Capturing Imagination

We have all found ourselves involuntarily addressing inanimate objects as though they were human. For a fleeting instant, we act as though our cars and computers can hear us. In situations like ritual or play, objects acquire a range of human characteristics, such as perception, thought, action, or speech. Puppets, dolls, and ritual statuettes cease to be merely addressees and ...

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We have all found ourselves involuntarily addressing inanimate objects as though they were human. For a fleeting instant, we act as though our cars and computers can hear us. In situations like ritual or play, objects acquire a range of human characteristics, such as perception, thought, action, or speech. Puppets, dolls, and ritual statuettes cease to be merely addressees and begin to address us—we see life in them.

How might we describe the kind of thought that gives life to the artifact, making it memorable as well as effective, in daily life, play, or ritual action? Following The Chimera Principle, in this collection of essays Carlo Severi explores the kind of shared imagination where inanimate artifacts, from non-Western masks and ritual statuettes to paintings and sculptures in our own tradition, can be perceived as living beings. This nuanced inquiry into the works of memory and shared imagination is a proposal for a new anthropology of thought.

List of Figures
Translator’s Note
Acknowledgments
Chapter One. On Living Objects and the Anthropology of Thought
Kūkai’s Vision
Levels of Cognition
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List of Figures
Translator’s Note
Acknowledgments
Chapter One. On Living Objects and the Anthropology of Thought
Kūkai’s Vision
Levels of Cognition
Anthropology and Pragmatics
Ethnography and Thoughtsense
Chapter Two. Primitivist Empathy: Intensifying the Image
and Deciphering Space
The Stakes of Formal Borrowings
Carl Einstein, or Immobile Ecstasy
Primitivism without Borrowing: Imaginary Filiation
Iconography and Gaze-Games
Chapter Three. The Universe of the Arts of Memory
An Exercise in Methodology
Amerindian Arts of Memory: A Case Study
Pictography and Memory: A Model
Eponymous Animals: Northwest Coast Visual Culture
Pictograms and Andean Khipus
Principles of Mnemonic Encoding
Chapter Four. Authorless Authority: Forms of Authority in Oral Traditions
Evidentials, Pragmatics, and Artifacts
The Fang Mvet: Singer, Song, and Harp
Rethinking the West African Nail Figure
The Complex Artifact
Chapter Five. Giving Voice: When Images Speak
Speech and Ritual Images
Here-Now-I: Demonstrative Images and Speech Acts
Kolossoi and Kouroi; or The Pragmatics of Images
Conclusion
Chapter Six. Becoming Patroclus: Funerary Rituals and Games in the Iliad
The Image Through the Text: Identification, Hierarchy, and Prefiguration
Funerary Games as Quasi-Rituals
Reflections on Funeral Rituals among the Wari’
The Universe of Object-Persons
Chapter Seven. The Anthropology of Abstract Art
Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Anthropology of Art
Principles of Analysis: An Example from Kandinsky
Visual Strategies in Abstract Art
Chapter Eight. Chimeric Space: Perception and Projection
The Visible and Invisible in Works of Art
Perception and Projection in the Gaze
Symbolism and Transitional Space
Chimeras and Ambiguous Images
Wayana and Yekuana Iconography: Chimeras in the Amazon
Conclusion
Chapter Nine. The Semblance of Life: The Epistemology of Western Perspective
A Science of Description: Imitare and Ritrarre
Models of Truth
Poetry Without Words or Blind Painting?
The Counterfactual Image
New Meditations on a Hobby Horse
Perspective and the Anthropology of Images
From Presence to the Active Gaze
The Witness-Figure and Capriccio
Chapter Ten. On Irrefutable Hypotheses
References Cited
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