse to interpret."

He's generalising of course, but there's a good point there. My sense is that the "sympathetic hunting magic" theory of cave art probably retains a bit of the reek of these "wild" 19th century ideas, and is shunned more for that reason than whether it makes possible sense in light of ethnology.
In reply to:
Re: Ritual (PeterH)
Topic Outline:
The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index